Hermann Hesse
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"Hermann Hesse" was a German born Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. His best-known works include Steppenwolf (novel)/Steppenwolf, Siddhartha (novel)/Siddhartha, and The Glass Bead Game, each of which explores an individual's search for authenticity, self-knowledge and spirituality. In 1946, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature.

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If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.

The best weapons against the infamies of life are courage, wilfulness and patience. Courage strenthens, wilfulness is fun and patience provides tranquility.

The man of power is ruined by power, the man of money by money, the submissive man by subservience, the pleasure seeker by pleasure.

Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.

Perhaps people like us cannot love. Ordinary people can - that is their secret.

Knowledge can be communicated, but wisdom cannot. A man can find it, he can live it, he can be filled and sustained by it, but he cannot utter or teach it.

He reflected deeply, until this feeling completely overwhelmed him and he reached a point where he recognized causes; for to recognize causes, it seemed to him, is to think, and through thought along feelings become knowledge and are not lost, but become real and being to mature.

When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane.

I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value.

It is possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard.

People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest.

Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.

Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.

Opinions mean nothing; they may be beautiful or ugly, clever or foolish, anyone can embrace or reject them.

The truth is lived, not taught.

There's no reality except the one contained within us. That's why so many people live an unreal life. They take images outside them for reality and never allow the world within them to assert itself.