Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) was a Germany-born Swiss author, poet, and painter. He is best known for his novels that explore themes of spirituality and the search for authenticity, and he received a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1946.
CLEAR ALL
We cannot make another person change his or her steps to an old dance, but if we change our own steps, the dance no longer can continue in the same predictable pattern.
4
Only through our connectedness to others can we really know and enhance the self. And only through working on the self can we begin to enhance our connectedness to others.
7
Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality.
Stay a verb—don’t become a noun.
Life’s work is to wake up, to let the things that enter into the circle wake you up rather than put you to sleep. The only way to do this is to open, be curious, and develop some sense of sympathy for everything that comes along, to get to know its nature and let it teach you what it will.
3
I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language.
1
We already have everything we need. There is no need for self-improvement. We are one blink of an eye away from being fully awake.
8
If you bring forth what is within you it will save you. If you do not, it will destroy you.
The greatest satisfaction comes not from chasing pleasure and avoiding pain, but from the radical acceptance of life as it is, without fighting and clinging to passing desires.
2
I learned again and again in my life, until you get your own act together, you’re not ready for Big Love. What you’re ready for is one of those codependent relationships where you desperately need a partner.