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Once It Happened, As I Lay Awake At Night, That I Suddenly Spoke In Verses, In Verses So Beautiful And Strange That I Did Not Venture To Think Of Writing Them Down, And Then In The Morning They Vanished; And Yet They Lay Hidden Within Me Like The Hard Kernel Within An Old Brittle Husk.

-Hermann Hesse

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Once It Happened, As

Hermann Hesse

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Once It Happened, As I Lay Awake At Night, That I Suddenly Spoke In Verses, In Verses So Beautiful And Strange That I Did Not Venture To Think Of Writing Them Down, And Then In The Morning They Vanished; And Yet They Lay Hidden Within Me Like The Hard Kernel Within An Old Brittle Husk.

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For The Air Of Lonely Men Surrounded Him Now, A Still Atmosphere In Which The World Around Him Slipped Away, Leaving Him Incapable Of Relationship, An Atmosphere Against Which Neither Will Nor Longing Availed. This Was One Of The Significant Earmarks Of His Life.

A Father Can Pass On His Nose And Eyes And Even His Intelligence To His Child, But Not His Soul. In Every Human Being The Soul Is New

When You Like Someone, You Like Them In Spite Of Their Faults. When You Love Someone, You Love Them With Their Faults.

Faith And Doubt Go Hand In Hand, They Are Complementaries. One Who Never Doubts Will Never Truly Believe.

Romantic Souvenirs Had A Way Of Attaching Themselves To One When One Wanted To Move On, But They Were Not To Be Taken Seriously.

All Interpretation, All Psychology, All Attempts To Make Things Comprehensible, Require The Medium Of Theories, Mythologies, And Lies.

In Any Case, The Most Lively Young People Become The Best Old People, Not Those Who Pretend To Be As Wise As Grandfathers While They Are Still At School.

That Seems To Be The Way Of Things. Everyone Takes, Everyone Gives. Life Is Like That.

Whither Will My Path Yet Lead Me? This Path Is Stupid, It Goes In Spirals, Perhaps In Circles, But Whichever Way It Goes, I Will Follow It.

To Die Is To Go Into The Collective Unconscious, To Lose Oneself In Order To Be Transformed Into Form, Pure Form.

Collective Unconscious

All Suicides Have The Responsibility Of Fighting Against The Temptation Of Suicide. Every One Of Them Knows Very Well In Some Corner Of His Soul That Suicide, Though A Way Out, Is Rather A Mean And Shabby One, And That It Is Nobler And Finer To Be Conquered By Life Than To Fall By One's Own Hand.

When A Tree Is Cut Down And Reveals Its Naked Death-wound To The Sun, One Can Read Its Whole History In The Luminous, Inscribed Disk Of Its Trunk: In The Rings Of Its Years, Its Scars, All The Struggle, All The Suffering, All The Sickness, All The Happiness And Prosperity Stand Truly Written, The Narrow Years And The Luxurious Years, The Attacks Withstood, The Storms Endured.

I Call That Man Awake Who, With Conscious Knowledge And Understanding, Can Perceive The Deep Unreasoning Powers In His Soul, His Whole Innermost Strength, Desire And Weakness, And Knows How To Reckon With Himself.

Gratitude Is Not A Virtue I Believe In, And To Me It Seems Hypocritical To Expect It From A Child.

Love Is Stronger Than Violence.

What Isn't Part Of Ourselves Doesn't Disturb Us.

The Reason Why I Do Not Know Anything About Myself, The Reason Why Siddhartha Has Remained Alien And Unknown To Myself Is Due To One Thing, To One Single Thing--i Was Afraid Of Myself, I Was Fleeing From Myself. I Was Seeking Atman, I Was Seeking Brahman, I Was Determined To Dismember Myself And Tear Away Its Layers Of Husk In Order To Find In Its Unknown Innermost Recess The Kernel At The Heart Of Those Layers, The Atman, Life, The Divine Principle, The Ultimate. But In So Doing, I Was Losing Myself.

Every Experience Has Its Element Of Magic.

There Is No Reality Except The One Contained Within Us.

Eternity Is A Mere Moment, Just Long Enough For A Joke.

When The Suffering Becomes Acute Enough, One Goes Forward.

Sentimentality Is A Basking In Feelings That In Reality You Don't Take Seriously Enough To Make The Slightest Sacrifice To Or Ever Translate Into Action.

Abraxas Was The God Who Was Both God And Devil.

When We Have Learned How To Listen To Trees, Then The Brevity And The Quickness And The Childlike Hastiness Of Our Thoughts Achieve An Incomparable Joy. Whoever Has Learned How To Listen To Trees No Longer Wants To Be A Tree. He Wants To Be Nothing Except What He Is. That Is Home. That Is Happiness.

Every Age, Every Culture, Every Custom And Tradition Has Its Own Character, Its Own Weakness And Its Own Strength, Its Beauties And Cruelties; It Accepts Certain Sufferings As Matters Of Course, Puts Up Patiently With Certain Evils. Human Life Is Reduced To Real Suffering, To Hell, Only When Two Ages, Two Cultures And Religions Overlap

Those Who Direct The Maximum Force Of Their Desires Toward The Center, Toward True Being, Toward Perfection, Seem Quieter Than The Passionate Souls Because The Flame Of Their Fervor Cannot Always Be Seen.

The Bourgeois Treasures Nothing More Highly Than The Self.... And So At The Cost Of Intensity He Achieves His Own Preservation Andsecurity. His Harvest Is A Quiet Mind Which He Prefers To Being Possessed By God, As He Prefers Comfort To Pleasure, Convenience To Liberty, And A Pleasant Temperature To That Deathly Inner Consuming Fire.

Faith Is Stronger Than So-called Reality.

So Wie Die Verruecktheit In Einem Hoeheren Sinn, Der Anfang Aller Weisheit Ist, So Ist Die Schizophrenie Der Anfang Aller Kunst, Aller Phantasie. (as Insanity In A Higher Sense, Is The Beginning Of All Wisdom, So Is Schizophrenia The Beginning Of All Art, All Fantasy.)

And Whether This Happiness Lasted A Hundred Seconds Or Ten Minutes, It Was So Far Removed From Time That It Resembled Every Other Genuine Happiness As Completely As One Fluttering Blue Lycaenid Butterfly Resembles Another.

The Cup Was Emptied And Would Never Be Filled Again.

My Resolve To Die Was Not The Whim Of An Hour. It Was The Ripe, Sound Fruit That Had Slowly Grown To Full Size, Lightly Rocked By The Winds Of Fate Whose Next Breath Would Bring It To The Ground.

So You Find Yourself Surrounded By Death And Horror In The World, And You Escape It Into Lust. But Lust Has No Duration; It Leaves You Again In The Desert.

Finding Yourself

The Bourgeois Today Burns As Heretics And Hangs As Criminals Those To Whom He Erects Monuments Tomorrow.

I Suddenly Saw How Sad And Artificial My Life Had Been During This Period, For The Loves, Friends, Habits And Pleasures Of These Years Were Discarded Like Badly Fitting Clothes. I Parted From Them Without Pain And All That Remained Was To Wonder That I Could Have Endured Them So Long.

Everything That Is Thought And Expressed In Words Is One-sided, Only Half The Truth; It All Lacks Totality, Completeness, Unity. When The Illustrious Buddha Taught About The World, He Had To Divide It Into Samsara And Nirvana, Illusion And Truth, Into Suffering And Salvation. One Cannot Do Otherwise, There Is No Other Method For Those Who Teach. But The World Itself, Being In And Around Us, Is Never One-sided. Never Is A Man Or A Deed Wholly Samsara Or Wholly Nirvana; Never Is A Man Wholly A Saint Or A Sinner. This Only Seems So Because We Suffer The Illusion That Time Is Something Real.

...every Ego So Far From Being A Unity Is In The Highest Degree A Manifold World, A Constellated Heaven, A Chaos Of Forms, Of States And Stages, Of Inheritances And Potentialities. It Appears To Be A Necessity As Imperative As Eating And Breathing For Everyone To Be Forced To Regard This Chaos As A Unity And To Speak Of His Ego As Though Is Was A One-fold And Clearly Detached And Fixed Phenomenon. Even The Best Of Us Shares This Delusion.

I Have Known It For A Long Time But I Have Only Just Experienced It. Now I Know It Not Only With My Intellect, But With My Eyes, With My Heart, With My Stomach.

That Is Why We Were Drawn To One Another And Why We Are Brother And Sister. I Am Going To Teach You To Dance And Play And Smile, And Still Not Be Happy. And You Are Going To Teach Me To Think And To Know And Yet Not Be Happy. Do You Know That We Are Both Children Of The Devil?

She Stood Before Him And Surrendered Herself To Him And Sky, Forest, And Brook All Came Toward Him In New And Resplendent Colors, Belonged To Him, And Spoke To Him In His Own Language. And Instead Of Merely Winning A Woman He Embraced The Entire World And Every Star In Heaven Glowed Within Him And Sparkled With Joy In His Soul. He Had Loved And Had Found Himself. But Most People Love To Lose Themselves.

In The Beginning Was The Myth. God, In His Search For Self-expression, Invested The Souls Of Hindus, Greeks, And Germans With Poetic Shapes And Continues To Invest Each Child's Soul With Poetry Every Day.

Life Is Waiting Everywhere, The Future Is Flowering Everywhere, But We Only See A Small Part Of It And Step On Much Of It With Our Feet

Every Phenomenon On Earth Is Symbolic, And Each Symbol Is An Open Gate Through Which The Soul, If It Is Ready, Can Enter Into The Inner Part Of The World, Where You And I And Day And Night Are All One.

. . . Gentleness Is Stronger Than Severity, Water Is Stronger Than Rock, Love Is Stronger Than Force.

We Kill At Every Step, Not Only In Wars, Riots And Executions. We Kill When We Close Our Eyes To Poverty, Suffering And Shame.in The Same Way All Disrespect For Life, All Hard-heartedness,all Indifference, All Contempt Is Nothing Else Than Killing.

As Every Flower Fades And As All Youth Departs, So Life At Every Stage, So Every Virtue, So Our Grasp Of Truth Blooms In Its Day And May Not Last Forever. Since Life May Summon Us At Every Age, Be Ready, Heart, For Parting, New Endeavour, Be Ready Bravely And Without Remorse To Find New Light That Old Ties Cannot Give. In All Beginnings Dwells A Magic Force For Guarding Us And Helping Us To Live.

Human Life Is Reduced To Real Suffering, To Hell, Only When Two Ages, Two Cultures And Religions Overlap.

A House Without Books Is A Poor House, Even If Beautiful Rugs Are Covering Its Floors And Precious Wallpapers And Pictures Cover Its Walls

Solitude Is Independence. It Had Been My Wish And With The Years I Had Attained It. It Was Cold. Oh, Cold Enough! But It Was Also Still, Wonderfully Still And Vast Like The Cold Stillness Of Space In Which The Stars Revolve.

A Tree Has Something To Say To Us: Be Still! Be Still! Look At Me!... Home Is Within You, Or Home Is Nowhere At All.

What Constitutes A Real, Live Human Being Is More Of A Mystery Than Ever These Days, And Men Each One Of Whom Is A Valuable, Unique Experiment On The Part Of Nature Are Shot Down Wholesale.

Loneliness Is The Way By Which Destiny Endeavors To Lead Man To Himself.

Despair Is The Result Of Each Earnest Attempt To Go Through Life With Virtue, Justice And Understanding, And To Fulfill Their Requirements. Children Live On One Side Of Despair, The Awakened On The Other Side.

We Are Not Going In Circles, We Are Going Upwards. The Path Is A Spiral; We Have Already Climbed Many Steps.

One Day I Would Be A Better Hand At The Game. One Day I Would Learn How To Laugh. Pablo Was Waiting For Me, And Mozart Too.

Everyone Can Perform Magic, Everyone Can Reach His Goals, If He Is Able To Think, If He Is Able To Wait, If He Is Able To Fast.

Perhaps People Like Us Cannot Love. Ordinary People Can - That Is Their Secret.

The Greatest Threat To Our World And Its Peace Comes From Those Who Want War, Who Prepare For It, And Who, By Holding Out Vague Promises Of Future Peace Or By Instilling Fear Of Foreign Aggression, Try To Make Us Accomplices To Their Plans.

And All The Voices, All The Goals, All The Yearnings, All The Sorrows, All The Pleasures, All The Good And Evil, All Of Them Together Was The World. All Of Them Together Was The Stream Of Events, The Music Of Life.

Nevertheless, Whether In Occurrences Lasting Days, Hours Or Mere Minutes At A Time, I Have Experienced Happiness Often, And Have Had Brief Encounters With It In My Later Years, Even In Old Age.

One Can Beg, Buy, Be Presented With And Find Love In The Streets, But It Can Never Be Stolen.

You Should Not Take Old People Who Are Already Dead Seriously. It Does Them Injustice. We Immortals Do Not Like Things To Be Taken Seriously. We Like Joking. Seriousness, Young Man, Is An Accident Of Time. It Consists, I Don't Mind Telling You In Confidence, In Putting Too High A Value On Time. I, Too, Once Put Too High A Value On Time. For That Reason I Wished To Be A Hundred Years Old. In Eternity, However, There Is No Time, You See. Eternity Is A Mere Moment, Just Long Enough For A Joke.

In Fear I Hurried This Way And That. I Had The Taste Of Blood And Chocolate In My Mouth, The One As Hateful As The Other.

It Is Not For Me To Judge Another Man's Life. I Must Judge, I Must Choose, I Must Spurn, Purely For Myself. For Myself, Alone.

Every Healthy Person Must Have A Goal In Life And That Life Must Have Content.

... Let Us Recall The Well-known Statement Of A University Professor In The Republic Of The Massagetes: 'not The Faculty But His Excellency The General Can Properly Determine The Sum Of Two And Two.'

University Professors

In Germany I Have Been Acknowledged Again Since The Fall Of Hitler, But My Works, Partly Suppressed By The Nazis And Partly Destroyed By The War; Have Not Yet Been Republished There.

I Am In Truth The Steppenwolf That I Often Call Myself; That Beast Astray That Finds Neither Home Nor Joy Nor Nourishment In A World That Is Strange And Incomprehensible To Him.

Your Soul Is The Whole World.

Who Travels Far Will Often See Things Far Removed From What Was Believed As Truth.

To Nobody Can You Communicate In Words And Teachings, What Happened To You In Your Hour Of Enlightenment.

You Must Find Your Dream, Then The Way Becomes Easy.

We Have To Stumble Through So Much Dirt And Humbug Before We Reach Home. And We Have No One To Guide Us. Our Only Guide Is Our Homesickness.

His Way Had Therefore Come Full Circle, Or Rather Had Taken The Form Of An Ellipse Or A Spiral, Following As Ever No Straight Unbroken Line, For The Rectilinear Belongs Only To Geometry And Not To Nature And Life.

Within You There Is A Stillness And Sanctuary To Which You Can Retreat At Any Time And Be Yourself

Most Men Will Not Swim Before They Are Able To.' Is Not That Witty? Naturally, They Won't Swim! They Are Born For The Solid Earth, Not For The Water. And Naturally They Won't Think. They Are Made For Life, Not For Thought. Yes, And He Who Thinks, What's More, He Who Makes Thought His Business, He May Go Far In It, But He Has Bartered The Solid Earth For The Water All The Same, And One Day He Will Drown.

How Beautiful The World Was When One Looked At It, Without Searching... Just Looked, Simply And Innocently.

Siddhartha Stopped Fighting His Fate This Very Hour, And He Stopped Suffering.

But Peace, Too, Is A Living Thing And Like All Life It Must Wax And Wane, Accommodate, Withstand Trials, And Undergo Changes.

I Wanted Only To Live In Accord With The Promptings Which Came From My True Self. Why Was That So Very Difficult?

Our Friendship Has No Other Purpose, No Other Reason, Than To Show You How Utterly Unlike Me You Are.

Words Do Not Express Thoughts Very Well. They Always Become A Little Different Immediately After They Are Expressed, A Little Distorted, A Little Foolish.

Truly, Nothing In The World Has So Occupied My Thoughts As This I, This Riddle, The Fact I Am Alive, That I Am Separated And Isolated From All Others, That I Am Siddhartha! And About Nothing In The World Do I Know Less About Than Me, About Siddhartha!

I Have Transported Many, Thousands; And To All Of Them, My River Has Been Nothing But An Obstacle On Their Travels. They Travelled To Seek Money And Business, And For Weddings, And On Pilgrimages, And The River Was Obstructing Their Path, And The Ferryman's Job Was To Get Them Quickly Across That Obstacle. But For Some Among Thousands, A Few, Four Or Five, The River Has Stopped Being An Obstacle, They Have Heard Its Voice, They Have Listened To It, And The River Has Become Sacred To Them, As It Has Become Sacred To Me.

Among The Letters My Readers Write Me, There Is A Certain Category Which Is Continuously Growing, And Which I See As A Symptom Of The Increasing Intellectualization Of The Relationship Between Readers And Literature.

A Soul That Is Ruined In The Bud Will Frequently Return To The Springtime Of Its Beginning And Its Promise-filled Childhood, As Though It Could Discover New Hopes There And Retie The Broken Threads Of Life. The Shoots Grow Rapidly And Eagerly, But It Is Only A Sham Life That Will Never Be A Genuine Tree.

Wisdom Is Nothing But A Preparation Of The Soul, A Capacity, A Secret Art Of Thinking, Feeling And Breathing Thoughts Of Unity At Every Moment Of Life.

All The Books Of The World Full Of Thoughts And Poems Are Nothing In Comparison To A Minute Of Sobbing, When Feeling Surges In Waves, The Soul Feels Itself Profoundly And Finds Itself. Tears Are The Melting Ice Of Snow. All Angels Are Close To The Crying Person.

What For Me Is Bliss And Life And Ecstasy And Exaltation, The World In General Seeks At Most In Imagination; In Life It Finds It Absurd.

I Do Want More. I Am Not Content With Being Happy. I Was Not Made For It. It Is Not My Destiny. My Destiny Is The Opposite.

Madness, In A Higher Sense, Is The Beginning Of All Wisdom

The Deity Is Within You, Not In Ideas And Books. Truth Is Lived, Not Taught.

They Slept Profoundly, Desperately, Greedily, As Though For The Last Time, As Though They Had Been Condemned To Stay Awake Forever And Had To Drink In All The Sleep In The World During These Last Hours.

Every Sin Already Carries Grace Within In, All Small Children Are Potential Old Men, All Sucklings Have Death Within Them, All Dying People - Eternal Life. The Buddha Exists In The Robber And Dice Player; The Robber Exists In The Brahmin.

Love Must Not Entreat,' She Added, 'or Demand. Love Must Have The Strength To Become Certain Within Itself. Then It Ceases Merely To Be Attracted And Begins To Attract.

I Cannot Tell My Story Without Reaching A Long Way Back.

You Have No Doubt Guessed Long Since That The Conquest Of Time And The Escape From Reality, Or However Else It May Be That You Choose To Describe Your Longing, Means Simply The Wish To Be Relieved Of Your So-called Personality. That Is The Prison Where You Lie.

They Both Listened Silently To The Water, Which To Them Was Not Just Water, But The Voice Of Life, The Voice Of Being, The Voice Of Perpetual Becoming.

Is Not Every Life, Every Work Fine?

Lucid And Quiet His Voice Hovered Above The Listeners, Like A Light, Like A Starry Sky.

A Girl Had Bidden Me Eat And Drink And Sleep, And Had Shown Me Friendship And Had Laughed At Me And Had Called Me A Silly Little Boy. And This Wonderful Friend Had Talked To Me Of The Saints And Shown Me That Even When I Had Outdone Myself In Absurdity I Was Not Alone.

Every Path Leads Homeward, Every Step Is Birth, Every Step Is Death, Every Grave Is Mother.

I Called The World Of Phenomena An Illusion, I Called My Eyes And My Tongue An Accident, Valueless Phenomena. No, That Is All Over; I Have Awakened, I Have Really Awakened And I Have Just Been Born Today.

My Goal Is This: Always To Put Myself In The Place In Which I Am Best Able To Serve, Wherever My Gifts And Qualities Find The Best Soil To Grow, The Widest Field Of Action. There Is No Other Goal.

In Each Individual The Spirit Is Made Flesh, In Each One The Whole Of Creation Suffers, In Each One A Savior Is Crucified.

Seeking Means: To Have A Goal; But Finding Means: To Be Free, To Be Receptive, To Have No Goal. You, O Worthy One, Are Perhaps Indeed A Seeker, For In Striving Towards Your Goal, You Do Not See Many Things That Are Under Your Nose.

To Hold Our Tongues When Everyone Is Gossiping, To Smile Without Hostility At People And Institutions, To Compensate For The Shortage Of Love In The World With More Love In Small, Private Matters; To Be More Faithful In Our Work, To Show Greater Patience, To Forgo The Cheap Revenge Obtainable From Mockery And Criticism: All These Are Things We Can Do.

But Of All The Water's Secrets, He Saw Today Only A Single One-one That Struck His Soul. He Saw That This Water Flowed And Flowed, It Was Constantly Flowing, And Yet It Was Always There; It Was Always Eternally The Same And Yet New At Every Moment! Oh, To Be Able To Grasp This, To Understand This!

The Many-voiced Song Of The River Echoed Softly. Siddhartha Looked Into The River And Saw Many Pictures In The Flowing Water. The River's Voice Was Sorrowful. It Sang With Yearning And Sadness, Flowing Towards Its Goal ... Siddhartha Was Now Listening Intently...to This Song Of A Thousand Voices ... Then The Great Song Of A Thousand Voices Consisted Of One Word: Om - Perfection ... From That Hour Siddhartha Ceased To Fight Against His Destiny.

Any Attempt To Replace A Personal Conscience By A Collective Conscience Does Violence To The Individual And Is The First Step Toward Totalitarianism.

It May Be Important To Great Thinkers To Examine The World, To Explain And Despise It. But I Think It Is Only Important To Love The World, Not To Despise It, Not For Us To Hate Each Other, But To Be Able To Regard The World And Ourselves And All Beings With Love, Admiration And Respect.

I Was Out Of My Bed In One Second, Trembling With Excitement, And I Dashed To The Door And Into The Adjoining Room, Where I Could Watch The Streets Below From The Windows.

The Man Of Power Is Ruined By Power, The Man Of Money By Money, The Submissive Man By Subservience, The Pleasure Seeker By Pleasure.

Lovers Should Not Separate From Each Other After Making Love Without Admiring Each Other, Without Being Conquered As Well As Conquering, So That No Feeling Of Satiation Or Desolation Arises Nor The Horrid Feeling Of Misusing Or Having Been Misused.

Only Within Yourself Exists The Other Reality For Which You Long. I Can Give You Nothing That Has Not Already Its Being Within Yourself. I Can Throw Open To You No Picture Gallery But Your Own Soul.

Oh, If I Had Had A Friend At This Moment, A Friend In An Attic Room, Dreaming By Candlelight And With A Violin Lying Ready At His Hand! How I Should Have Slipped Up To Him In His Quiet Hour, Noiselessly Climbing The Winding Stair To Take Him By Surprise, And Then With Talk And Music We Should Have Held Heavenly Festival Throughout The Night!

Painting Is Marvelous; It Makes You Happier And More Patient. Afterwards You Do Not Have Black Fingers As With Writing, But Blue And Red Ones.

Not In His Speech, Not In His Thoughts, I See His Greatness, Only In His Actions, In His Life.

Should We Be Mindful Of Dreams?" Joseph Asked. "can We Interpret Them?" The Master Looked Into His Eyes And Said Tersely: "we Should Be Mindful Of Everything, For We Can Interpret Everything.

For Me, However, That Beloved, Glowing Little Word Happiness Has Become Associated With Everything I Have Felt Since Childhood Upon Hearing The Sound Of The Word Itself.

The World Was Beautiful When Looked At In This Way-without Any Seeking, So Simple, So Childlike.

For The First Time In My Life I Tasted Death, And Death Tasted Bitter, For Death Is Birth, Is Fear And Dread Of Some Terrible Renewal.

The Marvel Of The Bhagavad-gita Is Its Truly Beautiful Revelation Of Life's Wisdom Which Enables Philosophy To Blossom Into Religion.

I Have Always Thirsted For Knowledge, I Have Always Been Full Of Questions.

We Must Become So Alone, So Utterly Alone, That We Withdraw Into Our Innermost Self. It Is A Way Of Bitter Suffering. But Then Our Solitude Is Overcome, We Are No Longer Alone, For We Find That Our Innermost Self Is The Spirit, That It Is God, The Indivisible. And Suddenly We Find Ourselves In The Midst Of The World, Yet Undisturbed By Its Multiplicity, For Our Innermost Soul We Know Ourselves To Be One With All Being.

A Tree Says: My Strength Is Trust. I Know Nothing About My Fathers, I Know Nothing About The Thousand Children That Every Year Spring Out Of Me. I Live Out The Secret Of My Seed To The Very End, And I Care For Nothing Else. I Trust That God Is In Me. I Trust That My Labor Is Holy. Out Of This Trust I Live.

He Has Robbed Me, Yet He Has Given Me Something Of Greater Value . . . He Has Given To Me Myself.

Trees Are Sanctuaries. Whoever Knows How To Speak To Them, Whoever Knows How To Listen To Them, Can Learn The Truth. They Do Not Preach Learning And Precepts, They Preach, Undeterred By Particulars, The Ancient Law Of Life.

Remember This: One Can Be A Strict Logician Or Grammarian And At The Same Time Full Of Imagination And Music.

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.

Gaze Into The Fire, Into The Clouds, And As Soon As The Inner Voices Begin To Speak... Surrender To Them. Don't Ask First Whether It's Permitted, Or Would Please Your Teachers Or Father Or Some God. You Will Ruin Yourself If You Do That.

All Men Of Goodwill Have This In Common - That Our Works Put Us To Shame.

Without Words, Without Writing And Without Books There Would Be No History, There Could Be No Concept Of Humanity.

Words Can Not Express The Joy Of New Life.

The River Is Everywhere At The Same Time . . . Everywhere And The Present Only Exists For It, Not The Shadow Of The Past, Nor The Shadow Of The Future.

Until 1914 I Loved To Travel; I Often Went To Italy And Once Spent A Few Months In India. Since Then I Have Almost Entirely Abandoned Travelling, And I Have Not Been Outside Of Switzerland For Over Ten Years.

You Can Ride, You Can Travel With A Friend Of Your Own; The Final Step You Must Take Alone. No Wisdom Is Better Than This When Known: That Every Hard Thing Is Done Alone.

Among Mathematicians, Even In Those Days, The Reputation Of Being A Good Glass Bead Game Player Meant A Great Deal; It Was Equivalent To Being A Very Good Mathematician.

What Is The Holding Of Breath? It Is A Flight From The Self, It Is A Temporary Escape From The Torment Of Self. It Is A Temporary Palliative Against The Pain And Folly Of Life.

There Is No Reality Except The One Contained Within Us. That Is Why So Many People Live Such An Unreal Life. They Take The Images Outside Them For Reality And Never Allow The World Within To Assert Itself.

I Will Not Pretend To Justify This Espionage I Carried On, And I Will Say Openly That All These Signs Of A Life Full Of Intellectual Curiosity, But Thoroughly Slovenly And Disorderly At The Same Time, Inspired Me At First With Aversion And Mistrust. I Am Not Only A Middle-class Man, Living A Regular Life, Fond Of Work And Punctuality; I Am Also An Abstainer And A Nonsmoker, And These Bottles In Haller's Room Pleased Me Even Less Than The Rest Of His Artistic Disorder.

In The Beginning Was The Myth.

The Truth Has A Million Faces, But There Is Only One Truth.

It Is Not Our Purpose To Become Each Other; It Is To Recognize Each Other, To Learn To See The Other And Honor Him For What He Is: Each The Other's Opposite And Complement.

You Wouldn't Consider All The Bipeds You Pass On The Street Human Beings Simply Because They Walk Upright And Carry Their Young In Their Bellies Nine Months! It Is Obvious How Many Of Them Are Fish Or Sheep, Worms Or Angels, How Many Are Ants, How Many Are Bees!

Everything Is Necessary, Everything Needs Only My Agreement, My Assent, My Loving Understanding; Then All Is Well With Me And Nothing Can Harm Me.

Every Politician In The World Is All For Revolution, Reason, And Disarmament-but Only In Enemy Countries, Not In His Own.

All Higher Humor Begins With Ceasing To Take Oneself Seriously.

What I Am In Search Of Is Not So Much The Gratification Of A Curiosity Or A Passion For Worldly Life, But Something Far Less Conditional. I Do Not Wish To Go Out Into The World With An Insurance Policy In My Pocket Guaranteeing My Return In The Event Of A Disappointment, Like Some Cautious Traveller Who Would Be Content With A Brief Glimpse Of The World. On The Contrary, I Desire That There Should Be Hazards, Difficulties And Dangers To Face; I Am Hungry For Reality, For Tasks And Deeds, And Also For Privation And Suffering.

...and Gradually His Face Assumed The Expressions Which Are So Often Found Among Rich People - The Expressions Of Discontent, Of Sickliness, Of Displeasure, Of Idleness, Of Lovelessness. Slowly The Soul Sickness Of The Rich Crept Over Him.

Knowledge Can Be Conveyed, But Not Wisdom. It Can Be Found, It Can Be Lived, It Is Possible To Be Carried By It, Miracles Can Be Performed With It, But It Cannot Be Expressed In Words And Taught.

That Life Is Difficult, I Have Often Bitterly Realized.

Life Is Difficult

Seeking Means: To Have A Goal; But Finding Means: To Be Free, To Be Receptive, To Have No Goal.

What We Can And Should Change Is Ourselves: Our Impatience, Our Egoism (including Intellectual Egoism), Our Sense Of Injury, Our Lack Of Love And Forbearance. I Regard Every Other Attempt To Change The World, Even If It Springs From The Best Intentions, As Futile.

Love Is Like Death. It Is Fulfillment And An Evening After Which Nothing More May Follow.

Only Within Yourself Exists That Other Reality For Which You Long.

There Was Once A Man, Harry, Called The Steppenwolf. He Went On Two Legs, Wore Clothes And Was A Human Being, But Nevertheless He Was In Reality A Wolf Of The Steppes. He Had Learned A Good Deal Of All That People Of A Good Intelligence Can, And Was A Fairly Clever Fellow. What He Had Not Learned, However, Was This: To Find Contentment In Himself And His Own Life.

Dreams And Restless Thoughts Came Flowing To Him From The River, From The Twinkling Stars At Night, From The Sun's Melting Rays. Dreams And A Restlessness Of The Soul Came To Him.

A Mere Nothing Suffices — And The Lightning Strikes.

A Thousand Times I Was Ready To Regret And Take Back My Rash Statement - Yet It Had Been The Truth.

People With Courage And Character Always Seem Sinister To The Rest.

What Could I Say To You That Would Be Of Value, Except That Perhaps You Seek Too Much, That As A Result Of Your Seeking You Cannot Find.

You Are Only Afriad If You Are Not In Harmony With Yourself. People Are Afraid Because They Have Never Owned Up To Themselves. A Whole Society Composed Of Men Afraid Of The Unknown Within Them!

Each Man Had Only One Genuine Vocation - To Find The Way To Himself....his Task Was To Discover His Own Destiny - Not An Arbitrary One - And To Live It Out Wholly And Resolutely Within Himself. Everything Else Was Only A Would-be Existence, An Attempt At Evasion, A Flight Back To The Ideals Of The Masses, Conformity And Fear Of One's Own Inwardness.

Each Man's Life Represents A Road Toward Himself.

One Of The Aphorisms Occurred To Me Now And I Wrote It Under The Picture: "fate And Temperament Are Two Words For One And The Same Concept." That Was Clear To Me Now.

For A While I Shall Still Be Leaving, Looking Back At You As You Slip Away Into The Magic Islands Of The Mind. But For A While Now All Are Alive, Believing That In A Single Poignant Hour We Did Say All That We Could Ever Say In A Great Flowing Out Of Radiant Power. It Was Like Seeing And Then Going Blind.

Things Are Going Downhill With You!' He Said To Himself, And Laughed About It, And As He Was Saying It, He Happened To Glance At The River, And He Also Saw The River Going Downhill, Always Moving On Downhill, And Singing And Being Happy Through It All.

You Learned People And Artists Have, No Doubt, All Sorts Of Superior Things In Your Heads; But You're Human Beings Like The Rest Of Us, And We, Too, Have Our Dreams And Fancies.

She Stood A Moment Before My Eyes, Clearly And Painfully, Loved And Deeply Woven Into My Destiny; Then Fell Away Again In A Deep Oblivion, At A Half Regretted Distance.

The True Profession Of A Man Is To Find His Way To Himself.

You Treat World History As A Mathematician Does Mathematics, In Which Nothing But Laws And Formulas Exist, No Reality, No Good And Evil, No Time, No Yesterday, No Tomorrow, Nothing But An Eternal, Shallow, Mathematical Present.

You've Never Lived What You Are Thinking, And That Isn't Good. Only The Ideas We Actually Live Are Of Any Value.

And Here Is A Doctrine At Which You Will Laugh. It Seems To Me, Govinda, That Love Is The Most Important Thing In The World.

If A Bell Failed To Ring, If A Stove Smoked, If A Wheel On A Machine Stuck, You Knew At Once Where To Look And Did So With Alacrity; You Found The Defect And Knew How To Cure It. But The Thing Within You, The Secret Mainspring That Alone Gave Meaning To Life, The Thing Within Us That Alone Is Living, Alone Is Capable Of Feeling Pleasure And Pain, Of Craving Happiness And Experiencing It- That Was Unknown. You Knew Nothing About That, Nothing At All, And If The Mainspring Failed There Was No Cure. Wasn't It Insane?

The Art Of Love-giving And Taking Become One.

There Are Always A Few Such People Who Demand The Utmost Of Life And Yet Cannot Come To Terms With Its Stupidity And Crudeness.

We Kill When We Close Our Eyes To Poverty, Affliction, Or Infamy. We Kill When, Because It Is Easier, We Countenance, Or Pretend To Approve Of Atrophied Social, Political, Educational, And Religious Institutions, Instead Of Resolutely Combating Them.

I Sped Through Heaven And Saw God At Work. I Suffered Holy Pains. I Dropped All My Defenses And Was Afraid Of Nothing In The World. I Accepted All Things And To All Things I Gave Up My Heart.

He Had Loved And He Had Found Himself. Most People Love To Lose Themselves.

That Is Where My Dearest And Brightest Dreams Have Ranged — To Hear For The Duration Of A Heartbeat The Universe And The Totality Of Life In Its Mysterious, Innate Harmony.

How Absurd These Words Are, Such As Beast And Beast Of Prey. One Should Not Speak Of Animals In That Way. They May Be Terrible Sometimes, But They're Much More Right Than Men...they're Never In Any Embarrassment. They Always Know What To Do And How To Behave Themselves. They Don't Flatter And They Don't Intrude. They Don't Pretend. They Are As They Are, Like Stones Or Flowers Or Stars In The Sky.

There Is, So I Believe, In The Essence Of Everything, Something That We Cannot Call Learning. There Is, My Friend, Only A Knowledge - That Is Everywhere.

I Have Had To Experience So Much Stupidity, So Many Vices, So Much Error, So Much Nausea, Disillusionment And Sorrow, Just In Order To Become A Child Again And Begin Anew. I Had To Experience Despair, I Had To Sink To The Greatest Mental Depths, To Thoughts Of Suicide, In Order To Experience Grace.

Life Is Always Frightful. We Cannot Help It And We Are Responsible All The Same. One's Born And At Once One Is Guilty.

When Someone Seeks," Said Siddhartha, "then It Easily Happens That His Eyes See Only The Thing That He Seeks, And He Is Able To Find Nothing, To Take In Nothing Because He Always Thinks Only About The Thing He Is Seeking, Because He Has One Goal, Because He Is Obsessed With His Goal. Seeking Means: Having A Goal. But Finding Means: Being Free, Being Open, Having No Goal.

Happiness Is Love, Nothing Else.

The World Was So Beautiful When Regarded Like This, Without Searching, So Simply, In Such A Childlike Way. Moons And Stas Were Beautiful, Beautiful Were Bank And Stream, Forest And Rocks, Goat And Gold-bug, Flower And Butterfly. So Lovely, So Delightful To Go Through The World This Way, So Like A Child, Awake, Open To What Is Near, Without Distrust.

The Best Weapons Against The Infamies Of Life Are Courage, Wilfulness And Patience. Courage Strenthens, Wilfulness Is Fun And Patience Provides Tranquility.

Those Who Are Too Lazy And Comfortable To Think For Themselves And Be Their Own Judges Obey The Laws. Others Sense Their Own Laws Within Them.

I Realize That Some People Will Not Believe That A Child Of Little More Than Ten Years Is Capable Of Having Such Feelings. My Story Is Not Intended For Them. I Am Telling It To Those Who Have A Better Knowledge Of Man. The Adult Who Has Learned To Translate A Part Of His Feelings Into Thoughts Notices The Absence Of These Thoughts In A Child, And Therefore Comes To Believe That The Child Lacks These Experiences, Too. Yet Rarely In My Life Have I Felt And Suffered As Deeply As At That Time.

So She Thoroughly Taught Him That One Cannot Take Pleasure Without Giving Pleasure, And That Every Gesture, Every Caress, Every Touch, Every Glance, Every Last Bit Of The Body Has Its Secret, Which Brings Happiness To The Person Who Knows How To Wake It. She Taught Him That After A Celebration Of Love The Lovers Should Not Part Without Admiring Each Other, Without Being Conquered Or Having Conquered, So That Neither Is Bleak Or Glutted Or Has The Bad Feeling Of Being Used Or Misused.

Nothing Was, Nothing Will Be, Everything Has Reality And Presence

To Study History Means Submitting To Chaos And Nevertheless Retaining Faith In Order And Meaning.

A Game Master Or Teacher Who Was Primarily Concerned With Being Close Enough To The "innermost Meaning" Would Be A Very Bad Teacher. To Be Candid, I Myself, For Example, Have Never In My Life Said A Word To My Pupils About The "meaning" Of Music; If There Is One It Does Not Need My Explanations. On The Other Hand I Have Always Made A Great Point Of Having My Pupils Count Their Eighths And Sixteenths Nicely. Whatever You Become, Teacher, Scholar, Or Musician, Have Respect For The "meaning" But Do Not Imagine That It Can Be Taught.

For Me, Trees Have Always Been The Most Penetrating Preachers. I Revere Them When They Live In Tribes And Families, In Forests And Groves.

The Opposite Of Every Truth Is Just As True.

Every Man's Story Is Important, Eternal And Sacred. That Is Why Every Man, As Long As He Lives And Fulfills The Will Of Nature, Is Wondrous And Worthy Of Every Consideration.

He Had Thrown Himself Away, He Had Lost Interest In Everything, And Life, Falling In With His Feelings, Had Demanded Nothing Of Him. He Had Lived As An Outsider, An Idler And Onlooker, Well Liked In His Young Manhood, Alone In His Illness And Advancing Years. Seized With Weariness, He Sat Down On The Wall, And The River Murmured Darkly In His Thoughts.

A Magic Dwells In Each Beginning, Protecting Us, Telling Us How To Live.

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