Hermann Hesse Quotes

The Bhagavad Gita—that ancient Indian Yogic text—says that it is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else’s life with perfection. So now I have started living my own life. Imperfect and clumsy as it may look, it is resembling me now, thoroughly.

What I know for sure: Often we don't even realize who we're meant to be because we're so busy trying to live out someone else's ideas. But other people and their opinions hold no power in defining our destiny.

What does genius mean? God has put us here specifically... every person has a job or journey to do. It's just a matter of finding what we're here to fulfill or execute. That's genius to me.

It's tragic how few people ever 'possess their souls' before they die. 'Nothing is more rare in any man', says Emerson, 'than an act of his own.' It is quite true. Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their life is a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

It is very easy to conform to what your society or your parents and teachers tell you. That is a safe and easy way of existing; but that is not living...To live is to find out for yourself what is true.

As we go through life we gradually discover who we are, but the more we discover, the more we lose ourselves.

If you spend your life walking through somebody else's museum, you never find out whether you're Rembrandt or not.

Sometimes identity can be your salvation. It can be liberating to find your place in the world, but at some point, identity can hold you back.

I spent thirty-three years in another man's shadow. I went everywhere he went, I helped him with everything he did. I was in a sense a part of him. When you live like that for a long time, you gradually lose track of what it is you yourself really want out of life

Live like yourself, was soon my lady's word, And lo! two puddings smok'd upon the board.

We move too much in platoons; we march by sections; we do not live in our vital individuality enough; we are slaves to fashion, in mind and in heart, if not to our passions and appetites.

I’m a really big believer that we all have this voice inside of us, and that voice is God talking to us, and we are all magical, and we all have something as specific to do as our fingerprint. And everybody should go out and do that. And I think between the ages of 15 and 32, don’t worry about getting married, don’t worry about settling down, don’t worry about having a baby. Give birth to yourself.

You and I were created by God to be so much more than normal…Following the crowd is not a winning approach to life. In the end it’s a loser’s game, because we never become who God created us to be by trying to be like everybody else.

If you want to live within the definition of your own truth, you have to choose to go through the initially painful and ultimately comforting process of finding it.

Pour out wine till I become a wanderer from myself; for in selfhood and existence I have felt only fatigue.

Your children are not your children. They are lives longing for itself. They come here with their own destiny. Give them your love. They will find their own way.

In my clinical experience, the greatest block to a person's development is his having to take on a way of life which is not rooted in his own powers.

You can't lose yourself.

Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold it's great proportions.

You must dare to disassociate yourself from those who would delay your journey... Leave, depart, if not physically, then mentally. Go your own way, quietly, undramatically, and venture toward Trueness at last.

There is no story that is you or that leads to you. Every story leads away from you.

Each man had only one genuine vocation to find the way to himself.

This wasn't the person he'd thought he was, or would have chosen to be if he'd been free to choose, but there was something comforting and liberating about being an actual definite someone, rather than a collection of contradictory potential someones.

I feel I've always been writing about self-identity. How do we become who we are? So I'm just writing from experience what's concerned me.