Hermann Hesse Quotes

Your world will follow your idea about yourself.

Ego is a social institution with no physical reality. The ego is simply your symbol of yourself. Just as the word “water” is a noise that symbolizes a certain liquid without being it, so too the idea of ego symbolizes the role you play, who you are, but it is not the same as your living organism.

The biographer who writes the life of his subject's self-concept passes through a fade into the inner house of life.

Identity in the form of continuity of personality is an extremely important characteristic of the individual.

I find myself a fascinating subject.

It's normal for human beings to identify with their own separate self. The problem is that we get caught in that notion of ourself as a separate individual and caught in that individual self's agenda.

And in fact, I think one of the best guides to telling you who you are, and I think children use it all the time for this purpose, is fantasy.

The development of the meaning attaching to the personal self, the conscious being, is the subject matter of the history of psychology.

I know who I am by now. And I am my own brand.

In preindustrial times, the idea of creating something was more related to your personality. Personality was something that you constructed; it's something you had to actively develop and work on. Now personality is something that you have.

To me the ego is the habitual and compulsive thought processes that go through everybody's mind continuously. External things like possessions or memories or failures or successes or achievements. Your personal history.

I didn't put out this album because I wanted everybody to know I was grown up. I'm 21 and that's not grown up.

Some people want to define themselves, and they should, as it's part of their identity. For me personally, I've never really had a label for myself.

Your lower self sees you as the center of the universe- your higher self sees you as a cell in the body of humanity.

The sense of identity provides the ability to experience one's self as something that has continuity and sameness, and to act accordingly.

Identity issues are hardwired into the way I think about character - it's almost as if I can't get away from them even if I want to.

As long as I am this or that, I am not all things.

Most people have a time-bound awareness. And the reason is they have sacrificed their self for their self-image.

Everyone returns us to a different sense of ourselves, for we become a little of who they think we are.

What mortal is there of us, who would find his satisfaction enhanced by an opportunity of comparing the picture he presents to himself of his doings, with the picture they make on the mental retina of his neighbours? We are poor plants buoyed up by the air-vessels of our own conceit.

Your ego is just an idea implanted in your mind. It is poisonous. Your ego keeps driving you madder and madder.

In order for you to be yourself, you have to be somebody first.

A man's name is not like a mantle which merely hangs about him...but a perfectly fitting garment, which, like the skin, has grown over him, at which one cannot rake and scrape without injuring the man himself.

I find it a huge strain to be responsible for my tastes and be known and defined by them.

I'm fascinated by what makes up a self, how one becomes a self, how much is it an answer to others and how much is it an essence of self.