Hermann Hesse Quotes

The disciplined are free.

Restraint never ruins one's health. What ruins it,is not restraint but outward suppression. A really self-restrained person grows every day from strength to strength and from peace to more peace. The very first step in self-restraint is the restraint of thoughts.

For the more a man limits himself, the nearer he is on the other hand to what is limitless.

For self is the lord of self, self is the refuge of self; therefore curb thyself as the merchant curbs a good horse.

When you feel the desire for power, you should stay in solitude for some time

In that power of self-control lies the seed of eternal freedom.

Love yourself and be awake- Today, tomorrow, always. First establish yourself in the way, Then teach others, And so defeat sorrow. To straighten the crooked You must first do a harder thing- Straighten yourself. You are your only master. Who else? Subdue yourself, And discover your master.

Behind real freedom, there lies discipline.

My father taught me that only through self-discipline can you achieve freedom. Pour water in a cup and you can drink; without the cup, the water would splash all over. The cup is discipline.

But since the world, which thou art to strive against, is not without thee, but within thee, it follows, that it is also to be conquered not without, but within thee.

It is his restraint that is honorable to a person, not their liberty.

We need to see, and agree that what we seek already lives within us, and we within it. Now we know our one great task: watch for whatever promises us freedom, and then quietly, consciously refuse to see ourselves through the eyes of what we know is incomplete. Then we live wholeness itself, instead of spending our lives looking for it.

Freedom is from within.

I do not ask for any crown But that which all may win; Nor try to conquer any world Except the one within.

Self-control is only courage under another form. It may also be regarded as the primary essence of character.

Self-denial does not belong to religion as characteristic of it; it belongs to human life; the lower nature must always be denied when you are trying to rise to a higher sphere.

I can slay a devil when I see one, Steady practice mastery of self so not to be one

The hardest victory is the victory over self.

A man without self-restraint is like a barrel without hoops, and tumbles to pieces.

One who conquers himself is greater than another who conquers a thousand times a thousand on the battlefield.

In the supremacy of self-control consists one of the perfections of the ideal man.

What, after all, are the world's deepest problems? They are what they always have been, the individual's problems—the meaning of life and death, the mastery of self, the quest for value and worth-whileness and freedom within, the transcending of loneliness, the longing for love and a sense of significance, and for peace. Society's problems are deep, but the individual's problems go deeper; Solzhenitsyn, Dostoyevsky, or Shakespeare will show us that, if we hesitate to take it from the Bible.

Every act of self-discipline increases your confidence, trust, and belief in yourself and your abilities.

Only in the crucible of self-mastery can freedom be smelted

The greatest value comes from loving yourself for who you are. I've been teaching myself this for years, so I hope that by showing what I've learned, others can find the same freedom and joy I have.