Hermann Hesse Quotes

Life is hardly more than a fraction of a second. Such a little time to prepare oneself for eternity!

What is life? A madness. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a story. And the greatest good is little enough; for all life is a dream, and dreams themselves are only dreams.

Infancy is what is eternal, and the rest, all the rest, is brevity, extreme brevity.

To a Buddhist, contradictions only exist in a mind that has been forced to cultivate them.

Who, except the gods, can live time through forever without any pain?

Life, in my view, is simple, tragic, and frighteningly beautiful.

Nothing that was real ever died, only names, forms, and illusions.

Certainly people have a lot tougher situations than I've had to deal with. But I will say we are all dying from the moment we are born. This is not just rehearsal.

We are all the foolishness and all the crimes we did. We're also all the kindnesses we did. I hate to think of life as if we understood time. We don't understand time.

Time stays, we go.

Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.

We die only once, and for such a long time.

I think the life we are living now is just a blink in the eye of eternity.

Eternity is in love with the productions of time.

Loss and possession, death and life are one, There falls no shadow where there shines no sun.

In order to exist just once in the world, it is necessary never again to exist.

It is living and ceasing to live that are imaginary solutions. Existence is elsewhere.

Time is but the shadow of the world upon the background of Eternity.

When Time is spent, Eternity begins.

Life and death are one thread, the same line viewed from different sides.

It's ironic that in our culture everyone's biggest complaint is about not having enough time; yet nothing terrifies us more than the thought of eternity.

I also believe that when one dies, one may wake up to the reality that proves that time does not exist.

That which comes and goes, rises and sets, is born and dies is the ego. That which always abides, never changes, and is devoid of qualities is the Self.

The future and eternity are two entirely different things.

I'm a religious, spiritual person, but if there is good in the world, there must be evil, too.