Hermann Hesse Quotes

Talent perceives differences; genius, unity.

One is always considered mad, when one discovers something that others cannot grasp.

It is the function of creative man to perceive and to connect the seemingly unconnected.

To see things in the seed, that is genius.

Genius is knowing where to stop.

A great deal of phenomenal experience has fostered in me a flexibility of the mind and imagination that some might call madness

Direct experience is the evasion, or hiding place of those devoid of imagination.

See what no one else sees. See what everyone chooses not to see... out of fear, conformity or laziness. See the whole world anew each day!

This is the test and triumph of originality, not to show us what has never been, and what we may therefore very easily never have dreamt of, but to point out to us what is before our eyes and under our feet, though we have had no suspicion of its existence, for want of sufficient strength of intuition, of determined grasp of mind to seize and retain it.

Genius is only a superior power of seeing.

The source of genius is imagination alone, the refinement of the senses that sees what others do not see, or sees them differently.

Intelligence is composed mostly of imagination, insight, things that have nothing to do with reason.

Genius is rarely able to give any account of its own processes.

I don't follow any system. All the laws you can lay down are only so many props to be cast aside when the hour of creation arrives.

It's easy to be a genius in your twenties. In your forties, it's difficult.

We are obliged to regard many of our original minds as crazy at least until we have become as clever as they are.

When I think of vision, I have in mind the ability to see above and beyond the majority.

The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success.

People may say that what I do is very clever, but it's not really at all. It's not Swift.

Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.

The prerequisite of originality is the art of forgetting, at the proper moment, what we know.

My insights come in periods of working. There are wonderful moments of surprise, but I'm superstitious enough not to want to talk about them.

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

Vision is the true creative rhythm.

Originality is simply a pair of fresh eyes.