Hermann Hesse Quotes

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

It's true that the biggest value of life is that it's going to stop. I was thinking when I was in New York the last time that all that we see that has importance is man-made. It isn't nature-made. And when I was looking through the window, looking at New York, I was so moved by humanity's desire for immortality-because that's what it is.

We are tiny flames, Helikaon, and we flicker alone in the great dark for no more than a heartbeat. When we strive for wealth, glory and fame, it is meaningless. The nations we fight for will one day cease to be. Even the mountains we gaze upon will crumble to dust. To truly live we must yearn for that which does not die.

The seed of mortals broods o'er passing things, and hath nought surer than the smoke-cloud's shadow.

The unreal is more powerful than the real, because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it, because it's only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles, wood rots. People, well, they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on.

Men are the dreams of a shadow.

Acquisition means life to miserable mortals.

A mass of dust, world's momentary slave, Is man, in state of our old Adam made, Soon born to die, soon flourishing to fade.

We're here for such a short period of time.

I see life as a burning meteorite that you can climb all over, and feed off, as it is falling to earth.

Reason is immortal, all else mortal.

The pursuit of eternity is no longer the prerogative of the gods - it is the business of us all, here and now.

Art is eternal, but life is short.

Who apart from the gods is without pain for his whole lifetime's length?

Western Humanism does not ask the fundamental questions about the meaning and limits of personal experience. Humsniists leave aside the mysteries of contingency and transitoriness, for the certainties of research, production, consumption.

The great problem of humanity is life and death. Every person dreams of becoming invisible one day.

We all have to die some day. Not very many immortals have shown up in this world.

Transience is one of the fundamental characteristics both of the human condition and of the political order.

I am a forgettable leaf on a tree.

We are made to be immortal, and yet we die. It's horrible, it can't be taken seriously

This is to be mortal, And seek the things beyond mortality.

For mortal kind taketh thought only for the day, and hath no more surety than the shadow of smoke.

Why are you weeping ? Did you imagine that I was immortal ?

Happier are all men than the dwellers in Faerie – or the gods, for that matter…Better a life like a falling star, bright across the dark, than a deathlessness that can see naught above or beyond itself…the day draws nigh when Faerie shall fade, the Erlking himself shrink to a woodland sprite and then to nothing, and the gods go under. And the worst of it is, I cannot believe it wrong that the immortals will not live forever.

I thought about all of the things that everyone ever says to each other, and how everyone is going to die, whether it's in a millisecond, or days, or months, or 76.5 years, if you were just born. Everything that's born has to die, which means our lives are like skyscrapers. The smoke rises at different speeds, but they're all on fire, and we're all trapped.