Hermann Hesse Quotes

Many who seem to be struggling with adversity are happy; many, amid great affluence, are utterly miserable.

We see many who are struggling against adversity who are happy, and more although abounding in wealth, who are wretched.

A decade of cutting away dead flesh, cauterizing old scars ripped open over and over and still it is not enough.

We come from people who brought us up to believe that life is a struggle, and if you should feel really happy, be patient: this will pass.

Almost everybody in the neighborhood had troubles, frankly localized and specified; but only the chosen had complications. To have them was in itself a distinction, though it was also, in most cases, a death warrant. People struggled on for years wit

If you think God has promised this world will be a five-star hotel, you will be miserable as you live through the normal struggles of life. But if you remember that God promised we would be pilgrims and this world may feel more like a desert or even a prison, you might find your life surprisingly happy.

I've had, what, two years? Probably five good years. Before that I had twenty years of uncertainty and suffering and ego destruction and poverty. All those things. That'll always outweigh the good times.

And send him many years of sunshine days!

One of the outstanding tragedies of this age of struggle and money-madness is the fact that so few people are engaged in the effort which they like best. Everyone should find his or her particular niche in the world's work, where both material prosperity and happiness in abundance may be found.

Faint is the bliss, that never past thro' pain.

I will always try to be happy. I don’t think people really understand the value of happiness until they know what it’s like to be in that very, very dark place. It’s not romantic. Not even a little.

... when there is a war the years are longer that is to say the days are longer the months are longer the years are much longer but the weeks are shorter that is what makes a war.

Our predicament is not the difficulty of attaining happiness, but the difficult of avoiding the misery to which the pursuit of happiness exposes us.

I've been choking to death for years. By now this should be easy.

The next film I have is called Miles Ahead, which is about Miles Davis, during a five-year period in his life during which he's struggling to figure out which direction to go musically and in his life. I play a record executive who's there to try to get Miles to collaborate with one of my clients. I'm excited to see that.

The two Antonines (for it is of them that we are now speaking) governed the Roman world forty-two years, with the same invariable spirit of wisdom and virtue. ... Their united reigns are possibly the only period of history in which the happiness of a great people was the sole object of government.

I have observed 100,000 families over my years of investment counseling. I always saw greater prosperity and happiness among those families who tithed than among those who didn't.

Life is not a struggle, not a tension. Life has not to be suffering. Life is bliss

Reader, I wish thee Health, Wealth, Happiness, And may kind Heaven thy Year's Industry bless.

It was wisely said, by a man of great observation, that there are as many miseries beyond riches as on this side of them.

I always feel like I'm in the five to ten pound struggle, but my life is so busy. I'm just not that concerned, really. I'm normal and I'm perfectly happy being that way. Some weeks I'm like, 'Man, my clothes are fitting so good' and then some weeks I'm like, 'I need to cut back on a few things,' but that's it. I don't fall into the trap of having to be 110 pounds.

A source of permanent, accessible pleasure, our genitals exist. The god who created our misfortune, who made us short-lived, vain and cruel, has also provided this form of meagre compensation. If we couldn't have sex from time to time, what would life be? A futile struggle against joints that stiffen, caries that form. All of which, moreover, is as uninteresting as humanly possible - the collagen which makes muscles stiffen, the appearance of microbic cavities in the gums.

The human animal, like others, is adapted to a certain amount of struggle for life [and] the mere absence of effort from his life removes an essential ingredient of happiness. [. . .] He forgets that to be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.

For too many of us ease is far more soul-destroying than trouble.

Trouble is the next best thing to enjoyment; there is no fate in the world so horrible as to have no share in either its joys or sorrows.