Hermann Hesse Quotes

The more defensive and angry I get, the more I later discover those feelings are usually just projections of feelings I am having towards myself.

The world is a mirror for us – whatever you say about others is really how you feel about yourself.

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.

People only hate what they see in themselves.

There is a very remarkable inclination in human nature to bestow on external objects the same emotions which it observes in itself, and to find every where those ideas which are most present to it.

It is a fact that you project what you are.

What we dislike in others is often a weakness in our own lives.

It is good to know what a man is, and also what the world takes him for. But you do not understand him until you have learnt how he understands himself.

I'm so deeply interested in what it feels like to be other people that I get to operate under the illusion when I'm writing fiction that I'm not really revealing that much about myself. But, of course, I am, and I know that I am. And yet there's this sort of membrane that I get to work behind as I write my fiction, and I love it.

I think if a character appeals to you, there are certain parts of yourself will come to the fore and other parts that will play down.

I am convinced we do not only love ourselves in others but hate ourselves in others too.

Have you ever noticed when you look in a mirror, unless you're really depressed or something, the person in the mirror generally looks a little more competent, a little more curious, a little more intelligent than you actually feel yourself to be? They often look more interesting and more soulful.

Nothing is stranger to man than his own image.

What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others.

The mystery at the center of 'Burial Rites' is not who killed whom on the night of March 13, 1828. It is the mystery each of us encounters: Can we every truly know another? Can we ever truly know ourselves?

Sometimes I think all my pictures are just pictures of me.

You can only see in someone else what you see in yourself.

I always say when someone says something negative about me, it's really saying something negative about them.

The person you call an enemy is an exaggerated aspect of your own shadow self.

...Everything you hate is everything that you created.

Critisism is just reflection of the person that speaking

I was constantly watching myself, my secret self, as dependent on my actions as my own personality

When you squeeze an orange, you'll always get orange juice to come out. What comes out is what's inside. The same logic applies to you: when someone squeezes you, puts pressure on you, or says something unflattering or critical, and out of you comes anger, hatred, bitterness, tension, depression, or anxiety, that is what's inside. If love and joy are what you want to give and receive, change your life by changing what's inside

I know that you cannot hate other people without hating yourself.