Hermann Hesse Quotes

The colour blue - that is my colour - and the colour blue means you have left the drabness of day-to-day reality to be transported into - not a world of fantasy, it’s not a world of fantasy - but a world of freedom where you can say what you like and what you don’t like. This has been expressed forever by the colour blue, which is really sky blue.

Things are only real after one has learned to agree on their realness. What took place this evening, for instance, cannot possibly be real to you, because no one could agree with you about it. 'Do you mean that you didn't see what happened?'. Of course I did. But I don't count. I am the one who's lying to you, remember?

Hello, I'm Leonard Nimoy. The following tale of alien encounters is true. By true I mean false. It's all lies. But they're entertaining lies and in the end, isn't that the truth? The answer is no.

Spin' is a polite word for deception. Spinners mislead by means that range from subtle omissions to outright lies. Spin paints a false picture of reality by bending facts, mischaracterizing the words of others, ignoring or denying crucial evidence, or just 'spinning a yarn' - by making things up.

Forgiving someone does not mean you condone their behavior. The act of forgiveness takes place in your own mind. It really has nothing to do with the other person. The reality of true forgiveness lies in setting ourselves free from holding on to the pain. It is simply an act of releasing yourself from the negative energy.

Human lives seldom conform to the conventions of fiction. Chekhov says that it is in the beginnings and endings of stories that we are most tempted to lie. I know what he means, and I agree.

Just because it's a dream doesn't mean it's a lie.

What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me? I can understand only in human terms. What I touch, what resists me - that I understand. And these two certainties - my appetite for the absolute and for unity and the impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable principle - I also know that I cannot reconcile them. What other truth can I admit without lying, without bringing in a hope I lack and which means nothing within the limits of my conditions?

Games are a way of escaping reality - that's why you need heroic factor.

The reality is just the opposite: the master does nothing. It is in your becoming a disciple that the whole mystery lies. It is in your surrender of the ego that the whole search comes to an authentic point. It is in putting your mind aside. That is what sannyas is: an authentic discipleship. It means putting your mind aside. You have lived according to your mind up to now. If that is fulfilling, then there is no need for anybody to become a sannyasin.

This must be what it means to be a ghost, being certain that life exists, because your four senses say so, and yet unable to see it.

To take the choice of another ... to forget their concrete reality, to abstract them, to forget that you are a node in a matrix, that actions have consequences. We must not take the choice of another being. What is community but a means to ... for all we individuals to have ... our choices.

I'm not as trusting as people think I am. Sure, I see the best in people, but that doesn't mean it's really there.

That's what I mean by radical truth. I mean accepting reality.

When I think of God, when I think of him as existent, and when I believe him to be existent, my idea of him neither increases nordiminishes. But as it is certain there is a great difference betwixt the simple conception of the existence of an object, and the belief of it, and as this difference lies not in the parts or composition of the idea which we conceive; it follows, that it must lie in the manner in which we conceive it.

A thought is harmless unless we believe it. It’s not our thoughts, but our attachment to our thoughts, that causes suffering. Attaching to a thought means believing that it’s true, without inquiring. A belief is a thought that we’ve been attaching to, often for years.

Falsehood is never in words; it is in things.

When you find peace within yourself, you become the kind of person who can live at peace with others. Inner peace is not found by staying on the surface of life, or by attempting to escape from life through any means. Inner peace is found by facing life squarely, solving its problems, and delving as far beneath its surface as possible to discover its verities and realities.

For many people, morality means a set of rules governing the disposition on one's genital organs; or a set of injunctions against lying, stealing, or killing except when such acts are sanctioned by church or state.

I wonder if being sane means disregarding the chaos that is life, pretending only an infinitesimal segment of it is reality.

Liberation also means that even though I'm a woman I have masculine parts of my temperament which I can safely explore and integrate into my experience.

Statistics is the art of lying by means of figures.

It's my belief that sanity lies in realizing that reality is not exactly what we had in mind.

Why do you lie" I ask her. "To block the truth." Fair enough. Naomi goes on. "Where did we get it in our heads that we need truth all the time? Sometimes lies are nice, you know? You don't have to know the truth all the time. It's too exhausting.

We face now an era where we're going to be fighting the terrorist threat. I mean, that's simply a reality we are going to have to address that one.