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"This change did not bring me into the community of the others, did not make me closer to anyone, but actually made me even lonelier. My reformation seemed to point in the direction ofDemian, but even this was a distant fate. I did not know myself, for I was too deeply involved. It had begunwith Beatrice, but for some time I had been living in such an unreal world with my paintings and my thoughtsof Demian that I'd forgotten all about her, too. I could not have uttered a single word about my dreams andexpectations, my inner change, to anyone, not even if I had wanted to. But how could I have wanted to?"
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"Let go of what was and embrace what to be."

"Windows 7 is on its way to being an obsolete product. Keeping it on your computer long term will leave you with an obsolete computer. Windows 10 has numerous problems, but lack of support soon is not one of them."

"They had entered the thorny wilderness, and the golden gates of their childhood had for ever closed behind them."

"...your tranquil yes to the changing over into the formless void of the unlimited."

"There's a time for departure even when there's no certain place to go."

"Sometimes you don't know when you're taking the first step through a door until you're already inside."

"You cannot marry your past without divorcing your future."

"The interval between the decay of the old and the formation and establishment of the new constitutes a period of transition which must always necessarily be one of uncertainty, confusion, error, and wild and fierce fanaticism."

"Leaving the familiar for unknown terrain is like a death - and feeling this level of finality should snap one back to life for life has greater meaning in the face of death."

"She's happy to be home but being home means that it's an end to her adventure and escape."
Explore more quotes by Hermann Hesse

"And those of us who trust ourselves the least,Who doubt and question most, these, it may be,Will make their mark upon eternity,And youth will turn to them as to a feast.The time may come when a man who confessedHis self-doubts will be ranked among the blessedWho never suffered anguish or knew fear,Whose times were times of glory and good cheer,Who lived like children, simple happy lives.For in us too is part of that Eternal MindWhich through the aeons calls to brothers of its kind:Both you and I will pass, but it survives."

"We are not going in circles, we are going upwards. The path is a spiral; we have already climbed many steps."

"And some day there will be nothing left of everything that has twisted my life and grieved it and filled me so often with such anguish. Some day, with the last exhaustion, peace will come and the motherly earth will gather me back home. It won't be the end of things, only a way of being born again, a bathing and a slumbering where the old and the withered sink down, where the young and new begin to breathe. Then, with other thoughts, I will walk along streets like these, and listen to streams, and overhear what the sky says in the evening, over and over and over."

"I called the world of phenomena an illusion, I called my eyes and my tongue and accident, valueless phenomena. No, that is all over; I have awakened, I have really awakened and have just been born today."

"If a beautiful thing were to remain beautiful for all eternity, I'd be glad, but all the same I'd look at it with a colder eye. I'd say to myself: You can look at it any time, it doesn't have to be today."

"To be able to throw one's self away for the sake of a moment, to be able to sacrifice years for a woman's smile - that is happiness."

"One knew nothing. One lived and walked about on the earth or rode through the forests, and so many things looked at one with such challenge and promise, rousing such longing: an evening star, a bluebell, a lake green with reeds, the eye of a human being or of a cow, and at times it seemed as if the very next moment something never seen but long yearned for must happen, as if a veil must drop from everything. But then it passed, and nothing happened, and the riddle was not solved, nor was the secret spell lifted, and finally one became old... and perhaps one still knew nothing, would still be waiting and listening."

"One must find the source within one's own Self, one must possess it. Everything else was seeking -- a detour, an error."

"One of the disadwantages of school and learning, he thought dreamily, was that the mind seemed to have the tendency too see and represent all things as though they were flat and had only two dimensions. This, somehow, seemed to render all matters of intellect shallow and worthless."
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