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"At Night on the High SeasAt night, when the sea cradles meAnd the pale star gleamLies down on its broad waves,Then I free myself whollyFrom all activity and all the loveAnd stand silent and breathe purely,Alone, alone cradled by the seaThat lies there, cold and silent, with a thousand lights.Then I have to think of my friendsAnd my gaze sinks into their eyes,And I ask each one, silent and alone:"Are you still mine?Is my sorrow a sorrow to you, my death a death?Do you feel from my love, my grief,Just a breath, just an echo?"And the sea peacefully gazes back, silent,And smiles: NOAnd no greetings and no answers come from anywhere."
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Exlpore more Reflection quotes

"When you leave a port, ask yourself two questions: What mark you have made on that port and what have you learned from that port?"

"The laws is not meant to destroy us. But our disobedience leads to our own destruction."

"Whether you are aware of it or not, your life is still disappearing. It's pouring out, it keeps diminishing."

"You never know what people have endured to get where they are."

"Why do you compare yourself to others? Can you carry weight of others on your shoulders?"

"Everyone should think about why certain undesirable situations occur in life."

"Knowing my soul is my lifetime-study."

"What you are seeking is yourself."

"Life is head and shoulders above all other things we regard as precious in this world."

"The world is full of vanities."
Explore more quotes by Hermann Hesse

"And while he compared all these things which he was seeing with his eyes to the mental pictures he had painted of them in his homesickness, it became clear to him that he was, after all, destined to be a poet, and he saw that in poets' dreams reside a beauty and enchantment that one seeks in vain in the things of the real world."

"The world, my friend Govinda, is not imperfect, or on a slow path towards perfection: no, it is perfect in every moment, all sin already carries the divine forgiveness in itself."

"Here in this endless and gleaming wildernessI was removed farther than ever from the world of men --And I never saw so close and so clearlyThe image in the mirror of my own soul."

"Once a man takes honesty as his ideal, he cannot confine himself to showing the pleasant and reasonable side of his nature."

"I had considered myself some kind of genius and had considerably underestimated the toils and difficulties encountered along the path to an art."

"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."

"What I am in search of is not so much the gratification of a curiosity or a passion for worldly life, but something far less conditional. I do not wish to go out into the world with an insurance policy in my pocket guaranteeing my return in the event of a disappointment, like some cautious traveller who would be content with a brief glimpse of the world. On the contrary, I desire that there should be hazards, difficulties and dangers to face; I am hungry for reality, for tasks and deeds, and also for privation and suffering."

"I understand you well. Now we have no need to dispute: you are awake, and so you have seen the difference between us, the difference between men akin to their father and those who take their destiny from a woman; the difference between spirit and intellect."
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