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"If a night-moth were to concentrate its will on flying to a star or some equally unattainable object, it wouldn't succeed. Only, it wouldn't even try in the first place. A moth confines its search to what has sense and value for it, what it needs, what is indispensable to its life... if I imagined that I wanted under all circumstances to get to the North Pole, then to achieve it I would have to desire it strongly enough that my whole being was ruled by it. But if I were to decide to will that the pastor should stop wearing his glasses, it would be useless. That would be making a game of it."
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"Her sample drawings were clipped, rather subordinately, to her photograph. All of them were arresting. One of them was unforgettable. The unforgettable one was done in florid wash colors, with a caption that read: 'Forgive Them Their Trespasses.' It showed three small boys fishing in an odd-looking body of water, one of their jackets draped over a 'No Fishing!' sign. The tallest boy, in the foreground of the picture, appeared to have rickets in one leg and elephantiasis in the other--an effect, it was clear, that Miss Kramer had deliberately used to show that the boy was standing with his feet slightly apart."

"Only the foolish, blinded by language's conventions, think of fire as red or gold. Fire is blue at it's melancholy rim, green in it's envious heart. It may burn white, or even, in it's greatest rages, black."

"The the glow become brighter: a holographic golden sickle with a few sheaves of wheat, rotating just above Meg McCaffrey.A boy in the crowd gasped. 'She's a communist!'A girl who'd been sitting at Cabin Four's table gave him a disgusted sneer. 'No, Damien, that's my mom's symbol."

"There was a necklace inside. A thin silver chain with a small pendant, a silver pansy."

"His gaze, bluntedby the unnumbered processionof iron bars, uncountedas his softly padded steps.Smooth motion of blood and sinewturning in its own, small circleprescribed by bars and walls...and skin, confined.Suddenly, without warning,a flash of light and imagepierces the caged brain,and passing through its beating heartto stillness finds its way."

"It was all extremely symbolic; but then, if you choose to think so, nothing in this world is not symbolical."
Explore more quotes by Hermann Hesse

"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."

"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."

"Muoth was right. On growing old, one becomes more contented than in one's youth, which I will not therefore revile, for in all my dreams I hear my youth like a wonderful song which now sounds more harmonious than it did in reality, and even sweeter."

"It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is."

"Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it."

"Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity."

"All the girls I had ever loved were mine. Each gave me what she alone had to give and to each I gave what she alone knew how to take."
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