If I know what love is, it's because of you.

— Hermann Hesse

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Solitude is independence.

— Hermann Hesse

People like you and me are quite lonely really but we still have each other, we have the secret satisfaction of being different, of rebelling, of desiring the unusual.

— Hermann Hesse

I will no longer mutilate and destroy myself in order to find a secret behind the ruins.

— Herman Hesse

Du bist für diese einfache, bequeme, mit so wenigem zufriedene Welt von heute viel zu anspruchsvoll und hungrig, sie speit dich aus, du hast für sie eine Dimension zu viel. Wer heute leben und seines Lebens froh werden will, der darf kein Mensch sein wie du und ich. Wer statt Gedudel Musik, statt Vergnügen Freude, statt Geld Seele, statt Betrieb echte Arbeit, statt Spielerei echte Leidenschaft verlangt, für den ist diese hübsche Welt hier keine Heimat.

— Hermann Hesse

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Learn what is to be taken seriously and laugh at the rest.

— Hermann Hesse

People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest.

— Hermann Hesse

There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself.

— Hermann Hesse

My story is not a pleasant one; it is neither sweet nor harmonious, as invented stories are; it has the taste of nonsense and chaos, of madness and dreams - like the lives of all men who stop deceiving themselves.

— Hermann Hesse