Hermann Hesse Siddhartha Quotations

The river is everywhere at the same time . . . everywhere and the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past, nor the shadow of the future.

My real self wanders elsewhere, far away, wanders on and on invisibly and has nothing to do with my life.

What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find.

Not in his speech, not in his thoughts, I see his greatness, only in his actions, in his life.

Your soul is the whole world.

I want to learn from myself, want to be my student, want to get to know myself, the secret of Siddhartha.

He has robbed me, yet he has given me something of greater value . . . he has given to me myself.

They both listened silently to the water, which to them was not just water, but the voice of life, the voice of Being, the voice of perpetual Becoming.

I shall no longer be instructed by the Yoga Veda or the Aharva Veda, or the ascetics, or any other doctrine whatsoever. I shall learn from myself, be a pupil of myself; I shall get to know myself, the mystery of Siddhartha." He looked around as if he were seeing the world for the first time.

Perhaps people like us cannot love. Ordinary people can - that is their secret.

The reason why I do not know anything about myself, the reason why Siddhartha has remained alien and unknown to myself is due to one thing, to one single thing--I was afraid of myself, I was fleeing from myself. I was seeking Atman, I was seeking Brahman, I was determined to dismember myself and tear away its layers of husk in order to find in its unknown innermost recess the kernel at the heart of those layers, the Atman, life, the divine principle, the ultimate. But in so doing, I was losing myself.

What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.

You show the world as a complete, unbroken chain, an eternal chain, linked together by cause and effect.

I have always thirsted for knowledge, I have always been full of questions.

And here is a doctrine at which you will laugh. It seems to me, Govinda, that love is the most important thing in the world.

Nothing was, nothing will be, everything has reality and presence

I have no desire to walk on water," said Siddhartha. "Let the old shramanas satisfy themselves with such skills.

Truly, nothing in the world has so occupied my thoughts as this I, this riddle, the fact I am alive, that I am separated and isolated from all others, that I am Siddhartha! And about nothing in the world do I know less about than me, about Siddhartha!

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

I can think. I can wait. I can fast.

No, a true seeker, one who truly wished to find, could accept no doctrine. But the man who has found what he sought, such a man could approve of every doctrine, each and every one, every path, every goal; nothing separated him any longer from all those thousands of others who lived in the eternal, who breathed the Divine.

I, also, would like to look and smile, sit and walk like that, so free, so worthy, so restrained, so candid, so childlike and mysterious. A man only looks and walks like that when he has conquered his Self. I also will conquer my Self.

You will become tired, Siddhartha." "I will become tired." "You will fall asleep, Siddhartha." "I will not fall asleep." "You will die, Siddhartha." "I will die.