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...

Oh, love isn’t there to make us happy. I believe it exists to show us how much we can endure.

That is just what life is when it is beautiful and happy – a game! Naturally, one can also do all kinds of other things with it, make a duty of it, or a battleground,...

Vasudeva listened with great attention. Listening carefully, he leteverything enter his mind, birthplace and childhood, all that learning,all that searching, all joy, all distress. This was among theferryman’s virtues one of the greatest: like only...

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...

Gratitude is not a virtue I believe in, and to me it seems hypocritical to expect it from a child.

Solitude is independence. It had been my wish and with the years I had attained it. It was cold. Oh, cold enough! But it was also still, wonderfully still and vast like the cold stillness...

(…) y todo aquello unido era el río, todas las voces, los fines, los anhelos, los sufrimientos, los placeres; el río era la música de la vida. Y cuando Siddharta escuchaba con atención al río,...

If only there were a dogma to believe in. Everything is contradictory, everything is tangential; there are no certainties anywhere. Everything can be interpreted one way and then again interpreted in the opposite sense. The...

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...

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...

When I have neither pleasure nor pain and have been breathing for a while the lukewarm insipid air of these so called good and tolerable days, I feel so bad in my childish soul that...

He saw mankind going through life in a childlike manner… which he loved but also despised…. He saw them toiling, saw them suffering, and becoming gray for the sake of things which seemed to him...

Young people have many pleasures and many sorrows, because they have only themselves to think of.

… the river is everywhere at once, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the rapids, in the sea, in the mountains, everywhere at once, and that there...

How I hated myself, thwarted, poisoned and tortured myself, made myself old and ugly. Never again, as I once fondly imagined, will I consider that Siddartha is clever. But one thing I have done well,...

I call that man awake who, with conscious knowledge and understanding, can perceive the deep unreasoning powers in his soul, his whole innermost strength, desire and weakness, and knows how to reckon with himself.

…I thought, with a certain amount of sorrow, how much enormous talent there must be in the world for nature simply to toss it away so arbitrarily! But nature could not care less what we...

… it would be better for our country and the world in general, if at least the few people who were capable of thought stood for reason and the love of peace instead of heading...

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...

He sat thus, lost in meditation, thinking Om, his soul as the arrow directed at Brahman.

He tried to think of death as he had done now and then, but that tired him and he dozed off. When he awoke an hour later, he felt fresh and calm as though he...

You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself.

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

Voll Blüten steht der Pfirsichbaum nicht jede wächst zur Frucht sie schimmern hell wie Rosenschaum durch Blau und Wolkenflucht. Wie Blüten geh’n Gedanken auf hundert an jedem Tag — lass’ blühen, lass’ dem Ding den...

The world was beautiful when looked at in this way—without any seeking, so simple, so childlike.

Despair is the result of each earnest attempt to go through life with virtue, justice and understanding, and to fulfill their requirements. Children live on one side of despair, the awakened on the other side.

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...

You were too lazy to learn to dance until it was almost too late, and in the same way you were too lazy to learn to love. As for ideal and tragic love, that I...

How foolish it is to wear oneself out in vain longing for warmth! Solitude is independence. It had been my wish and with the years I had attained it. It was cold. Oh, cold enough!...

Y lo que, por el contrario, me sucede a mí en las raras horas de placer, lo que para mí es delicia, suceso, elevación y éxtasis, eso no lo conoce, ni lo ama, ni lo...

A thousand times I was ready to regret and take back my rash statement – yet it had been the truth.

Oh, if I had had a friend at this moment, a friend in an attic room, dreaming by candlelight and with a violin lying ready at his hand! How I should have slipped up to...

His way had therefore come full circle, or rather had taken the form of an ellipse or a spiral, following as ever no straight unbroken line, for the rectilinear belongs only to Geometry and not...

She stood before him and surrendered herself to him and sky, forest, and brook all came toward him in new and resplendent colors, belonged to him, and spoke to him in his own language. And...

Did you,” so he asked him at one time, “did you too learn that secret from the river: that there is no time?”Vasudeva’s face was filled with a bright smile.”Yes, Siddhartha,” he spoke. “It is...

…the Master and the boy followed each other as if drawn along the wires of some mechanism, until soon it could no longer be discerned which was coming and which going, which following and which...

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.

All the books of the world full of thoughts and poems are nothing in comparison to a minute of sobbing, when feeling surges in waves, the soul feels itself profoundly and finds itself. Tears are...

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

One thing, however, did become clear to him—why so many perfect works of art did not please him at all, why they were almost hateful and boring to him, in spite of a certain undeniable...

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 of them for reality and never allow the world...

Gemeinsam aber ist allen Menschen, die des guten Willens sind, dieses: daß unsere Werke uns am Ende beschämen, daß wir immer wieder von vorn beginnen müssen, daß das Opfer immer neu gebracht werden muß.

Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

We are sun and moon, dear friend; we are sea and land. It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor...

Would you actually believe that you had committed your foolish acts in order to spare your son from committing them too? And could you in any way protect your son from Sansara? How could you?...

In eternity there is no time, only an instant long enough for a joke.

When I composed those verses I was preoccupied less with music than with an experience—an experience in which that beautiful musical allegory had shown its moral side, had become an awakening and a summons to...

Tegularius was a willful, moody person who refused to fit into his society. Every so often he would display the liveliness of his intellect. When highly stimulated he could be entrancing; his mordant wit sparkled...

I realize that some people will not believe that a child of little more than ten years is capable of having such feelings. My story is not intended for them. I am telling it to...