I have no right to call myself one who knows. I was one who seeks, and I still am, but I no longer seek in the stars or in books; I’m beginning to hear the...

It was a strange business and it made a sad and curious impression on me; everything that had belonged to me in these earlier years of my life left me, was alien and lost to...

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

…and as far as talent is concerned, there will be such an excess that our artists will become their own audiences, and audiences made up of ordinary people will no longer exist.

He brooded on how close destruction always was to all creatures, animals as well as humans, and he realized that there is nothing we can predict or know for certain in this world except death.

Dreams and restless thoughts came flowing to him from the river, from the twinkling stars at night, from the sun’s melting rays. Dreams and a restlessness of the soul came to him.

Each of us has to find out for himself what is permitted and what is forbidden.. forbidden for him. It’s possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard. And...

De entre los sonidos, palabras y otros elementos triviales, podemos construir juguetes líricos e intelectuales, originar filosofías y canciones llenas de mensajes y consuelo más bellas que el ruin deporte de la fortuna y el...

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.

Visiems savižudžiams taip pat yra pažįstama kova su savižudybės pagunda. Kažkokiame savo sielos kamputyje kiekvienas puikiausiai žino, kad nors savižudybė ir yra išeitis, bet vis dėlto ji tėra tik šiek tiek menkas ir neteisėtas atsarginis...

then Siddhartha began to understand that his son had not brought him happiness and peace, but suffering and worry. But he loved him, and he preferred the suffering and worries of love over happiness and...

For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They...

I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teaching my blood whispers to me.

I feel life trembling within me, in my tongue, on the soles of my feet, in my desire or my suffering, I want my soul to be a wandering thing, able to move back into...

But if you were to die ten times for him, you would not alter his destiny in the slightest

We must become so alone, so utterly alone, that we withdraw into our innermost self. It is a way of bitter suffering. But then our solitude is overcome, we are no longer alone, for we...

The Wolf trots to and fro,The world lies deep in snow,The raven from the birch tree flies,But nowhere a hare, nowhere a roe,The roe -she is so dear, so sweet -If such a thing I...

One can pass on knowledge but not wisdom. One can find wisdom, one can live it, one can be supported by it, one can work wonders with it, but one cannot speak it or teach...

La vida de todo hombre es un camino hacia sí mismo, la tentativa de un camino, la huella de un sendero. Ningún hombre ha sido por completo él mismo; pero todos aspiran a llegar a...

Let me say no more. Words do no justice to the hidden meaning. Everything immediately becomes slightly different when it is expressed in words, a little bit distorted, a little foolish…It is perfectly fine with...

Narcissus’s thoughts were far more occupied with Goldmund than Goldmund imagined. He wanted the bright boy as a friend. He sensed in him his opposite, his complement; he would have liked to adopt, lead, enlighten,...

Thoughts and sorrows seem to have remained on the other side of the mountains. Between tormented men and hateful deeds, a person has to think and sorrow so much! Back there it is so difficult...

Like animals we call to each other,” was the thought that came to him as he remembered the hour of love in the afternoon.

Not everyone is allotted the chance to become a personality; most remain types, and never experience the rigor of becoming an individual. But those who do so inevitably discover that these struggles bring them into...

He had too much to think about. In the course of his long, useless marches he had sunk deeper and deeper into the tangle of his botched life as into a clump of brambles, and...

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, who ever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the...

One of the disadwantages of school and learning, he thought dreamily, was that the mind seemed to have the tendency too see and represent all things as though they were flat and had only two...

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...

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

I have had to experience so much stupidity, so many vices, so much error, so much nausea, disillusionment and sorrow, just in order to become a child again and begin anew. I had to experience...

Para o homem consciente só havia um dever: procurar-se a si mesmo, afirmar-se em si mesmo e seguir sempre adiante o seu próprio caminho, sem se preocupar com o fim a que possa conduzi-lo.

Čia reikia pridurti, jog klaidinga vadinti savižudžiais tik tuos žmones, kurie iš tikrųjų nusižudo. Tarp pastarųjų yra netgi daug tokių, kurie savižudžiais tampa, taip sakant, atsitiktinai, polinkio į savižudybę jie gali ir neturėti. Tarp žmonių,...

After having been standing by the gate of the garden for a long time, Siddhartha realised that his desire was foolish, which had made him go up to this place, that he could not help...

I believe that I am not responsible for the meaningfulness or meaninglessness of life, but that I am responsible for what I do with the life I’ve got.

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

We know from several statements of Knecht’s that he wanted to write the former Master’s biography, but official duties left him no time for such a task. He had learned to curb his own wishes....

He thought, that all men, trickled away, changing constantly, until they finally dissolved, while the artist-created images remained unchangeably the same. He thought that the fear of death was perhaps the root of all art,...

Whither will my path yet lead me? This path is stupid, it goes in spirals, perhaps in circles, but whichever way it goes, I will follow it.

Siddhartha began to understand that it was not happiness and peace that had come to him with his son but, rather, sorrow and worry. But he loved him and preferred the sorrow and worry of...

We are not going in circles, we are going upwards. The path is a spiral; we have already climbed many steps.

Todos los hombres pasan por estas dificultades. Para el hombre medio es éste el punto en que las exigencias de su propia vida entran en colisión dramática con las circunstancias, el punto en que tiene...

The whole of world history often seems to me nothing more than a picture book which portrays humanity’s most powerful and a senseless desire – the desire to forget. Does not each generation, by means...

Narcissus knew only too well what a charming golden bird had flown to him. This hermit soon sensed a kindred soul in Goldmund, in spite of their apparent contrasts. Narcissus was dark and spare; Goldmund,...

The mind cannot live in nature, only against nature, only as its counterpart.

It is wrong to say that schoolmasters lack heart and are dried-up, soulless pedants! No, by no means. When a child’s talent which he has sought to kindle suddenly bursts forth, when the boy puts...

They slept profoundly, desperately, greedily, as though for the last time, as though they had been condemned to stay awake forever and had to drink in all the sleep in the world during these last...

Now, he thought, since all these most easily perishing things have slipped from me again, now I’m standing here under the sun again just as I have been standing here a little child, nothing is...

I call a man awake who knows in his conscious reason his innermost unreasonable forces, drives, and weaknesses and knows how to deal with them.

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

I do want more. I am not content with being happy. I was not made for it. It is not my destiny. My destiny is the opposite.