“The world, my friend, is not imperfect or developing slowly toward perfection. No, the world is perfect at every moment, all sin already contains grace, all youngsters already contain oldsters, all babies contain death, all the dying contain eternal life. It is not possible for any man to see how far along another man is on his way; Buddha is waiting in robbers and dicers, the robber is waiting in the Brahmin. In deep meditation it is possible to eliminate time, to see all past, all present, all developing life as coexisting, and everything is good, everything perfect, everything Brahma.”
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha (Page 125)
“Wisdom cannot be communicated. Wisdom that a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish. Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. We can find it, we can live it, we can be carried by it, we can work wonders with it, but we cannot utter it or teach it.”
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha (Page 124)
27 Deep Friendship Quotes and Why Who We Surround Ourselves With—Matters
Excerpt: 27 Friendship quotes that will inspire you to not only cherish your friends, but maybe become a better friend, too.
Read More »27 Deep Friendship Quotes and Why Who We Surround Ourselves With—Matters
“Science can never win against art, and logic can never win against love. History can never win against myth, and reality is poor compared to dreams, very poor. So if you carry any idea against imagination, drop it. Because we all carry it—this age is very anti-imagination. People have been taught to be factual, realistic, empirical, and all sorts of nonsense. People should be more dreamy, more childlike, more ecstatic. People should be able to create euphoria. And only through that do you reach your original source.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 249)
“Slowly blossomed, slowly ripened in Siddhartha the insight, the knowledge of what wisdom actually is, what the goal of his long seeking was. It was nothing but a readiness of the soul, an ability, a secret art, to think the thought of oneness, to feel and breathe the oneness at every moment, in the midst of life. Slowly this blossomed in him, brightly emanated to him from Vasudeva’s old childlike face: harmony, knowledge of the eternal perfection of the world, smiling, oneness.”
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha (Page 114)
“What father, what teacher could shield [his son] from living his own life, soiling himself with life, burdening himself with guilt, drinking the better drink himself, finding his path himself? Do you really believe, dear friend, that anyone at all is spared this path? Perhaps your little son because you love him, because you would like to spare him pain and sorrow and disillusion? But even if you died for him ten times over, you could not take away even the tiniest bit of his destiny.”
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha (Page 106)
“You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.”
Cormac McCarthy, No Country For Old Men
“[Siddhartha’s son] too is called, he too is of eternal life. But do we know then, you and I, to what he is called, to what path, to what deeds, to what sufferings? His sufferings will not be small, his heart is too hard and proud. Such hearts must suffer much, wander much, do much injustice, saddle themselves with many sins. You never force him, never beat him, never order him, becasue you know that soft is stronger than hard, water stronger than rock, love stronger than violence. Very good, I praise you. But is it not a mistake to your part to believe that you never force him, never punish him? Do you not bind him in bonds with your love? Do you not shame him daily and make things even harder for him with your kindness and patience? Do you not force him, the arrogant and pampered boy, to live in a hut with two old banana eaters, for whom even rice is a delicacy, whose thoughts cannot be his, whose hearts are old and silent and take a different course from his? Is he not forced by all this, not punished?”
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha (Page 105)
“On many evenings, they sat together at the tree trunk by the bank, silently listening to the water, which was no water for them, but the voice of life, the voice of Being, the voice of eternal Becoming.”
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha (Page 95)
“One of the ferryman’s greatest virtues was that he knew how to listen like few other people. Without a word from Vasudeva, the speaker felt that the ferryman took in his words, silent, open, waiting, missing none, impatient for none, neither praising nor blaming, but only listening. Siddhartha felt what happiness it is to unburden himself to such a listener, to sink his own life into this listener’s heart, his own seeking, his own suffering.”
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha (Page 92)