This little theater of mine has as many doors into as many boxes as you please, ten or a hundred thousand, and behind each door exactly what you seek awaits you. It is a pretty cabinet of pictures, my...
This here, he said playing with it, is a stone, and will, after a certain time, perhaps turn into soil, and will turn from soil into a plant or animal or human being. In the past, I would have said: T...
Think of it... that in your heart there is an answer to all the things and sights of the world, that everything concerns you, that you ought to know as much about everything as it is possible for man...
These impulses always came from the other world, they were always accompanied by anxiety, compulsion, and a troubled conscience, they were always revolutionary, endangering the peace in which I would...
There was truly no pleasure and no honor in being a scholar or a writer. Those who entered the service of the rulers and devised slogans for them had jobs and livelihoods, but they suffered the contem...
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 it...
There are always a few such people who demand the utmost of life and yet cannot come to terms with its stupidity and crudeness.
Then Siddhartha had spent the night at his house with dancers and wine, had pretended to be superior to his companions, which he no longer was. He had drunk much wine and later after midnight he went...
The world is going under, I thought, and this notion so little surprised me, it seemed as though I had been waiting a long time for just that to happen. But now, from amid the burning and collapsing c...
The weeks up there were almost the most beautiful in my life. I breathed the pure, clear air, drank the icy water from streams and watched the herds of goats grazing on the steep slopes, guarded by da...
The way to innocence, to the uncreated and to God leads on, not back, not back to the wolf or to the child, but ever further into sin, ever deeper into human life.
The war against death, dear Harry, is always a beautiful, noble and wonderful and glorious thing, and so, it follows, is the war against war. But it is always hopeless and quixotic too.
The town in which … I had spent my youth … had nothing to give me but memories.
The scholar who knowingly speaks, writes, or teaches falsehood, who knowingly supports lies and deceptions, not only violates organic principles. He also, no matter how things may seem at the given mo...
The person who truly wants nothing except his destiny no longer has others of his own kind; he stands completely alone and has only the chill of outer space around him. You know, that’s Jesus in the g...
The golden trail was blazed and I was reminded of the eternal, of Mozart, of the stars. For an hour I could breathe again and live and face existence, without having to suffer torment, fear or shame.
The empire cannot become a child again. Nobody can. It cannot simply give away its cannons, machines, and money and once again write poems in small peaceful cities and play sonatas. But it can take th...
The courtesan bent over him, took a long look at his face, at his eyes, which had grown tired. You are the best lover, she said thoughtfully, I ever saw. You’re stronger than others, more supple, more...
The Steppenwolf, however, first threw up his sharp, closely cropped head and sniffed around nervously before he either made any answer or announced his name. Oh, it smells good here, he said, and at t...
That's the way it is when you love. It makes you suffer, and I have suffered much in the years since. But it matters little that you suffer, so long as you feel alive with a sense of the close bond th...