Authors:
  1. Quotes
  2. Authors
  3. H
  4. Hermann Hesse
  5. Pain

Hermann Hesse Quotes about Pain

All Hermann Hesse Quotes Age Aliens Art Birth Chaos Character Childhood Children Contentment Culture Destiny Doubt Dying Earth Eternity Evil Fate Feelings Fighting Giving Grace Happiness Harmony Hate Heart Heaven Home House Hurt Independence Inspirational Journey Joy Judging Knowledge Life Literature Love Lying Madness Magic Morning Myth Pain quotes Passion Past Peace Perfection Pleasure Rain Reality Responsibility Running School Sleep Solitude Sorrow Soul Spring Strength Struggle Suffering Teaching Time Today Travel Truth Understanding Unity Waiting Wall War Water Wisdom Writing Yoga
What is meditation?... It is fleeing from the self, it is a short escape of the agony of being a self, it is a short numbing of the senses against the pain and the pointlessness of life. The same escape, the same short

What is meditation?... It is fleeing from the self, it is a short escape of the agony of being a self, it is a short numbing of the senses against the pain and the pointlessness of life. The same escape, the same short numbing is what the driver of an ox-cart finds in the inn, drinking a few bowls of rice wine or fermented coconut-milk.

Hermann Hesse
Pain, Drinking, Wine
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Jane Austen, Lewis Carroll, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (2014). “The 10 Greatest Books of All Time”, p.1457, Google Publishing

You say yes to the sunlight and pure fantasies, so you have to say yes to the filth and the nausea. Everything is within you, gold and mud, happiness and pain, the laughter of childhood and the apprehension of death. Say yes to everything, shirk nothing.

Hermann Hesse
Laughter, Pain, Opposites
Hermann Hesse (1980). “Six Novels: With Other Stories and Essays”

I suddenly saw how sad and artificial my life had been during this period, for the loves, friends, habits and pleasures of these years were discarded like badly fitting clothes. I parted from them without pain and all that remained was to wonder that I could have endured them so long.

Hermann Hesse
Pain, Years, Clothes
Hermann Hesse (1969). “Gertrude”

There were now and then, though rarely, the hours that brought the welcome shock, pulled down the walls and brought me back again from my wanderings to the living heart of the world. Sadly and yet deeply moved, I set myself to recall the last of these experiences. It was at a concert of lovely old music. After two of three notes of the piano the door was opened of a sudden to the other world. I sped through heaven and saw God at work. I suffered holy pains. I dropped all my defenses and was afraid of nothing in the world. I accepted all things and to all things I gave up my heart.

Hermann Hesse
Wall, Pain, Heart

Whether it is good or evil, whether life in itself is pain or pleasure, whether it is uncertain-that it may perhaps be this is not important-but the unity of the world, the coherence of all events, the embracing of the big and the small from the same stream, from the same law of cause, of becoming and dying.

Hermann Hesse
Pain, Law, Evil
Hermann Hesse (2015). “Siddhartha: An Indian Tale”, p.28, Om Books International

If a bell failed to ring, if a stove smoked, if a wheel on a machine stuck, you knew at once where to look and did so with alacrity; you found the defect and knew how to cure it. But the thing within you, the secret mainspring that alone gave meaning to life, the thing within us that alone is living, alone is capable of feeling pleasure and pain, of craving happiness and experiencing it- that was unknown. You knew nothing about that, nothing at all, and if the mainspring failed there was no cure. Wasn't it insane?

Hermann Hesse
Pain, Feelings, Secret
Hermann Hesse (1974). “Kingsor's Last Summer”

What is the holding of breath? It is a flight from the Self, it is a temporary escape from the torment of Self. It is a temporary palliative against the pain and folly of life.

Hermann Hesse
Pain, Self, Flight
Hermann Hesse (2015). “Siddhartha: An Indian Tale”, p.17, Om Books International

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 I smash my rusty lyre of thanksgiving in the face of the slumbering god of contentment and would rather feel the most devilish pain burn in me than this warmth of a well-heated room. - Harry Haller

Hermann Hesse
Pain, Air, Breathing
Hermann Hesse (1980). “Six Novels: With Other Stories and Essays”

Alas, Siddhartha, I see you suffering, but you're suffering a pain at which one would like to laugh, at which you'll soon laugh for yourself.

Hermann Hesse
Pain, Laughing, Siddhartha
Hermann Hesse (2016). “Siddhartha (World Classics, Unabridged)”, p.59, Vij Books India Pvt Ltd

I sped through heaven and saw god at work. I suffered holy pains. I dropped all my defenses and was afraid of nothing in the world. I accepted all things and to all things I gave up my heart.

Hermann Hesse
Pain, Heart, Heaven
Hermann Hesse (1983). “Steppenwolf”, Bantam

You May Also Like: