Siddhartha by Herman Hesse

• Your soul is the whole world. It says that when a man is asleep, he penetrates his innermost and dwells in Atman.
• One must find the source within one's own Self, one must possess it.
• Opinions mean nothing; they may be beautiful or ugly, clever or foolish, anyone can embrace or reject them.
• Nobody finds salvation through teachings.
• It is not for me to judge another life. I must judge for myself. I must choose and reject.
• One can beg, buy, be presented with and find love in the streets, but it can never be stolen.
• Everyone can perform magic, everyone can reach his goal, if he can think, wait and fast.
• Everyone gives what he has. The soldier gives strength, the merchant goods, the teacher instruction, the farmer rice, the fisherman fish.
• One cannot have pleasure without giving it, and that every gesture, every caress, every touch, every glance, every single part of the body has its secret which can give pleasure to one who can understand. Lovers should not separate from each other after making love without admiring each other, without being conquered as well as conquering, so that no feeling of satiation or desolation arises nor the horrid feeling of misusing or having been misused.
• Nothing was ever achieved by scolding. If a loss has been sustained, I will bear the loss.
• Everything that was not suffered to the end and finally concluded, recurred, and the same sorrows were undergone.
• Disclosing his wound to this listener was the same as bathing it in the river, until it became cool and one with the river.
• What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find.
• When someone is seeking, it happens quite easily that he only sees the thing that he is seeking; that he is unable to find anything, unable to absorb anything, because he is only thinking of the thing he is seeking, because he has a goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal.
• In striving towards your goal, you do not see many things that are under your nose.
• Many people have to change a great deal and wear all sorts of clothes.
• I have become aware of knowledge, just as one feels life in one's heart.
• Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish.
• Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.
• In every truth the opposite is equally true.
• Never is a man or a deed wholly Samsara or wholly Nirvana; never is a man wholly a saint or a sinner.
• The world is not imperfect or slowly evolving along a long path to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment; every sin already carries grace within it, all small children are potential old men, all sucklings have death within them, all dying people--eternal life.
• Everything that exists is good--death as well as life, sin as well as holiness, wisdom as well as folly. Everything is necessary, everything needs only my agreement, my assent, my loving understanding; then all is well with me and nothing can harm me.
• Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.
• Love is the most important thing in the world.
• It is only important to love the world, not to despise it, not for us to hate each other, but to be able to regard the world and ourselves and all beings with love, admiration and respect.

4/5/2011