And all the voices, all the goals, all the yearnings, all the sorrows, all the pleasures, all the good and evil, all of them together was the world. All of them together was the stream of events, the music of life.
A mere nothing suffices – and the lightning strikes.
I am much inclined to live from my rucksack, and let my trousers fray as they like.
I want to learn from myself, want to be my student, want to get to know myself, the secret of Siddhartha.
My real self wanders elsewhere, far away, wanders on and on invisibly and has nothing to do with my life.
I live in my dreams – that’s what you sense. Other people live in dreams, but not in their own. That’s the difference.
It is not for me to judge another man’s life. I must judge, I must choose, I must spurn, purely for myself. For myself, alone.
If a man has nothing to eat, fasting is the most intelligent thing he can do.
Our mind is capable of passing beyond the dividing line we have drawn for it. Beyond the pairs of opposites of which the world consists, other, new insights begin.
Solitude is independence. It had been my wish and with the years I had attained it. It was cold. Oh, cold enough! But it was also still, wonderfully still and vast like the cold stillness of space in which the stars revolve.
Beauty does not bring happiness to the one who possesses it, but to the one who loves and admires it.
Opinions mean nothing; they may be beautiful or ugly, clever or foolish, anyone can embrace or reject them.
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.
He saw that the water continually flowed and flowed and yet it was always there; it was always the same and yet every moment it was new.
I, also, would like to look and smile, sit and walk like that, so free, so worthy, so restrained, so candid, so childlike and mysterious. A man only looks and walks like that when he has conquered his Self. I also will conquer my Self.
God does not send us despair in order to kill us; he sends it in order to awaken us to new life.
Without a mother, one cannot love. Without a mother, one cannot die.
Romantic souvenirs had a way of attaching themselves to one when one wanted to move on, but they were not to be taken seriously.
He had loved and he had found himself. Most people love to lose themselves.
Each of us is merely one human being, merely an experiment, a way station. But each of us should be on the way toward perfection, should be striving to reach the center, not the periphery.