“If a night-moth were to concentrate its will on flying to a star or some equally unattainable object, it wouldn't succeed. Only, it wouldn't even try in the first place. A moth confines its search to what has sense and value for it, what it needs, what is indispensable to its life... if I imagined that I wanted under all circumstances to get to the North Pole, then to achieve it I would have to desire it strongly enough that my whole being was ruled by it. But if I were to decide to will that the pastor should stop wearing his glasses, it would be useless. That would be making a game of it.”

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About Hermann Hesse

German-Swiss poet and novelist

Hermann Hesse was a German-Swiss poet and novelist. He won the 1946 Nobel Prize in Literature and is best known for novels such as Demian, Steppenwolf, Siddhartha, Narcissus and Goldmund, and The Glass Bead Game. His writing was shaped by his interest in Eastern religious, spiritual, and philosophical traditions, as well as by his engagement with Jungian analysis. Across his fiction, he returns to the search for authenticity, self-knowledge, and spiritual meaning.

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Books by Hermann Hesse

Siddhartha

2006

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Der Steppenwolf

2002

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Demian

2000

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Das Glasperlenspiel

1990

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Narziss und Goldmund

2003

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