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Meaning
This reads as a challenge to the usual story we tell about setbacks. What looks like failure may be reinterpreted as movement, a deliberate change of direction, or even progress that only appears painful from the outside. It lands when a crisis later reveals hidden growth, or when a person realizes that stepping back was part of going forward.
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Originally said in English.
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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.
More from Hermann Hesse (262 quotes) →More quotes by Hermann Hesse
- “It was at a concert of lovely old music. After two or three notes of the piano the door was opened of a sudde…”Hermann Hesse
- “Everything becomes a little different as soon as it is spoken out loud.”Hermann Hesse
- “Most men will not swim before they are able to.”Hermann Hesse
- “For it cannot be denied that all over the world and in all ages there are beings who are perceived to be extr…”Hermann Hesse
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Books by Hermann Hesse
Siddhartha
2006
Der Steppenwolf
2002
Demian
2000
Das Glasperlenspiel
1990
Narziss und Goldmund
2003