“Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else ... Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.”

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.