Knulp: Drei Geschichten Aus Dem Leben Knulps

“If a beautiful thing were to remain beautiful for all eternity, I'd be glad, but all the same Id look at it with a colder eye. I'd say to myself: You can look at it any time, it doesn't have to be today.””

— Hermann Hesse

“A father can pass on his nose and eyes and even his intelligence to his child, but not his soul. In every human being the soul is new””

— Hermann Hesse

“He had thrown himself away, he had lost interest in everything, and life, falling in with his feelings, had demanded nothing of him. He had lived as an outsider, an idler and onlooker, well liked in his young manhood, alone in his illness and advancing years. Seized with weariness, he sat down on the wall, and the river murmured darkly in his thoughts.””

— Hermann Hesse

“He had too much to think about. In the course of his long, useless marches he had sunk deeper and deeper into the tangle of his botched life as into a clump of brambles, and still he had found no meaning or consolation.””

— Hermann Hesse

“Knulp said: “Every human being has his own soul, he can’t mix it with any other. Two people can meet, they can talk with one another, they can be close together. But their souls are like flowers, each rooted to its place. One can’t go to another, because it would have to break away from its roots, and that it can’t do. Flowers send out their scent and their seeds, because they would like to go to each other; but a flower can’t do anything to make a seed go to its right place; the wind does that, and the wind comes and goes where it pleases.””

— Hermann Hesse

“no matter how close two human beings may be, there is always a gulf between them which only love can bridge, and that only from hour to hour.””

— Hermann Hesse

“You could observe people's folly, you could laugh at them or feel sorry for them, but you had to let them go their own way.””

— Hermann Hesse

“Can't you see that you had to be a reckless drifter to bring ... people a bit of child's folly and child's laughter wherever you went? To make all sorts of people love you a little and tease you a little and be a little grateful to you?””

— Hermann Hesse