28 quotes
In each individual the spirit has become flesh, in each man the creation suffers, within each one a redeemer is nailed to the cross.
Demian (1919)
The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world. The bird flies to God. The God's name is Abraxas.
Demian (1919)
Our god's name is Abraxas and he is God and Satan and he contains both the luminous and the dark world.
Demian (1919)
I realize today that nothing in the world is more distasteful to a man than to take the path that leads to himself.
Demian (1919)
We aren't pigs as you seem to think, but human beings. We create gods and struggle with them, and they bless us.
Demian (1919)
We ought not to consider the opinions of those sects as naïve as they appear from the rationalist point of view.
Demian (1919)
The world, as it is now, wants to die, wants to perish — and it will.
Demian (1919)
Love does not entreat; or demand. Love must have the strength to become certain within itself. Then it ceases merely to be attracted and begins to attract.
Demian (1919)
No man has ever been entirely and completely himself. Yet each one strives to become that — one in an awkward, the other in a more intelligent way, each as best he can.
Demian (1919)
If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.
Demian (1919)
I cannot tell my story without reaching a long way back.
Demian (1919)
You must find your dream, then the way becomes easy. But there is no dream that lasts forever, each dream is followed by another, and one should not cling to any particular one.
Demian (1919)
I had grown a thin mustache, I was a full-grown man, and yet I was completely helpless and without a goal in life.
Demian (1919)
Abraxas was the god who was both god and devil.
Demian (1919)
Whether you and I and a few others will renew the world someday remains to be seen. But within ourselves we must renew it each day, otherwise we just aren't serious. Don't forget that!
Demian (1919)
Certainly you shouldn't go kill somebody or rape a girl, no! But you haven't reached the point where you can understand the actual meaning of "permitted" and "forbidden." You've only sensed part of the truth.
Demian (1919)
Each man had only one genuine vocation — to find the way to himself
Demian (1919)
Each person must stand on his own feet.
Demian (1919)
You, too, have mysteries of your own.
Demian (1919)
Each of us has to find out for himself what is permitted and what is forbidden — forbidden for him. It's possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard. And vice versa.
Demian (1919)