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Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish... Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.

— Hermann Hesse Siddhartha (1922)

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More quotes by Hermann Hesse

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)

We cannot evade life's course, but we can school ourselves to be superior to fortune and also to look unflinchingly upon the most painful things.

Gertrude (1910)

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)

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If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.

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'The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.'

William Shakespeare As You Like It (1599)

It takes extraordinary wisdom and self-control to accept that many things have a logic we do not understand that is smarter than our own.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)

Young men think old men are fools; but old men know young men are fools.

George Chapman All Fools (1605)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Hermann Hesse (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.