I believe that the struggle against death, the unconditional and self-willed determination to live, is the mode of power behind the lives and activities of all outstanding men.

The river taught us how to listen with a silent heart, with a waiting open soul.

...Haller's sickness of the soul, as I now know, is not the eccentricity of a single individual, but the sickness of the times themselves, the neurosis of that generation to which Haller belongs, a sickness, it seems, that by no means attacks the weak and worthless only but, rather, precisely those who are strongest in spirit and richest in gifts.

Alas, Siddhartha, I see you suffering, but you're suffering a pain at which one would like to laugh, at which you'll soon laugh for yourself.

I shall begin my story with an experience I had when I was ten and attended our small town's Latin school.

You show the world as a complete, unbroken chain, an eternal chain, linked together by cause and effect.

In every truth, the opposite is equally true. For example, a truth can only be expressed and enveloped in words if it is onesided.