Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours.

Learn what is to be taken seriously and laugh at the rest.

The man of power is ruined by power, the man of money by money, the submissive man by subservience, the pleasure seeker by pleasure.

Love must neither beg nor demand. Love must be strong enough to find certainty within itself. It then cease to be moved and becomes the mover.

"You do not really love me — you love nobody. Is that not true?" "Maybe," said Siddhartha wearily. "I am like you. You cannot love either, otherwise how could you practice love as an art? Perhaps people like us cannot love. Ordinary people can — that is their secret."

Faith is stronger than so-called reality.

You treat world history as a mathematician does mathematics, in which nothing but laws and formulas exist, no reality, no good and evil, no time, no yesterday, no tomorrow, nothing but an eternal, shallow, mathematical present.