In any case, the most lively young people become the best old people, not those who pretend to be as wise as grandfathers while they are still at school.

When a writer receives praise or blame, when he arouses sympathy or is ridiculed, when he is loved or rejected, it is not on the strength of his thoughts and dreams as a whole, but only of that infinitesimal part which has been able to make its way through the narrow channel of language and the equally narrow channel of the reader's understanding.

I began to understand that suffering and disappointments and melancholy are there not to vex us or cheapen us or deprive us of our dignity but to mature and transfigure us.

You will become tired, Siddhartha." "I will become tired." "You will fall asleep, Siddhartha." "I will not fall asleep." "You will die, Siddhartha." "I will die.

I am in truth the Steppenwolf that I often call myself; that beast astray that finds neither home nor joy nor nourishment in a world that is strange and incomprehensible to him.

An enlightened man had but one duty - to seek the way to himself, to reach inner certainty, to grope his way forward, no matter where it led.

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.