a person is never entirely holy or entirely sinful.

I have always been a great dreamer; in dreams I am more active than in my real life, and these shadows sapped me of health and energy.

...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.

Gaze into the fire, into the clouds, and as soon as the inner voices begin to speak... surrender to them. Don't ask first whether it's permitted, or would please your teachers or father or some god. You will ruin yourself if you do that.

Human life is reduced to real suffering, to hell, only when two ages, two cultures and religions overlap.

"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."

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