Demian: A Novel

I live in my dreams: that is what you have felt about me. Other people live in dreams as well, but not in their own, that is the difference.”

If we were nothing more than individuals, we could actually be put out of the world entirely with a musket-ball, and in that case there would be no more sense in relating stories. But each man is not only himself, he is also the unique, quite special, and in every case the important and remarkable point where the world’s phenomena converge, in a ce

“Love must not beg,” she said, “nor demand either. Love must have the force to be absolutely certain of itself. Then it is attracted no longer, but attracts. Sinclair, I am attracting your love. As soon as you attract my love, I shall come. I do not want to make a present of myself. I want to be won.”

He who will fulfill his destiny has neither examples nor ideals, he has nothing dear to him, nothing to comfort him. And one really ought to go this way. People like you and me are certainly very lonely, but we still have each other, we have the secret satisfaction of being different, of revolting, of wanting the unusual. But we must drop that, too

I recollected what Pistorius had said to me. But however much I felt his words to be right I could not pass them on. I could not give advice which did not result from my own experience, advice the observance of which I did not yet feel myself equal to.

“Wise speeches have no value at all, absolutely none. You only escape from yourself. To escape from yourself is a sin. You should be able to creep right into yourself, like a tortoise.”

“I cannot tell you anything, Knauer. People can’t help one another in this case. No one has helped me, either. You must think of something yourself, and you must obey the prompting which really comes from your own nature. There is nothing else. If you cannot find yourself, you won’t find any spirits, either.”

Look in the fire, look at the clouds, and as soon as you have presentiments, and the voices of your soul begin to speak, yield to them and don’t first ask what the opinion of your master or your father would be, or whether they would be pleasing to some god or other. One spoils oneself that way. In doing that one treads the common road, becomes a f

“It is always hard, to be born. You know, it is not without effort that the bird comes out of the egg.