Steppenwolf

By Hermann Hesse QUOTATION: What I always hated and detested and cursed above all things was this contentment, this healthiness and comfort, this carefully preserved optimism of the middle classes, this fat and prosperous brood of mediocrity.
ATTRIBUTION: Hermann Hesse (1877–1962), German novelist, poet. Steppenwolf, “For Madmen Only,” (1927).

QUOTATION: What I always hated and detested and cursed above all things was this contentment, this healthiness and comfort, this carefully preserved optimism of the middle classes, this fat and prosperous brood of mediocrity.
ATTRIBUTION: Hermann Hesse (1877–1962), German novelist, poet. “For Madmen Only,” Steppenwolf (1927).

QUOTATION: The bourgeois treasures nothing more highly than the self.... And so at the cost of intensity he achieves his own preservation and security. His harvest is a quiet mind which he prefers to being possessed by God, as he prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to that deathly inner consuming fire.
ATTRIBUTION: Hermann Hesse (1877–1962), German novelist, poet. “Treatise on the Steppenwolf,” Steppenwolf (1927).

QUOTATION: Every age, every culture, every custom and tradition has its own character, its own weakness and its own strength, its beauties and cruelties; it accepts certain sufferings as matters of course, puts up patiently with certain evils. Human life is reduced to real suffering, to hell, only when two ages, two cultures and religions overlap.
ATTRIBUTION: Hermann Hesse (1877–1962), German novelist, poet. Steppenwolf, preface (1927).