# Quote — Hermann Hesse, Demian

> I do not consider myself less ignorant than most people. I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teachings my blood whispers to me. My story is not a pleasant one; it is neither sweet nor harmonious, as invented stories are; it has the taste of nonsense and chaos, of madness and dreams — like the lives of all men who stop deceiving themselves.
>
> Each man's life represents the road toward himself, and attempt at such a road, the intimation of a path. No man has ever been entirely and completely himself. Yet each one strives to become that — one in an awkward, the other in a more intelligent way, each as best he can.

- Author: [Hermann Hesse](https://www.leafyquotes.com/hermann-hesse.md)
- Book: [Demian](https://www.leafyquotes.com/hermann-hesse/demian.md)
- Page: 9
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hermann_Hesse#Demian_(1919)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/hermann-hesse/demian/i-do-not

## More from this book

> Translation: If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.

p. 182 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/hermann-hesse/demian/translation-if-you.md)

> Each man had only one genuine vocation — to find the way to himself

p. 193 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/hermann-hesse/demian/each-man-had.md)

> The world, as it is now, wants to die, wants to perish — and it will.

p. 199 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/hermann-hesse/demian/the-world-as.md)