# Quote — Hermann Hesse, Demian

> If nature has made you a bat, you shouldn't try and be an ostrich. You consider yourself odd at times, you accuse yourself of taking a road different from most people. You have to unlearn that! Gaze into the fire, the clouds and as soon as the inner voices begin to speak - surrender to them. Don't ask first whether it is permitted or would please your teachers or your father or some God. You will ruin yourself if you do that. That way you will become earth bound, a vegetable.

- Author: [Hermann Hesse](https://www.leafyquotes.com/hermann-hesse.md)
- Book: [Demian](https://www.leafyquotes.com/hermann-hesse/demian.md)
- Page: 180
- 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/if-nature-has

## 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)