"Within the last few decades, since the complete triumph

of industrialization, the image of our earth's surface has been

entirely altered and rearranged; every city and landscape in

the world has suffered monstrous change and a corresponding

revolution has swept the souls and minds of men.

In the years since the outbreak of the world war this

development has been so rapid that one can without

exaggeration announce the death and destruction 

of that culture in which we older people were educated

as children and which seemed to us at that time eternal

and immutable."

 from Our Age's Yearning for a Philosophy of Life 

1926-1927 by Hermann Hesse

Hermann Hesse, My Belief, Essays on Life and Art

I have dipped into this book hundreds of times, simply to 

read, not necessarily taking much from it, often not 

finishing the essay. So why have I placed this book by my

bed for so many years? In these essays Hesse demonstrates

that there is a life of the mind. That someone read and 

thought about our intellectual history, our spirituality, our 

morality. He mulled over what he has read and heard and 

experienced in an attempt to understand his place in the

world and that of his fellows. And I suspect this is a 
worthwhile pursuit, an subject that everyone would 
be better off reflecting on and working through.

" Over there the pale snow lay in a different fashion

than on my roof, over there the beech forest and the

black pine trees were indescribably beautiful and 

reserved in a way I never saw in my neighborhood;

perhaps God Himself walked over there along the 

slopes, and whoever met Him there could touch Him

and speak to Him and look closely into His eyes."

from At Year's End 1904

              by Hermann Hesse