Beneath the Wheel Quotes

“Teachers dread nothing so much as unusual characteristics in precocious boys during the initial stages of their adolescence. A certain streak of genius makes an ominous impression on them, for there exists a deep gulf between genius and the teaching profession. Anyone with a touch of genius seems to his teachers a freak from the very first. As far as teachers are concerned, they define young geniuses as those who are bad, disrespectful, smoke at fourteen, fall in love at fifteen, can be found at sixteen hanging out in bars, read forbidden books, write scandalous essays, occasionally stare down a teacher in class, are marked in the attendance book as rebels, and are budding candidates for room-arrest. A schoolmaster will prefer to have a couple of dumbheads in his class than a single genius, and if you regard it objectively, he is of course right. His task is not to produce extravagant intellects but good Latinists, arithmeticians and sober decent folk. The question of who suffers more acutely at the other's hands - the teacher at the boy's, or vice versa - who is more of a tyrant, more of a tormentor, and who profanes parts of the other's soul, student or teacher, is something you cannot examine without remembering your own youth in anger and shame. yet that's not what concerns us here. We have the consolation that among true geniuses the wounds almost always heal. As their personalities develop, they create their art in spite of school. Once dead, and enveloped by the comfortable nimbus of remoteness, they are paraded by the schoolmasters before other generations of students as showpieces and noble examples. Thus the struggle between rule and spirit repeats itself year after year from school to school. The authorities go to infinite pains to nip the few profound or more valuable intellects in the bud. And time and again the ones who are detested by their teachers are frequently punished, the runaways and those expelled, are the ones who afterwards add to society's treasure. But some - and who knows how many? - waste away quiet obstinacy and finally go under.”
― Hermann Hesse, Beneath the Wheel

“A soul that is ruined in the bud will frequently return to the springtime of its beginning and its promise-filled childhood, as though it could discover new hopes there and retie the broken threads of life. The shoots grow rapidly and eagerly, but it is only a sham life that will never be a genuine tree.”
― Hermann Hesse, Beneath the Wheel

“When a tree is polled, it will sprout new shoots nearer its roots. A soul that is ruined in the bud will frequently return to the springtime of its beginnings and its promise-filled childhood, as though it could discover new hopes there and retie the broken threads of life. The shoots grow rapidly and eagerly, but it is only a sham life that will never be a genuine tree.”
― Hermann Hesse, Beneath the Wheel

“Like a wallflower he stayed in the background waiting for someone to fetch him, someone more courageous and stronger than himself to tear him away and force him into happiness.”
― Hermann Hesse, Beneath the Wheel

“It is wrong to say that schoolmasters lack heart and are dried-up, soulless pedants! No, by no means. When a child's talent which he has sought to kindle suddenly bursts forth, when the boy puts aside his wooden sword, slingshot, bow-and-arrow and other childish games, when he begins to forge ahead, when the seriousness of the work begins to transform the rough-neck into a delicate, serious and an almost ascetic creature, when his face takes on an intelligent, deeper and more purposeful expression - then a teacher's heart laughs with happiness and pride. It is his duty and responsibility to control the raw energies and desires of his charges and replace them with calmer, more moderate ideals. What would many happy citizens and trustworthy officials have become but unruly, stormy innovators and dreamers of useless dreams, if not for the effort of their schools? In young beings there is something wild, ungovernable, uncultured which first has to be tamed. It is like a dangerous flame that has to be controlled or it will destroy. Natural man is unpredictable, opaque, dangerous, like a torrent cascading out of uncharted mountains. At the start, his soul is a jungle without paths or order. And, like a jungle, it must first be cleared and its growth thwarted. Thus it is the school's task to subdue and control man with force and make him a useful member of society, to kindle those qualities in him whose development will bring him to triumphant completion.”
― Hermann Hesse, Beneath the Wheel

“It was all the same to him where he would end up; what mattered most was the fact he had finally escaped … and shown … that his will was stronger than mere commands and edicts.”
― Hermann Hesse, Beneath the Wheel

“Every healthy person must have a goal in life and that life must have content.”
― Hermann Hesse, Beneath the Wheel

“Wie ein schüchternes Mädchen blieb er sitzen und wartet, ob einer käme ihn zu holen, ein Stärkerer und Mutigerer als er, der ihn mitrisse und zum Glücklichsein zwänge.”
― Hermann Hesse, Beneath the Wheel

“everything I had so far experienced was mere chance … my life still lacked a deep individual meaning of its own”
― Hermann Hesse, Beneath the Wheel

“I had made my mind up to stay at the top of the class and [...] graduate at the head of it. […] that was my kind of ideal. I just didn't know any better.”
― Hermann Hesse, Beneath the Wheel

“The teachers apparently regarded a dead student very differently from a living one.”
― Hermann Hesse, Beneath the Wheel

“All this seemed a decorative newly painted picture behind clear new glass.”
― Hermann Hesse, Beneath the Wheel

“His small fragile ship had barely escaped a disaster; now it enters a region of new storms and uncharted depths through which even the best led ... cannot find a guide. He must find his own way and be his own saviour.”
― Hermann Hesse, Beneath the Wheel

“there exists a deep gulf between genius and the teaching profession. Anyone with a touch of genius seems to his teachers a freak from the very first. As far as teachers are concerned, they define young geniuses as those who are bad, disrespectful, smoke at fourteen, fall in love at fifteen, can be found at sixteen hanging out in bars, read forbidden books, write scandalous essays, occasionally stare down a teacher in class, are marked in the attendance book as rebels, and are budding candidates for room-arrest. A school master will prefer to have a couple of dumbheads in class than a … genius. … His task is not to produce extravagant intellectuals but good Latinists, arimeticians and sober decent folk. … We have the consolation that among true geniuses the wounds always heal. … they create their art in spite of school. Once dead and enveloped by the comfortable nimbus of remoteness, they are paraded by the schoolmasters before other generations of students as showpieces and noble examples. … Time and again the ones who are detested by their teachers … are afterwards the ones who add to society's treasure.”
― Hermann Hesse, Beneath the Wheel

“What would many happy citizens and trustworthy officials have become but unruly, stormy innovators and dreamers of useless dreams, if not for the effort of their schools?”
― Hermann Hesse, Beneath the Wheel

“I had made my mind up to stay at the top of the class and […] graduate at the head of it. […] that was my kind of ideal. I just didn't know any better.”
― Hermann Hesse, Beneath the Wheel

“Mathematics, as far as he was concerned, was a Sphinx charged with deceitful puzzles whose cold malicious gaze transfixed her victims, and he gave the monster a wide berth.”
― Hermann Hesse, Beneath the Wheel

“He could have exchanged his name and address with any of his neighbours, and nothing would have been different.”
― Hermann Hesse, Beneath the Wheel

“As far as teachers are concerned, they define young geniuses as those who are bad, disrespectful, smoke at fourteen, fall in love at fifteen, can be found at sixteen hanging out in bars, read forbidden books, write scandalous essays, occasionally stare down a teacher in class, are marked in the attendance book as rebels, and are budding candidates for room-arrest.”
― Hermann Hesse, Beneath the Wheel

“... and out of the awareness of sameness grew the desire for differentiation.”
― Hermann Hesse, Beneath the Wheel

“Quando se despoja uma árvore de seus ramos, ela costuma aparecer vestida de novos rebentos no tronco e não tardará que novos ramos cresçam, novas folhas reverdeçam e a copa se recomponha como era dantes. Assim acontece também, freqüentemente, a uma alma que adoece em plena florescência; volta às suas raízes primaveris e à sua infância, como se aí pudesse encontrar novas esperanças e reatar o fio quebrado do ciclo da vida. A seiva acode nos brotos que despontam no tronco mas é uma ressurreição aparente, pois a alma, tal como a árvore destroncada, jamais voltará a ser idêntica ao que era.”
― Hermann Hesse, Beneath the Wheel

“How unusually beautiful the forest was in the morning without anyone walking through it but him, column after column of spruce, a vast hall with a blue-green vault.”
― Hermann Hesse, Beneath the Wheel

“Heilner went on: "Yes, things were certainly different then. Who knows anything about things like that around here? All these bores and cowards who grind away and work their fingers to the bone and don't realize that there's something higher than the Hebrew alphabet. You're no different."

Hans kept silent. This Heilner fellow certainly was a strange one. A romantic, a poet. As everyone knew, he worked hardly at all and still he knew quite a bit, he knew how to give good answers, and at the same time despised his learning.

“We're reading Homer," he went on in the same mocking tone, "as though the Odyssey were a cookbook. Two verses an hour and then the whole thing is masticated word by word and inspected until you're ready to throw up. But at the end of the hour the professor will say: 'Notice how nicely the poet has turned this phrase! This has afforded you an insight into the secret of poetic creativity!' Just like a little icing around the aorists and particles so you won't choke on them completely. I don't have any use for that kind of Homer. Anyway, what does all this old Greek stuff matter to us? If one of us ever tried to live a little like a Greek, he'd be out on his tail. And our room is called 'Hellas'! Pure mockery! Why isn't it called 'wastepaper basket' or 'monkey cage' or 'sweatshop'? All this classical stuff is a big fake.”
― Hermann Hesse, Beneath the Wheel

“This one was so lively and talkative, she paid no attention to him or his shyness, so he withdrew his feelers awkwardly and a little offended crawled back into himself like a snail brushed by a cartwheel.”
― Hermann Hesse, Beneath the Wheel

“I had made my mind up to stay at the top of the class and … graduate at the head of it. … That was my kind of ideal. I just didn't know any better.”
― Hermann Hesse, Beneath the Wheel

“there exists a deep gulf between genius and the teaching profession. Anyone with a touch of genius seems to his teachers a freak from the very first. As far as teachers are concerned, they define young geniuses as those who are bad, disrespectful, smoke at fourteen, fall in love at fifteen, can be found at sixteen hanging out in bars, read forbidden books, write scandalous essays, occasionally stare down a teacher in class, are marked in the attendance book as rebels, and are budding candidates for room-arrest. A school master will prefer to have a couple of dumbheads in class than a […] genius. […] His task is not to produce extravagant intellectuals but good Latinists, arimeticians and sober decent folk. […] We have the consolation that among true geniuses the wounds always heal. […] they create their art in spite of school. Once dead and enveloped by the comfortable nimbus of remoteness, they are paraded by the schoolmasters before other generations of students as showpieces and noble examples. […] [T]ime and again the ones who are detested by their teachers […] are afterwards the ones who add to society's treasure.”
― Hermann Hesse, Beneath the Wheel

“the headmaster […] pledged that, provided he behaved himself, he would be duly sheltered and cared for by the state for the rest of his days. It did not occur to any of the boys, nor their fathers, that all this would perhaps not really be free.”
― Hermann Hesse, Beneath the Wheel

“The authorities go to infinite pains to nip the few profound or more valuable intellects in the bud. And time and again the ones who are detested by their teachers and frequently punished, the runaways and those expelled, are the ones who afterwards add to society's treasure.”
― Hermann Hesse, Beneath the Wheel

“Ο κύριος Γ., μεταπράτης και πράκτορας, δεν είχε κανένα ιδιαίτερο προτέρημα ή ιδιότητα που να τον κάνει να ξεχωρίζει από τους συμπολίτες του. Ακριβώς όπως κι εκείνοι, είχε ένα φαρδύ, υγιές πρόσωπο, ένα μέτριο εμπορικό ταλέντο συνδεμένο μ' έναν ειλικρινή, εγκάρδιο σεβασμό του χρήματος, ακόμα, ένα μικρό σπιτάκι με κήπο, έναν οικογενειακό τάφο στο νεκροταφείο, ένα εκκλησιαστικό φρόνημα φθαρμένο κάπως από το διαφωτισμό, ανάλογο σεβασμό στο Θεό και την εξουσία και ένα αίσθημα τυφλής υποταγής στις σιδερένιες επιταγές της αστικής αξιοπρέπειας. Έπινε καμιά φορά από κανένα μισόλιτρο, αλλά δεν είχε μεθύσει ποτέ. Πότε-πότε έκανε παράλληλα μερικές όχι εντελώς παστρικές δουλειές, αλλά ποτέ δεν τις τραβούσε πέρα από τα τυπικά επιτρεπόμενα όρια. Τους ανθρώπους που ήτανε φτωχότεροι απ' αυτόν τους έλεγε πεινάλες και κορδωνόταν μπροστά στους πλουσιότερους.[...]

Η εσωτερική του ζωή ήτανε ζωή φιλισταίου. Ό,τι κάτεχε σε ψυχισμό ήτανε από καιρό σκονισμένο και απαρτιζόταν από ένα λίγο περισσότερο από παραδοσιακό, τραχύ οικογενειακό αίσθημα, μια περηφάνια για το γιο του και μια ευκαιριακή διάθεση να προσφέρει δώρα σε φτωχούς. Οι πνευματικές του ικανότητες δεν πήγαιναν πέρα από μια έμφυτη, αυστηρά οριοθετημένη πονηριά και τα λογιστικά. Τα διαβάσματα του περιορίζονταν στην εφημερίδα και για να καλύπτονται οι καλλιτεχνικές του ανάγκες έφτανε η χρονιάτικη θεατρική παράσταση και, ανάμεσα, η επίσκεψη σε κάποιο τσίρκο. Θα μπορούσε ν' αλλάξει όνομα και σπίτι με οποιοδήποτε γείτονα του, χωρίς ν' αλλάξει στην ουσία καθόλου. Και στα κατάβαθα της ψυχής του μοιραζόταν με όλους το”
― Hermann Hesse, Beneath the Wheel

“Who knows anything about things like that around here? All these bores and cowards who grind away and work their fingers to the bone and don't realize that there's something higher than the Hebrew alphabet.”
― Hermann Hesse, Beneath the Wheel