Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. Quotes V

-Knew only one thing: that he could not go back, that the life he had lived for many years was past, tasted and drained to a degree of nausea.
-The past now seemed to him covered by a veil, extremely remote, very unimportant.
-The world of appearances is transitory, the style of our clothes and hair is extremely transitory. Our hair and our bodies are themselves transitory.
-The transitory soon changes.
-Three noble and invincible arts: fasting, waiting, and thinking. These were his possessions, his power and strength, his firm staff.
-Nothing is mine, I know nothing, I posses nothing. I have learned nothing. How strange it is. Now, when I am no longer young, when my hair is fast growing gray, when strength begins to diminish, now I am beginning again like a child.
-Is it not true that slowly and through many deviations I changed from a man into a child? From a thinker into an ordinary person? And yet this path has been good and the bird in my breast has not died.
-The bird, the clear spring and voice within him was still alive. That was why he rejoiced, that was why he laughed, that was why his face was radiant under his gray hair.