From Hesse’s Demian, p. 97:

Occasionally I became dissatisfied and tortured by desires. I thought I could no longer abide to see her next to me without taking her in my arms. That too, she would notice at once. When I once stayed away for several days and then returned all upset, she took me aside and said: “You shouldn’t surrender yourself to wishes you don’t believe in. I know what you desire. You must be able to give up those wishes, or else desire them completely and firmly. If some day you are able to make the request feeling quite certain it will be granted, then it will actually be granted. But you make wishes and then regret them, feeling afraid all the while. But you have to get over that…”

P. 98:

“Love ought not to make requests,” she said, “but shouldn’t make demands, either. Love must have the strength to reach certainty for itself. Then it no longer undergoes the power of attraction, but exerts it. Sinclair, your love is being attracted by me. Whenever it begins to attract me, I shall come. I don’t want to make a gift of myself, I want to be won.”

But another time she told me another tale. It was about a man who loved without hope. He withdrew completely inside himself, and thought he would burn up with love. He lost contact with the world; he no longer saw the blue sky and the green forest; the brook didn’t murmur for him, the harp didn’t sound for him; everything had gone under and he had become poor and miserable. But his love grew, and he was much readier to die and wither away than to renounce the possession of the beautiful woman he loved. Then he noticed that his love had burnt up everything else in him; it became powerul and exerted more and more attraction; and the beautiful woman was compelled to follow; she came, he stoof there with outstretched arms to draw her to himself. But when she stood before him, she was totally transformed, and with trembling he felt and saw that he had attracted to himself the entire world he had lost. It stood before him and yielded itself to him; sky and forest and brook, everything came to meet him in new colors, vivid and splendid; it belonged to him, it spoke his languag. And instead of merely winning a woman, he had the whole world on his bosom, and every star in the sky shone within him and sparkled joy into his soul. He had loved and by doing so, had found himself. But most people love in order to lose themselves.