Nevertheless, whether in occurrences lasting days, hours or mere minutes at a time, I have experienced happiness often, and have had brief encounters with it in my later years, even in old age.

Hesse frames happiness not as a permanent state but as something episodic—arriving in stretches that may last days or only minutes. The insistence on “nevertheless” suggests a life shadowed by difficulty, disillusionment, or suffering, against which these moments of happiness stand out as hard-won and real. The line also resists the common narrative that happiness belongs chiefly to youth: he emphasizes that even “in my later years, even in old age,” brief encounters remain possible. The significance lies in its modest, realistic consolation: meaning and joy may be intermittent, but their recurrence across a lifetime can still justify hope and attentiveness to the present.