Hermann Hesse

How beautiful the world was when one looked at it without searching, just looked, simply and innocently.

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.

You know quite well, deep within you, that there is only a single magic, a single power, a single salvation… and that is called loving. Well then, love your suffering. Do not resist it, do not flee from it. It is only your aversion to it that hurts, nothing else.

If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way.

There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist, except an old optimist.

It’s not for me. I tried human flesh and it’s too salty for my taste.

You have to be odd to be number one.

Only once in my life was I on the edge of incivility.

Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

There is nothing so stable as change.

I’m going to go down and take care of the bill. I’m not going to embarrass you, just let me do it. I had such a great time, I just want it to be my treat. [On returning after several minutes red faced] They won’t take my check, I don’t know what we’re going to do. [Robertson said ‘David, what we’ve spent here, we’re going to have to do a lot of dishes.’] I’m going to call Prince Rupert [Loewenstein] and ask him to call the hotel and tell them I’m good for it. Or maybe he can pay the bill and then I’ll pay him back or something. [Prince Rupert vouched for his credit and the hotel agreed to accept Geffen’s check.]

I don’t expect to retire. Every man must work, that’s his natural destiny.

One of the hardest things for a parent to have to do is to tell your children that your other parent has died.

Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.

The difference between you and the person you envy, is that you settle for less.

He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again.

If I were required to guess off-hand, and without collusion with higher minds, what is the bottom cause of the amazing material and intellectual advancement of the last fifty years, I should guess that it was the modern-born and previously non-existent disposition on the part of men to believe that a new idea can have value.

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.