Hermann Hesse

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

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.

Writing is good, thinking is better. Cleverness is good, patience is better.

You have to know how to defend yourself.

You gotta have a dream. If you don’t have a dream, how you gonna make a dream come true?

It’s so much easier to tell people what they want to hear instead of what they need to hear.

I didn’t start a war. Nobody died.

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is.

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.

Blood banks are all closed; you can’t use others to keep you warm.

No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.

No matter how carefully and assiduously and how deeply you bury shit, the American public will find it and buy it in large quantity, It’s true, absolutely true.

Until you’ve lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was.

When people tell you not to believe in your dreams, and they say “Why?”, say “Why not?”

People create their own experiences.

A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.

All punishments by which the human body might be maimed are barbarbarism.

The people change, the common denominator is you.