QotD

[jackofallgeeks]

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.
- Hermann Hesse

Not sure who this Hesse guy is, but I've long believed that line.

Comments

[dikaiosunh.livejournal.com]

He's a quite prominent German writer (whose heyday was, yes, in the 60s-ish). Among his better-known works are Siddhartha, which does deal with the Buddha; Steppenwolf (from which the band takes its name), about middle age (to the extent that you can put it in a nutshell - that's a very unfair description);, Narcissus and Goldmund, which deals with a longstanding friendship between two childhood friends one of whom takes a religious, the other a secular path; and, The Glass Bead Game, which details a semi-futuristic society in which new knowledge is disdained by the elite in favor of elaborate "games" linking previous knowledge together.