Cursed be all that learning that is contrary to the cross of Christ.
It is important that man dreams, but it is perhaps equally important that he can laugh at his own dreams.
Only friendship which can stand occasional plain speaking is worth having.
Even in despair, man must laugh.
Only he who handles his ideas lightly is master of his ideas, and only he who is master of his ideas is not enslaved by them.
Nothing matters to a man who says nothing matters.
What is patriotism but love of the good things we ate in our childhood? I have said elsewhere that the loyalty to Uncle Sam is the loyalty to doughnuts and ham and sweet potatoes and the loyalty to the German Vaterland is the loyalty to Pfannkuchen and Christmas Stollen. As for international understanding, I feel that macaroni has done more for our appreciation of Italy than Mussolini. . . in food, as in death, we feel the essential brotherhood of mankind.
I come from a very small rural village in northern Germany, and being an actor never even seemed like a possibility. I thought you would have to live in a big city, or be discovered somewhere, or be born into an artistic family, which I certainly wasn't.
My father was a painter and he taught art. He once said to me, 'I never knew an Indian child who could not draw. '
I make it a point of honour to have a couple of gnomes in my garden as silent testimony to the right of gnome-lovers everywhere to do their own thing without fear of snide remarks.
When we destroy something crated by man we call it vandalism but when we destroy something by nature we call it progress.