Thomas Mann quotes - page 7

I think of my suffering, of the problem of my suffering. What am I suffering from? From knowledge - is it going to destroy me? What am I suffering from? From sexuality - is it going to destroy me? (Thomas Mann)
Analysis can be a very unappetizing affair, as much so as death. View quote
Thomas Mann
Hold fast the time! Guard it, watch over it, every hour, every minute! View quote
Thomas Mann
Fanaticism turns into a means of salvation, enthusiasm into epileptic ecstasy, politics becomes an opiate for the masses, a proletarian eschatology; and reason veils her face. View quote
Thomas Mann
The body, love, death, these three are just one. View quote
Thomas Mann
What is success? It is an inner, an indescribable force, resourcefulness, power of vision; a consciousness that I am, by my mere existence, exerting pressure on the movement of life about me. View quote
Thomas Mann
I stand between two worlds, am at home in neither, and in consequence have rather a hard time of it. View quote
Thomas Mann
The days began to fly now, and yet each one of them was stretched by renewed expectations and swollen with silent, private experiences. Yes, time is a puzzling thing, there is something about it that is hard to explain. View quote
Thomas Mann
Asia surrounds us - wherever one's glance rests, a Tartar physiognomy. View quote
Thomas Mann
Latin phrase meaning "It pleases to experiment", Ch. 4. View quote
Thomas Mann
A black pall, you know, with a silver cross on it, or R. I. P. (Thomas Mann)
I admire the proud and cold who go adventuring on the paths of great and demoniac beauty, and scorn "man" View quote
Thomas Mann
It is as though something had begun to slip – as though I haven't the firm grip I had on events. View quote
Thomas Mann
But my deepest and most secret love belongs to the fair-haired and the blue-eyed, the bright children of life, the happy, the charming and the ordinary. View quote
Thomas Mann
One must die to life in order to be utterly a creator. View quote
Thomas Mann
Speech is civilization itself. View quote
Thomas Mann
A solitary, unused to speaking of what he sees and feels, has mental experiences which are at once more intense and less articulate than those of a gregarious man. View quote
Thomas Mann
Animals do not admire each other. A horse does not admire its companion. View quote
Thomas Mann
I shall need to sleep three weeks on end to get rested from the rest I've had. View quote
Thomas Mann
I think of my suffering, of the problem of my suffering. What am I suffering from? From knowledge - is it going to destroy me? What am I suffering from? From sexuality - is it going to destroy me? How I hate it, this knowledge which forces even art to join it! How I hate it, this sensuality, which claims everything fine and good is its consequence and effect. Alas, it is the poison that lurks in everything fine and good! - How am I to free myself of knowledge? By religion? How am I to free myself of sexuality? By eating rice? View quote
Thomas Mann
The important thing for me, then, is not the "work," but my life. Life is not the means for the achievement of an esthetic ideal of perfection; on the contrary, the work is an ethical symbol of life. (Thomas Mann)
It had been a moving, tranquil apotheosis, immersed in the transfiguring sunset glow of decline and decay and extinction. An old family, already grown too weary and too noble for life and action, had reached the end of its history, and its last utterances were sounds of music: a few violin notes, full of the sad insight which is ripeness for death. View quote
Thomas Mann
Space, like time, engenders forgetfulness; but it does so by setting us bodily free from our surroundings and giving us back our primitive, unattached state. Yes, it can even, in the twinkling of an eye, make something like a vagabond of the pedant and Philistine. Time, we say, is Lethe; but change of air is a similar draught, and, if it works less thoroughly, does so more quickly. View quote
Thomas Mann
Writing well was almost the same as thinking well, and thinking well was the next thing to acting well. All moral discipline, all moral perfection derived from the soul of literature, from the soul of human dignity, which was the moving spirit of both humanity and politics. Yes, they were all one, one and the same force, one and the same idea, and all of them could be comprehended in one single word... The word was - civilization! View quote
Thomas Mann
Analysis as an instrument of enlightenment and civilization is good, in so far as it shatters absurd convictions, acts as a solvent upon natural prejudices, and undermines authority; good, in other words, in that it sets free, refines, humanizes, makes slaves ripe for freedom. But it is bad, very bad, in so far as it stands in the way of action, cannot shape the vital forces, maims life at its roots. Analysis can be a very unappetizing affair, as much so as death. View quote
Thomas Mann