Thomas Mann Quotes

He Thought What A Fine Thing It Was That People Made Music All Over The World, Even In The Strangest Settings – Probably Even On Polar Expeditions.

Yes, They Are Carnal, Both Of Them, Love And Death, And Therein Lies Their Terror And Their Great Magic!

The Books And Magazines Streamed In. He Could Buy Them All, They Piled Up Around Him And Even While He Read, The Number Of Those Still To Be Read Disturbed Him. … They Stood In Rows, Weighing Down His Life Like A Possession Which He Did Not Succeed In Subordinating To His Personality.

He Took In The Squeaky Music, The Vulgar And Pining Melodies, Because Passion Immobilizes Good Taste And Seriously Considers What Soberly Would Be Thought Of As Funny And To Be Resented.

The Freudian Theory Is One Of The Most Important Foundation Stones For An Edifice To Be Built By Future Generations, The Dwelling Of A Freer And Wiser Humanity.

And Then The Sly Arch-lover That He Was, He Said The Subtlest Thing Of All: That The Lover Was Nearer The Divine Than The Beloved; For The God Was In The One But Not In The Other - Perhaps The Tenderest, Most Mocking Thought That Ever Was Thought, And Source Of All The Guile And Secret Bliss The Lover Knows.

He Probably Was Mediocre After All, Though In A Very Honorable Sense Of That Word.

I Shall Need To Sleep Three Weeks On End To Get Rested From The Rest I've Had.

Often I Have Thought Of The Day When I Gazed For The First Time At The Sea. The Sea Is Vast, The Sea Is Wide, My Eyes Roved Far And Wide And Longed To Be Free. But There Was The Horizon. Why A Horizon, When I Wanted The Infinite From Life?

The Observations And Encounters Of A Solitary, Taciturn Man Are Vaguer And At The Same Times More Intense Than Those Of A Sociable Man; His Thoughts Are Deeper, Odder And Never Without A Touch Of Sadness. Images And Perceptions That Could Be Dismissed With A Glance, A Laugh, An Exchange Of Opinions, Occupy Him Unduly, Become More Intense In The Silence, Become Significant, Become An Experience, An Adventure, An Emotion. Solitude Produces Originality, Bold And Astonishing Beauty, Poetry. But Solitude Also Produces Perverseness, The Disproportionate, The Absurd And The Forbidden.

Innate In Nearly Every Artistic Nature Is A Wanton, Treacherous Penchant For Accepting Injustice When It Creates Beauty And Showing Sympathy For And Paying Homage To Aristocratic Privilege.

It Is Most Certainly A Good Thing That The World Knows Only The Beautiful Opus But Not Its Origins, Not The Conditions Of Its Creation; For If People Knew The Sources Of The Artist's Inspiration, That Knowledge Would Often Confuse Them, Alarm Them, And Thereby Destroy The Effects Of Excellence. Strange Hours! Strangely Enervating Labor! Bizarrely Fertile Intercourse Of The Mind With A Body!