309 Quotes by Thomas Mann

Art is the funnel, as it were, through which spirit is poured into life.

I stand between two worlds. I am at home in neither, and I suffer in consequence. You artists call me a bourgeois, and the bourgeois try to arrest me...I don't know which makes me feel worse.

To allow only the kind of art that the average man understands is the worst small-mindedness and the murder of mind and spirit. It is my conviction that the intellect can be certain that in doing what most disconcerts the crowd, in pursuing the most daring, unconventional advances and explorations, it will in some highly indirect fashion serve man - and in the long run, all men.

Miss von Osterloh had looked through it once during an idle fifteen minutes and pronunce it “quite sophisticated,” which veredict was her euphemism for “inhumanly boring.

I shall need to sleep three weeks on end to get rested from the rest I’ve had.

He may have been waiting a long while, in snow or rain, yet his joy at my final appearance knows no resentment at my faithlessness, though I have neglected him all day and brought his hopes to naught.

I don’t think anyone is thinking long-term now.

People’s behavior makes sense if you think about it in terms of their goals, needs, and motives.

And then he’d rub his cheeks with cold cream because he’d just shaved and the tears stung.