309 Quotes by Thomas Mann

Ultimately we are only as old as we feel in our hearts and minds.

Dr. Krokowski answered his own question, and said: “In the form of illness. Symptoms of disease are nothing but a disguised manifestation of the power of love; and all disease is only love transformed.

The dilemma, my dear sir, the tragedy, begins where nature has been cruel enough to split the personality, to shatter its harmony by imprisoning a noble and ardent spirit within a body not fit for the stresses of life. Have you heard of Leopardi, Engineer, or you, Lieutenant? An unhappy poet of my own land, a crippled, ailing man, born with a great soul, which his sufferings were constantly humiliating and dragging down into the depths of irony – its lamentations rend the heart to hear.

Era la sonrisa de Narciso al inclinarse sobre el agua.

His yearning for new and faraway places, his desire for freedom, relief and oblivion was as he admitted to himself, an urge to flee-an urge to get away from his work, from the everyday site of a cold, rigid, and passionate servitude.

Passion-means to live for life’s sake but I am well aware you Germans live for the sake of experience. Passion means to forget ones self. But you do things in order to enrich yourselves.

Speech is civilization itself. The word, even the most contradictory word, preserves contact – it is silence which isolates.

Io sto tra due mondi, di cui nessuno e’ il mio, e per questo la mia vita e’ un po’ difficile.

It’s hard to keep going when it seems like you’re not getting anywhere, but you’ll never succeed if you stop. Those of us with a dream that seems so far from being realized must remember that the road is long, but only those who stay on the path will reach their destination.