309 Quotes by Thomas Mann

Begin all over again? It would be no good. It would all turn out the same – all happen again just as it has happened. For certain people are For certain people are bound to go astray because for them no such thing as a right way exists.

Hans Castorp was, for his own person, quite without arrogance; yet a larger arrogance, the pride of caste and tradition, stood written on his brow and in his sleepy-looking eyes, and voiced itself in the conviction of his own superiority, which came over him when he measured Frau Chauchat for what she was.

She was not a woman; but she was not a man either and therefore not a human being. A solemn angel of daring with parted lips and dilated nostrils, that is what she was, an unapproachable Amazon of the realms of space beneath the canvas, high above the crowd, whose lust for her was transformed into awe.

It is as well that the world knows only a fine piece of work and not also its origins, the conditions under which it came into being; for knowledge of the sources of an artist’s inspiration would often confuse readers and shock them, and the excellence of the writing would be of no avail.

But he immediately felt he did not really want to take that step. It would lead him back, give his soul back to himself; but when one is frantic, the last thing one desires is to be oneself again.

Deep is the well of the past. Should we not call it bottomless?

Space, like time, gives birth to forgetfulness, but does so by removing an individual from all relationships and placing him in a free and pristine state – indeed, in but a moment it can turn a pedant and philistine into something like a vagabond. Time, they say, is water from the river Lethe, but alien air is a similar drink; and if its effects are less profound, it works all the more quickly.

Hans Castorp had found courage up here – if courage before the elements is defined not as a dull, level-headed relationship with them, but a conscious abandonment to them.

Time drowns in the unmeasured monotony of space. Where uniformity reigns, movement from point to point is no longer movement; and where movement is no longer movement, there is no time.