309 Quotes by Thomas Mann

There had always been people who had willingly entered into illness and madness in order to win knowledge for mankind – and knowledge, having been wrested from madness, became health and, once obtained by heroic sacrifice. its possession and use were no longer conditioned by illness and madness. That was the true death on the cross.

There are people with whom it is not easy to live, but whom it is impossible to leave.

Inborn in almost every artistic nature is a luxuriant, treacherous bias in favor of the injustice that creates beauty, a tendency to sympathize with aristocratic preference and pay it homage. A.

There will always be men who are justified in this interest in themselves, this detailed observation of their own emotions; poets who can express with clarity and beauty their privileged inner life, and thereby enrich the emotional world of other people.

It was the smile of Narcissus bending over the water mirror, the deep, enchanted, protracted smile with which he stretched out his arms to the reflection of his own beauty, an ever so slightly contorted smile – contorted by the hopelessness of his endeavor to kiss the lovely lips of his shadow – and coquettish, inquisitive and mildly pained, beguiled and beguiling.

We are most likely to get angry and excited in our opposition to some idea when we ourselves are not quite certain of our own position, and are inwardly tempted to take the other side.

By now, his morality coincided with his curiosity, probably always had. It was the unconditional curiosity of the tourist thirsty for knowledge; a curiosity that, in having tasted the mystery of personality, had perhaps not been all that far from realms emerging here; a curiosity that displayed something of a military character by not trying to evade something forbidden if it might offer itself.

But Hans Castorp said as they walked on: “You see, I didn’t mind it at all, I got on with her quite well; I always do with such people; I understand instinctively how to go at them – don’t you think so? I even think, on the whole, I get on better with sad people than with jolly ones – goodness knows why. Perhaps it’s because I’m an orphan, and lost my parents early;.

One can say that he consumed one whole week waiting for the return of that single hour every seven days – and waiting means racing ahead, means seeing time and the present not as a gift, but as a barrier, denying and negating their value, vaulting over them in your mind. Waiting, people say, is boring. But in actuality, it can just as easily be diverting, because it devours quantities of time without our ever experiencing or using them for their own sake.