309 Quotes by Thomas Mann

The only religious way to think of death is as part and parcel of life.

Passion is like crime; it does not thrive on the established order.

A man's dying is more the survivor's affair than his own.

Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunderstorm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols.

What a wonderful phenomenon it is, carefully considered, when the human eye, that jewel of organic structures, concentrates its moist brilliance on another human creature.

Solitude gives birth to the original in us.

Beauty can pierce one like a pain.

Paradox is the poisonous flower of quietism, the iridescent surface of the rotting mind, the greatest depravity of all.

Myth is the foundation of life. It is the timeless pattern, the religious formula to which life shapes itself.