309 Quotes by Thomas Mann

To feel stirring within you the wonderful and melancholy play of strange forces and to be aware that those others you yearn for are blithely inaccessible to all that moves you―what a pain is this! And yet! He stood there aloof and alone, staring hopelessly at a drawn blind and making, in his distraction, as though he could look out. But yet he was happy. For he lived. His heart was full...

Forbearance in the face of fate, beauty constant under torture, are not merely passive. They are a positive achievement, an explicit triumph.

Innate in nearly every artistic nature is a wanton, treacherous penchant for accepting injustice when it creates beauty and showing sympathy for and paying homage to aristocratic privilege.

Is not the pastness of the past the more profound, the more legendary, the more immediately it falls before the present ?

Recreation", which is to say: a refreshing exercise of the organism, because it was in immediate danger of overindulging itself in the uninterrupted monotony of daily life and growing indifferent.

Leider sei eben heute alles Politik, es gebe keine geistige Reinheit mehr.

Caustique ? Vous voulez dire : méchant ? Oui, je suis un peu méchant, dit Settembrini. Mon regret c'est que je sois obligé de gaspiller ma méchanceté à des sujets aussi misérables. J'espère que vous n'avez rien contre la méchanceté, mon cher ingénieur. A mon sens, c'est l'arme la plus étincelante de la raison contre les puissances des ténèbres et de la laideur. La méchanceté, monsieur, est l'esprit de la critique, et la critique est à l'origine du progrès et des lumières de la civilisation.

Also Ruhe, Geduld, Mannszucht, messen, essen, liegen, abwarten und Tee trinken.

Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil.