“...when life still hesitates to touch us, when neither duty nor guilt dares lay a hand upon us” — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
All interest in disease and death is only another expression of interest in life. — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
“A human being lives out not only his personal life as an individual, but also, consciously or subconsciously, the lives of his… — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
“And for its part, what was life? Was it perhaps only an infectious disease of matter—just as the so-called spontaneous generation of… — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
For the myth is the foundation of life; it is the timeless schema, the pious formula into which life flows when it… — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
An art whose medium is language will always show a high degree of critical creativeness, for speech is itself a critique of… — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
“Passionate—that means to live for the sake of living. But one knows that you all live for sake of experience. Passion, that… — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
A man lives not only his personal life, as an individual, but also, consciously or unconsciously, the life of his epoch and… — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
“Passion-means to live for life's sake but I am well aware you Germans live for the sake of experience. Passion means to… — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
“Genius is a form of the life force that is deeply versed in illness, that both draws creatively from it and creates… — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
The accouterments of life were so rich and varied, so elaborated, that almost no place at all was left for life itself.… — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
“(...) nearly all the great things that exist owe their existence to a defiant despite: it is despite grief and anguish, despite… — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
“But was it not true that there were people, certain individuals, whom one found it impossible to picture dead, precisely because they… — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
“These artists pay little attention to an encircling present that bears no direct relation to the world of work in which they… — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
It is remarkable how a man cannot summarize his thoughts in even the most general sort of way without betraying himself completely,… — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
“Disease, and most specially opprobrious, suppressed, secret disease, creates a certain critical opposition to the world, to mediocre life, disposes a man… — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
“Protestantism harbors within it certain elements – just as the Great Reformer himself harbored such elements within his personality. I am thinking… — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
If the years of youth are experienced slowly, while the later years of life hurtle past at an ever-increasing speed, it must… — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
“He undressed, lay down, put out the light. Two names he whispered into his pillow, the few chaste northern syllables that meant… — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
“His games have a deeper meaning and fascination that adults can no longer fathom and require nothing more than three pebbles, or… — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
“Consciousness of self was an inherent function of matter once it was organized as life, and if that function was enhanced it… — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
Even in a personal sense, after all, art is an intensified life. By art one is more deeply satisfied and more rapidly… — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
“And life? Life itself? Was it perhaps only an infection, a sickening of matter? Was that which one might call the original… — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
“He completely lacked any ardent interest that might have occupied his mind. His interior life was impoverished, had undergone a deterioration so… — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
“A man lives not only his personal life, as an individual, but also, consciously or unconsciously, the life of his epoch and… — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
What we call National-Socialism is the poisonous perversion of ideas which have a long history in German intellectual life. — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
“...nearly everything great owes its existence to “despites”: despite misery and affliction, poverty, desolation, physical debility, vice, passion, and a thousand other… — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
“life of service and humility, of silent subordination and religious training, from which he wrested intellectual pleasures congruent with his” — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
Is not life in itself a thing of goodness, irrespective of whether the course it takes for us can be called a… — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
But my deepest and most secret love belongs to the fair-haired and the blue-eyed, the bright children of life, the happy, the… — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
“Truth, and the freedom to seek it, are not luxury-products which enervate a people and unfit them for the struggle of life.… — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
“I bear within me the seed, the rudiments, the possibility of life's capacities and endeavors. Where might I be, if I were… — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
The only religious way to think of death is as part and parcel of life. — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
Art is the funnel, as it were, through which spirit is poured into life. — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
I never can understand how anyone can not smoke it deprives a man of the best part of life. With a good… — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
“For passion, like crime does not sit well with the sure order and even course of everyday life. It welcomes every loosening… — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
“Yet each, in itself—this was the uncanny, the anti-organic, the life-denying character of them all—each of them was absolutely symmetrical, icily regular… — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
“Kindly permit me to tell you, sir, that I hate you. I hate you and your child, as I hate the life… — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
Solitude produces originality, bold and astonishing beauty, poetry. But solitude also produces perverseness, the disproportianate, the absurd and the forbidden. — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
“Solitude favors the original, the daringly and otherworldly beautiful, the poem. But it also favors the wrongful, the extreme, the absurd, and the forbidden.” — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
“But what would be our readers’ reaction if we simply refused to get to the bottom of that question?” — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
What good would politics be, if it didn’t give everyone the opportunity to make moral compromises. — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
“O, čarobna organsko lepoto, koja se ne sastojiš ni iz uljane boje ni iz kamena, već iz materije žive i raspadljive, pune grozničave tajne… — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
“I hope that you have nothing against malice, my good engineer. In my eyes it is the brightest sword that reason has against the… — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
“The days began to fly now, and yet each one of them was stretched by renewed expectations and swollen with silent, private experiences. Yes,… — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
“A stimulus is a stimulus. The body doesn't give a damn about the meaning of the stimulus. Whether minnows or communion, the sebaceous glands… — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
It is remarkable how a man cannot summarize his thoughts in even the most general sort of way without betraying himself completely, without putting… — Thomas Mann Copy Share Image
