“Technology and comfort - having those, people speak of culture, but do not have it.”
Thomas Mann book Doctor Faustus
Source: Doctor Faustus
xy
@xy, member from Sept. 25, 2023“All interest in disease and death is only another expression of interest in life.”
Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain
Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 6
“Distance in a straight line has no mystery. The mystery is in the sphere.”
Thomas Mann (1875–1955) German novelist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate
Thomas Mann book Tonio Kröger
Source: Tonio Kröger (1903), Ch. 9, as translated by Bayard Quincy Morgan
Context: I stand between two worlds, am at home in neither, and in consequence have rather a hard time of it. You artists call me a commoner, and commoners feel tempted to arrest me … I do not know which wounds me more bitterly. Commoners are stupid; but you worshippers of beauty who call me phlegmatic and without yearning, ought to reflect that there is an artistry so deep, so primordial and elemental, that no yearning seems to it sweeter and more worthy of tasting than that for the raptures of common-placeness.
“A harmful truth is better than a useful lie.”
Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain
Source: The Magic Mountain
“Art is the funnel, as it were, through which spirit is poured into life.”
Thomas Mann (1875–1955) German novelist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate
“He probably was mediocre after all, though in a very honorable sense of that word.”
Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain
Source: The Magic Mountain
“There are so many different kinds of stupidity, and cleverness is one of the worst.”
Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain
Source: The Magic Mountain
“War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.”
Thomas Mann (1875–1955) German novelist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate
As quoted in This I Believe (1954), by Edward R. Murrow, p. 16
Variant: War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.
Source: This I Believe: The Personal Philosophies of One Hundred Thoughtful Men and Women
“No man remains quite what he was when he recognizes himself.”
Thomas Mann (1875–1955) German novelist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate
Thomas Mann (1875–1955) German novelist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate
Source: Death in Venice and Other Tales
“Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil.”
Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain
Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 6, section, A Good Soldier as translated by Woods (1996), p. 506
“It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death.”
Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain
Variant: Love stands opposed to death. It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death.
Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 6; variant translation: It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death. Only love, not reason, gives sweet thoughts. And from love and sweetness alone can form come: form and civilization.
Context: Love stands opposed to death. It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death. Only love, not reason, gives kind thoughts.