Thomas Mann: Trending quotes (page 6)

“There were profound reasons for his attachment to the sea: he loved it because as a hard-working artist he needed rest, needed to escape from the demanding complexity of phenomena and lie hidden on the bosom of the simple and tremendous; because of a forbidden longing deep within him that ran quite contrary to his life’s task and was for that very reason seductive, a longing for the unarticulated and immeasurable, for eternity, for nothingness. To rest in the arms of perfection is the desire of any man intent upon creating excellence; and is not nothingness a form of perfection?”

“The new hero-type favored by Aschenbach, and recurring in his books in a multiplicity of individual variants, had already been remarked upon at an early stage by a shrewd commentator, who had described his conception as that of “an intellectual and boyish manly virtue, that of a youth who clenches his teeth in proud shame and stands calmly on as the swords and spears pass through his body … the figure of Saint Sebastian is the most perfect symbol if not of art in general, then certainly of the kind of art in question.”

“Hans Castorp loved music from his heart; it worked upon him much the same way as did his breakfast porter, with deeply soothing, narcotic effect, tempting him to doze.”

“I love and reverence the Word, the bearer of the spirit, the tool and gleaming ploughshare of progress.”

“The ancients adorned their sarcophagi with the emblems of life and procreation, and even with obscene symbols; in the religions of antiquity the sacred and the obscene often lay very close together. These men knew how to pay homage to death. For death is worthy of homage as the cradle of life, as the womb of palingenesis.”

“It seemed that at the end of the lecture Dr. Krokowski was making propaganda for psycho-analysis; with open arms he summoned all and sundry to come unto him. "Come unto me," he was saying, though not in those words, " come unto me, all ye who are weary and heavy-laden." And he left no doubt of his conviction that all those present were weary and heavy-laden. He spoke of secret suffering, of shame and sorrow, of the redeeming power of the analytic. He advocated the bringing of light into the unconscious mind and explained how the abnormality was metamorphosed into the conscious emotion; he urged them to have confidence; he promised relief.”

“The days began to fly now, and yet each one of them was stretched by renewed expectations and swollen with silent, private experiences. Yes, time is a puzzling thing, there is something about it that is hard to explain.”

“Order and simplification are the first steps toward the mastery of a subject — the actual enemy is the unknown.”

“We do not fear being called meticulous, inclining as we do to the view that only the exhaustive can be truly interesting.”

“What good would politics be, if it didn’t give everyone the opportunity to make moral compromises.”

“Only love, and not reason, yields kind thoughts.”

“Technology and comfort - having those, people speak of culture, but do not have it.”

“Thought that can merge wholly into feeling, feeling that can merge wholly into thought - these are the artist's highest joy.”

“I tell them that if they will occupy themselves with the study of mathematics they will find in it the best remedy against the lusts of the flesh.”

“He thought what a fine thing it was that people made music all over the world, even in the strangest settings – probably even on polar expeditions.”

“All interest in disease and death is only another expression of interest in life.”

“Distance in a straight line has no mystery. The mystery is in the sphere.”

“I stand between two worlds, am at home in neither, and in consequence have rather a hard time of it.”

“Yes, they are carnal, both of them, love and death, and therein lies their terror and their great magic!”