Thomas Mann: Quotes about love
Thomas Mann was German novelist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate. Explore interesting quotes on love."Early Sorrow" in Tellers of Tales : 100 Short Stories from the United States, England, France, Russia and Germany edited by William Somerset Maugham (1939), p. 884
“For the sake of goodness and love, man shall let death have no sovereignty over his thoughts.”
Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 6
Context: I will keep faith with death in my heart, yet will remember that faith with death and the dead is only wickedness and dark voluptuousness and enmity against humankind, if it is given power over our thought and contemplation. For the sake of goodness and love, man shall let death have no sovereignty over his thoughts. And with that, I wake up.
“The body, love, death, these three are just one.”
Hans Castorp to Chauchat, in French, Ch. 5
The Magic Mountain (1924)
Context: Rough translation of this passage written in French: The body, love, death, these three are just one. For the body, this is the disease and exquisite delight, and this that does die, yes, they are carnal both of them, love and death, and thus their terror and their great magic!
Source: Tonio Kröger (1903), Ch. 9, as translated by Bayard Quincy Morgan
Variant translation: But my deepest and most secret love belongs to the fair-haired and the blue-eyed, the bright children of life, the happy, the charming and the ordinary.
Ch. 9, as translated by David Luke
Context: What I have done is nothing, not much — as good as nothing. I shall do better things, Lisaveta — this is a promise. While I am writing, the sea's roar is coming up to me, and I close my eyes. I am looking into an unborn and shapeless world that longs to be called to life and order, I am looking into a throng of phantoms of human forms which beckon me to conjure them and set them free: some of them tragic, some of them ridiculous, and some that are both at once — and to these I am very devoted. But my deepest and most secret love belongs to the blond and blue-eyed, the bright-spirited living ones, the happy, amiable, and commonplace.
Do not speak lightly of this love, Lisaveta; it is good and fruitful. There is longing in it and melancholy envy, and a tiny bit of contempt, and an unalloyed chaste blissfulness.
“It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death.”
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.
“Only love, and not reason, yields kind thoughts.”
Source: The Magic Mountain
Settembrini's view of literature, Ch. 4
The Magic Mountain (1924)
Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 3
Source: Death in Venice (1912), Ch. 3, as translated by David Luke
L’amour pour lui, pour le corps humain, c’est de même un intérêt extrêmement humanitaire et une puissance plus éducative que toute la pédagogie du monde!
Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 5
Source: Tonio Kröger (1903), Ch. 9, as translated by Bayard Quincy Morgan
Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 7
“Love as a force contributory to disease.”
The title of "Dr. Krokowski" lectures. Ch. 4
The Magic Mountain (1924)
Source: Tristan (1902), Ch. 8
Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 4
Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 6; variant translation: I will let death have no mastery over my thoughts! For therein, and in nothing else, lies goodness and love of humankind.