“The purifying, healing influence of literature, the dissipating of passions by knowledge and the written word, literature as the path to understanding, forgiveness and love, the redeeming might of the word, the literary spirit as the noblest manifestation of the spirit of man, the writer as perfected type, as saint.”

—  Thomas Mann , book The Magic Mountain

Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 7

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Thomas Mann 159
German novelist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate 1875–1955

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