Quotes from book
The Magic Mountain

Thomas Mann Original title Der Zauberberg (German, 1924)

The Magic Mountain is a novel by Thomas Mann, first published in German in November 1924. It is widely considered to be one of the most influential works of twentieth-century German literature.

Thomas Mann photo

“Asia surrounds us — wherever one’s glance rests, a Tartar physiognomy.”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

Asien verschlingt uns. Wohin man blickt: tatarische Gesichter.
Variant translation: Asia devours us. Wherever one looks: Tartar faces.
Settembrini in Ch. 5
The Magic Mountain (1924)

Thomas Mann photo

“A man’s dying is more the survivors’ affair than his own.”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 6

Thomas Mann photo

“The beautiful word begets the beautiful deed.”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 4

Thomas Mann photo

“Speech is civilization itself. The word, even the most contradictory word, preserves contact — it is silence which isolates.”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 6

Thomas Mann photo

“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

Thomas Mann photo

“The invention of printing and the Reformation are and remain the two outstanding services of central Europe to the cause of humanity.”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 6

Thomas Mann photo

“There is something suspicious about music, gentlemen. I insist that she is, by her nature, equivocal. I shall not be going too far in saying at once that she is politically suspect.”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 4

Thomas Mann photo

“A black pall, you know, with a silver cross on it, or R. I. P. — requiescat in pace — you know. That seems to me the most beautiful expression — I like it much better than ‘He is a jolly good fellow,’ which is simply rowdy.”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 5

Thomas Mann photo

“Frau Stöhr … began to talk about how fascinating it was to cough…. Sneezing was much the same thing. You kept on wanting to sneeze until you simply couldn’t stand it any longer; you looked as if you were tipsy; you drew a couple of breaths, then out it came, and you forgot everything else in the bliss of the sensation. Sometimes the explosion repeated itself two or three times. That was the sort of pleasure life gave you free of charge.”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 4

Thomas Mann photo

“Our air up here is good for the disease — I mean good against the disease,… but it is also good for the disease.”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 4

Thomas Mann photo

“A man lives not only his personal life, as an individual, but also, consciously or unconsciously, the life of his epoch and his contemporaries.”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 2, “At Tienappels’,” (1924), trans. by H.T. Lowe-Porter (1928).

Thomas Mann photo

“In effect it seemed to him that, though honor might possess certain advantages, yet shame had others, and not inferior: advantages, even, that were well-nigh boundless in their scope.”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 3

Thomas Mann photo

“What was life? It was warmth, the warmth generated by a form-preserving instability, a fever of matter, which accompanied the process of ceaseless decay and repair of protein molecules that were too impossibly ingenious in structure.”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 5

Thomas Mann photo

“Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunderstorm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols.”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 5

Thomas Mann photo

“Love for him, for the human body, was extremely humanitarian an interest and had more educational power than the whole teaching skills of the world!”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

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

Thomas Mann photo

“The only religious way to think of death is as part and parcel of life; to regard it, with the understanding and the emotions, as the the inviolable condition of life.”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 5

Thomas Mann photo

“Absolutely everything beloved and cherished of the bourgeoisie, the conservative, the cowardly, and the impotent — the State, family life, secular art and science — was consciously or unconsciously hostile to the religious idea, to the Church, whose innate tendency and permanent aim was the dissolution of all existing worldly orders, and the reconstitution of society after the model of the ideal, the communistic City of God.”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

Naphta in Ch. 7
The Magic Mountain (1924)

Thomas Mann photo

“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.”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 3

Thomas Mann photo

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

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

Settembrini's view of literature, Ch. 4
The Magic Mountain (1924)