Is not life in itself a thing of goodness, irrespective of whether the course it takes for us can be called a ‘happy’ one?
—Thomas Mann
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
Topics: Miscellaneous, Activism, Living, Service
Thoughts come clearly while one walks.
—Thomas Mann
Topics: Walking
No one remains quite what he was when he recognizes himself.
—Thomas Mann
Topics: Awareness, Self-Knowledge, Self-Discovery
Space, like time, engenders forgetfulness; but it does so by setting us bodily free from our surroundings and giving us back our primitive, unattached state
—Thomas Mann
Topics: Space
A solitary, unused to speaking of what he sees and feels, has mental experiences which are at once more intense and less articulate than those of a gregarious man.
—Thomas Mann
Topics: Solitude
Whose best and most fruitful gift was the power of admiration, which made it possible for me to learn. Now, as in my youth, I am looking up to the truly great creations of the past, which I see high above my own and which alone deserve the name of greatness.
—Thomas Mann
Topics: Respect
A man’s dying is more the survivors’ affair than his own.
—Thomas Mann
Topics: Death
Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil.
—Thomas Mann
Topics: Tolerance
What is uttered is finished and done with.
—Thomas Mann
Topics: Speaking, Speakers
War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.
—Thomas Mann
Topics: War
Hold fast the time! Guard it, watch over it, every hour, every minute! Unregarded it slips away, like a lizard, smooth, slippery, faithless, a pixy wife. Hold every moment sacred. Give each clarity and meaning, each the weight of thine awareness, each its true and due fulfillment.
—Thomas Mann
Topics: Time
Time cools, time clarifies; no mood can be maintained quite unaltered through the course of hours.
—Thomas Mann
Topics: Patience, Resilience
Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous- to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd.
—Thomas Mann
Topics: Solitude
A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
—Thomas Mann
Topics: Writing
What we call mourning for our dead is perhaps not so much grief at not being able to call them back; as it is grief at not being able to want to do so
—Thomas Mann
Topics: Grief
A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also a truth.
—Thomas Mann
The electrifying influence exercised on a whole generation just after the First World War by Demian…is unforgettable. With uncanny accuracy this poetic work struck the nerve of the times and called forth grateful rapture from a whole youthful generation who believed that an interpreter of their innermost life had risen from their own midst.
—Thomas Mann
Topics: Authors & Writing
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
Topics: Music
All interest in disease and death is only another expression of interest in life.
—Thomas Mann
Topics: Medicine
Time has no division 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 pistols.
—Thomas Mann
Topics: Time
I have always been an admirer. I regard the gift of admiration as indispensable if one is to amount to something; I don’t know where I would be without it.
—Thomas Mann
Topics: Admiration
Disease makes men more physical; it leaves them with nothing but body.
—Thomas Mann
Topics: Health
Every reasonable human being should be a moderate Socialist.
—Thomas Mann
Topics: Communism, Socialism
The only religious way to think of death is as part and parcel of life.
—Thomas Mann
Topics: Dying, Death
If you are possessed by an idea, you find it expressed everywhere, you even smell it.
—Thomas Mann
Topics: Ideas, Positive Attitudes, Optimism
Human reason needs only to will more strongly than fate, and she is fate.
—Thomas Mann
Topics: Fate
This was love at first sight, love everlasting: a feeling unknown, unhoped for, unexpected—in so far as it could be a matter of conscious awareness; it took entire possession of him, and he understood, with joyous amazement, that this was for life.
—Thomas Mann
Topics: Romance, Love
It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death.
—Thomas Mann
Topics: Love
Democracy is eternal and human. It dignifies the human being; it respects humanity.
—Thomas Mann
Topics: Democracy
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Jean Paul German Novelist
- Berthold Auerbach German Novelist
- Werner Heisenberg German Theoretical Physicist
- Hans Carossa German Novelist
- Max Planck German Theoretical Physicist
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe German Poet
- Erwin Rommel German Field Marshal
- Hermann Hesse Swiss Novelist, Poet
- Albert Einstein German-born Theoretical Physicist
- Konrad Adenauer German Statesman
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