Quotes from Thomas Mann

But admiration and sadness, admiration and worry, is not that almost a definition of love? There are people with whom it is not easy to live, but whom it is impossible to leave.

Almost every artistic nature is born with a revealing connoisseurial tendency that appreciates injustice so long as it results in beauty and applauds, even worships aristocratic privilege.

It might well be that getting used to things up here was simply a matter of getting used to not getting used to them—but

You have never spent any time in theatrical circles, have you? So you do not know those thespian faces that can embody the features of a Julius Caesar, a Goethe and a Beethoven all in one, but whose owners, the moment they open their mouths, prove to be the most miserable ninnies under the sun.

It was, however, striking—in the best sense of the word—that precisely those rules that corresponded exactly to their overseers' economic interests enjoyed unconditional veneration, whereas rules for which said correspondence was less applicable were more likely to be winked at.

Solitude favors the original, the daringly and otherworldly beautiful, the poem. But it also favors the wrongful, the extreme, the absurd, and the forbidden.

Thomas Buddenbrook's existence was no different from that of an actor - an actor whose lfe has become one long production, which but for a few hours for relaxation, consumes him unceasingly.

One can say that he consumed one whole week waiting for the return of that single hour every seven days—and waiting means racing ahead, means seeing time and the present not as a gift, but as a barrier, denying and negating their value, vaulting over them in your mind. Waiting, people say, is boring. But in actuality, it can just as easily be diverting, because it devours quantities of time without our ever experiencing or using them for their own sake.

The average man thinks that a little falseness goes with beauty.

And then he'd rub his cheeks with cold cream because he'd just shaved and the tears stung.

Il bene viene sempre troppo tardi, diventa realtà troppo tardi, quando non si è più capaci di goderne.

Al igual que el tiempo, el espacio trae consigo el olvido; aunque lo hace desprendiendo a la persona humana de sus contingencias para transportarla a un estado de libertad originaria; incluso del pedante y el burgués hace, de un solo golpe, una especie de vagabundo. El tiempo, según dicen, es Lete, el olvido; pero también el aire de la distancia es un bebedizo semejante, y si bien su efecto es menos radical, cierto es que es mucho más rápido.

There had always been people who had willingly entered into illness and madness in order to win knowledge for mankind--and knowledge, having been wrested from madness, became health and, once obtained by heroic sacrifice. its possession and use were no longer conditioned by illness and madness. That was the true death on the cross.

Aber für ihn war Musik - Musik, wenn es eben nur welche war, und gegen das Wort von Goethe: 'Die Kunst beschäftigt sich mit dem Schweren und Guten' fand er einzuwenden, daß das Leichte auch schwer ist, wenn es gut ist, was es ebensowohl sein kann wie das Schwere. Davon ist etwas bei mir hängengeblieben, ich habe es von ihm. Allerdings habe ich ihn immer dahin verstanden, daß man sehr sattelfest sein muß im Schweren und Guten, um es so mit dem Leichten aufzunehmen.

Did we not, at the very moment of birth, stumble into agonizing captivity? A prison, a prison with bars and chains everywhere!

For happiness, he told himself, isn't being loved; that was just a slightly nauseous satisfaction of vanity. Happiness is loving and perhaps seizing a few short illusory moments of intimacy with the object of one's love.

But he immediately felt he did not really want to take that step. It would lead him back, give his soul back to himself; but when one is frantic, the last thing one desires is to be oneself again.

Even the piquant can forfeit popularity if tied to something intellectual.

Verhalen horen zich in het verleden af te spelen, en hoe verder het verleden, zou men kunnen zeggen, des te beter voor ze, in hun hoedanigheid van verhalen, én voor de verteller, wiens gemurmel de onvoltooid verleden tijd bezweert.

He was empty within. There was no stimulus, no absorbing task into which he could throw himself. But his nervous activity, his inability to be quiet,.........had indeed taken the upper hand and become his master. It was something artificial, a pressure on the nerves, a depressant, in fact......This craving for activity had become a martyrdom, but it was dissipated in a host of trivialities.

Begin all over again? It would be no good. It would all turn out the same—all happen again just as it has happened. For certain people are For certain people are bound to go astray because for them no such thing as a right way exists.

Io sto tra due mondi, di cui nessuno e' il mio, e per questo la mia vita e' un po' difficile.

Wrapped in his coat, a book in his lap, the traveler took his ease, the hours slipping by unnoticed.

These artists pay little attention to an encircling present that bears no direct relation to the world of work in which they live, and they therefore see in it nothing more than an indifferent framework for life, either more or less favorable to production.