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Forbearance in the face of fate, beauty constant under torture, are not merely passive. They are a positive achievement, an explicit triumph.

Thomas Mann

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

Course Happiness Life Name Oneself
What pleases the public is lively and vivid delineation which makes no demands on the intellect; but passionate and absolutist youth can only be enthralled by a problem.
THOMAS MANN

Demand Live Passion Problem Public Youth
I stand between two worlds. I am at home in neither, and I suffer in consequence. You artists call me a bourgeois, and the bourgeois try to arrest me…I don’t know which makes me feel worse.
THOMAS MANN

Arrest Feeling Home Stand Suffering World Worst
Often I have thought of the day when I gazed for the first time at the sea. The sea is vast, the sea is wide, my eyes roved far and wide and longed to be free. But there was the horizon. Why a horizon, when I wanted the infinite from life?
THOMAS MANN

Infinite Life Sea Thinking Time
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

Expectation Feeling Joy Life Love Possession Sight Understand Unknown
For to be poised against fatality, to meet adverse conditions gracefully, is more than simple endurance; it is an act of aggression, a positive triumph.
THOMAS MANN

Act Adversity Fatal Grace Poised Positive
For the myth is the foundation of life; it is the timeless schema, the pious formula into which life flows when it reproduces its traits out of the unconscious.
THOMAS MANN

Conscious Flow Foundation Life Reproduction Time
I shall need to sleep three weeks on end to get rested from the rest I’ve had.
THOMAS MANN

End Myself Need Sleep
In books we never find anything but ourselves. Strangely enough, that always gives us great pleasure, and we say the author is a genius.
THOMAS MANN

Author Book Enough Genius Greatness Happiness Strange
What a wonderful phenomenon it is, carefully considered, when the human eye, that jewel of organic structures, concentrates its moist brilliance on another human creature!
THOMAS MANN

Care Creature Eyes Human Phenomenon Structure Wonderful
People’s behavior makes sense if you think about it in terms of their goals, needs, and motives.
THOMAS MANN

Goal Motive Need People Yourself
I don’t think anyone is thinking long-term now.
THOMAS MANN

Goal Present Thinking
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

Beautiful Born Original Pervert Poetry
Thought that can merge wholly into feeling, feeling that can merge wholly into thought – these are the artist’s highest joy.
THOMAS MANN

Artist Feeling High Joy Thinking
Solitude produces originality, bold and astonishing beauty, poetry. But solitude also produces perverseness, the disproportianate, the absurd and the forbidden.
THOMAS MANN

Astonish Beautiful Original Poetry Solitude Weird
Everything is politics.
THOMAS MANN

One Liner Politics
What our age needs, what it demands, what it will create for itself, is—terror.
THOMAS MANN

Age Creation Demand Terror
For the sake of goodness and love, man shall let death have no sovereignty over his thoughts.
THOMAS MANN

Death Goodness Himself Love Thinking
A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also a truth.
THOMAS MANN

Greatness Opposite Truth
Only love, and not reason, yields kind thoughts.
THOMAS MANN

Kind Love Reason Thinking
Laughter is a sunbeam of the soul.
THOMAS MANN

Laughter Soul Sunshine
He thought what a fine thing it was that people made music all over the world, even in the strangest settings – probably even on polar expeditions.
THOMAS MANN

Expedition Music People Thinking World
Technology and comfort – having those, people speak of culture, but do not have it.
THOMAS MANN

Culture People Talk Technology
What good would politics be, if it didn’t give everyone the opportunity to make moral compromises.
THOMAS MANN

Compromises Goodness Moral Opportunity Politics
The Freudian theory is one of the most important foundation stones for an edifice to be built by future generations, the dwelling of a freer and wiser humanity.
THOMAS MANN

Foundation Humanity Important Theory Wisdom
Every reasonable human being should be a moderate Socialist.
THOMAS MANN

Human Reason Social
What we call National-Socialism is the poisonous perversion of ideas which have a long history in German intellectual life.
THOMAS MANN

History Ideas Intellect Life Poison

Forbearance in the face of fate, beauty constant under torture, are not merely passive. They are a positive achievement, an explicit triumph.

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Forbearance in the face of fate, beauty constant under torture, are not merely passive. They are a positive achievement, an explicit triumph.

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