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Innate in nearly every artistic nature is a wanton, treacherous penchant for accepting injustice when it creates beauty and showing sympathy for and paying homage to aristocratic privilege.

Thomas Mann

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

Age Creation Demand Terror
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
A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also a truth.
THOMAS MANN

Greatness Opposite Truth
No man remains quite what he was when he recognizes himself.
THOMAS MANN

Himself Man Quite Recognition
Time cools, time clarifies; no mood can be maintained quite unaltered through the course of hours.
THOMAS MANN

Maintain Quite Time
Animals do not admire each other. A horse does not admire its companion.
THOMAS MANN

Admire Animal Companion
Technology and comfort – having those, people speak of culture, but do not have it.
THOMAS MANN

Culture People Talk Technology
If you are possessed by an idea, you find it expressed everywhere, you even smell it.
THOMAS MANN

Expression Ideas Possession Smell Yourself
Distance in a straight line has no mystery. The mystery is in the sphere.
THOMAS MANN

Deep Distance Mystery Shape
Only love, and not reason, yields kind thoughts.
THOMAS MANN

Kind Love Reason Thinking
Art is the funnel, as it were, through which spirit is poured into life.
THOMAS MANN

Art Life Pour Spirit
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
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
Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil.
THOMAS MANN

Crime Evil One Liner Tolerance
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
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

Feeling Man Mental Talk
It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death.
THOMAS MANN

Faith Love Reason Strong
Has the world ever been changed by anything save the thought and its magic vehicle the Word?
THOMAS MANN

Change Magic Thinking Vehicle Word
There is only one real misfortune: to forfeit one’s own good opinion of oneself. Lose your complacency, once betray your own self-contempt and the world will unhesitatingly endorse it.
THOMAS MANN

Goodness Hesitate Misfortune Opinion Reality Yourself
Speech is civilization itself.
THOMAS MANN

Civilization One Liner Speech
A harmful truth is better than a useful lie.
THOMAS MANN

Better Harm Lying Truth
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
Every reasonable human being should be a moderate Socialist.
THOMAS MANN

Human Reason Social
All interest in disease and death is only another expression of interest in life.
THOMAS MANN

Death Expression Interest Life
We don’t love qualities, we love persons; sometimes by reason of their defects as well as of their qualities.
THOMAS MANN

Love Ourselves Person Quality Reason Time
But my deepest and most secret love belongs to the fair-haired and the blue-eyed, the bright children of life, the happy, the charming and the ordinary.
THOMAS MANN

Belong Bright Charm Children Deep Love Myself Ordinary Secret

Innate in nearly every artistic nature is a wanton, treacherous penchant for accepting injustice when it creates beauty and showing sympathy for and paying homage to aristocratic privilege.

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Innate in nearly every artistic nature is a wanton, treacherous penchant for accepting injustice when it creates beauty and showing sympathy for and paying homage to aristocratic privilege.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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