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We don’t love qualities, we love persons; sometimes by reason of their defects as well as of their qualities.

Thomas Mann

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
I never can understand how anyone can not smoke it deprives a man of the best part of life. With a good cigar in his mouth a man is perfectly safe, nothing can touch him, literally.
THOMAS MANN

Deprive Himself Man Safety Smoke Touch Understand
Order and simplification are the first steps toward the mastery of a subject.
THOMAS MANN

Order Simplify Subject
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 shall need to sleep three weeks on end to get rested from the rest I’ve had.
THOMAS MANN

End Myself Need Sleep
Everything is politics.
THOMAS MANN

One Liner Politics
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
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
For the sake of goodness and love, man shall let death have no sovereignty over his thoughts.
THOMAS MANN

Death Goodness Himself Love Thinking
One has the idea of a stupid man as perfectly healthy and ordinary, and of illness as making one refined and clever and unusual.
THOMAS MANN

Clever Health Ideas Man Perfection Refine Unusual
He who loves the more is the inferior and must suffer.
THOMAS MANN

Himself Inferior Love Suffering
A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
THOMAS MANN

Difficult People Writing
Only love, and not reason, yields kind thoughts.
THOMAS MANN

Kind Love Reason Thinking
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
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
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

Acceptance Artist Injustice Nature Privilege

We don’t love qualities, we love persons; sometimes by reason of their defects as well as of their qualities.

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We don’t love qualities, we love persons; sometimes by reason of their defects as well as of their qualities.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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