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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

I don’t think anyone is thinking long-term now.
THOMAS MANN

Goal Present Thinking
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
It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death.
THOMAS MANN

Faith Love Reason Strong
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
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
He probably was mediocre after all, though in a very honorable sense of that word.
THOMAS MANN

Average Honor Word
For the sake of goodness and love, man shall let death have no sovereignty over his thoughts.
THOMAS MANN

Death Goodness Himself Love 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
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
A man’s dying is more the survivors’ affair than his own.
THOMAS MANN

Affair Death Himself Man Survive
A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
THOMAS MANN

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

Compromises Goodness Moral Opportunity Politics
Art is the funnel, as it were, through which spirit is poured into life.
THOMAS MANN

Art Life Pour Spirit
I shall need to sleep three weeks on end to get rested from the rest I’ve had.
THOMAS MANN

End Myself Need Sleep
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
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
Time cools, time clarifies; no mood can be maintained quite unaltered through the course of hours.
THOMAS MANN

Maintain Quite Time
He took in the squeaky music, the vulgar and pining melodies, because passion immobilizes good taste and seriously considers what soberly would be thought of as funny and to be resented.
THOMAS MANN

Funny Music Passion Serious Vulgar
Forbearance in the face of fate, beauty constant under torture, are not merely passive. They are a positive achievement, an explicit triumph.
THOMAS MANN

Achievement Beautiful Face Fate Positive Win
Every reasonable human being should be a moderate Socialist.
THOMAS MANN

Human Reason Social
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

Conscious Life Himself Live Man Personal
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
Distance in a straight line has no mystery. The mystery is in the sphere.
THOMAS MANN

Deep Distance Mystery Shape
War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.
THOMAS MANN

Coward Escape Peace Problem War
Everything is politics.
THOMAS MANN

One Liner Politics
Animals do not admire each other. A horse does not admire its companion.
THOMAS MANN

Admire Animal Companion

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!

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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!

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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