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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

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

Admire Animal Companion
Yes, they are carnal, both of them, love and death, and therein lies their terror and their great magic!
THOMAS MANN

Death Greatness Love Magic
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
I shall need to sleep three weeks on end to get rested from the rest I’ve had.
THOMAS MANN

End Myself Need Sleep
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
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
Stupid – well, there are so many kinds of stupidity, and cleverness is one of the worst.
THOMAS MANN

Clever Kind Smart Stupidity Worst
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
What our age needs, what it demands, what it will create for itself, is—terror.
THOMAS MANN

Age Creation Demand Terror
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
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
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
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
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
No man remains quite what he was when he recognizes himself.
THOMAS MANN

Himself Man Quite Recognition

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

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

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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