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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

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

Death Goodness Himself Love 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
Animals do not admire each other. A horse does not admire its companion.
THOMAS MANN

Admire Animal Companion
He probably was mediocre after all, though in a very honorable sense of that word.
THOMAS MANN

Average Honor Word
All interest in disease and death is only another expression of interest in life.
THOMAS MANN

Death Expression Interest Life
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
War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.
THOMAS MANN

Coward Escape Peace Problem War
Distance in a straight line has no mystery. The mystery is in the sphere.
THOMAS MANN

Deep Distance Mystery Shape
Speech is civilization itself.
THOMAS MANN

Civilization One Liner Speech
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
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
Stupid – well, there are so many kinds of stupidity, and cleverness is one of the worst.
THOMAS MANN

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

Age Creation Demand Terror
Only love, and not reason, yields kind thoughts.
THOMAS MANN

Kind Love Reason Thinking
One must die to life in order to be utterly a creator.
THOMAS MANN

Creation Death Life Oneself
It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death.
THOMAS MANN

Faith Love Reason Strong
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
Time cools, time clarifies; no mood can be maintained quite unaltered through the course of hours.
THOMAS MANN

Maintain Quite Time
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
A harmful truth is better than a useful lie.
THOMAS MANN

Better Harm Lying Truth
He who loves the more is the inferior and must suffer.
THOMAS MANN

Himself Inferior Love Suffering
No man remains quite what he was when he recognizes himself.
THOMAS MANN

Himself Man Quite Recognition
We do not fear being called meticulous, inclining as we do to the view that only the exhaustive can be truly interesting.
THOMAS MANN

Fear Interest Ourselves Sight View
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
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
Order and simplification are the first steps toward the mastery of a subject.
THOMAS MANN

Order Simplify Subject
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

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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