Thomas Mann Quotes

“Space, like time, gives birth to forgetfulness, but does so by removing an individual from all relationships and placing him in a free and pristine state--indeed, in but a moment it can turn a pedant and philistine into something like a vagabond. Time, they say, is water from the river Lethe, but alien air is a similar drink; and if its effects are less profound, it works all the more quickly.”
― Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

“Many things in this period have been hard to bear, or hard to take seriously. My own profession went into a protracted swoon during the Reagan-Bush-Thatcher decade, and shows scant sign of recovering a critical faculty—or indeed any faculty whatever, unless it is one of induced enthusiasm for a plausible consensus President. (We shall see whether it counts as progress for the same parrots to learn a new word.) And my own cohort, the left, shared in the general dispiriting move towards apolitical, atonal postmodernism. Regarding something magnificent, like the long-overdue and still endangered South African revolution (a jagged fit in the supposedly smooth pattern of axiomatic progress), one could see that Ariadne’s thread had a robust reddish tinge, and that potential citizens had not all deconstructed themselves into Xhosa, Zulu, Cape Coloured or ‘Eurocentric’; had in other words resisted the sectarian lesson that the masters of apartheid tried to teach them. Elsewhere, though, it seemed all at once as if competitive solipsism was the signifier of the ‘radical’; a stress on the salience not even of the individual, but of the trait, and from that atomization into the lump of the category. Surely one thing to be learned from the lapsed totalitarian system was the unwholesome relationship between the cult of the masses and the adoration of the supreme personality. Yet introspective voyaging seemed to coexist with dull group-think wherever one peered about among the formerly ‘committed’.

Traditionally then, or tediously as some will think, I saw no reason to discard the Orwellian standard in considering modern literature. While a sort of etiolation, tricked out as playfulness, had its way among the non-judgemental, much good work was still done by those who weighed words as if they meant what they said. Some authors, indeed, stood by their works as if they had composed them in solitude and out of conviction. Of these, an encouraging number spoke for the ironic against the literal mind; for the generously interpreted interest of all against the renewal of what Orwell termed the ‘smelly little orthodoxies’—tribe and Faith, monotheist and polytheist, being most conspicuous among these new/old disfigurements. In the course of making a film about the decaffeinated hedonism of modern Los Angeles, I visited the house where Thomas Mann, in another time of torment, wrote Dr Faustus. My German friends were filling the streets of Munich and Berlin to combat the recrudescence of the same old shit as I read:

This old, folkish layer survives in us all, and to speak as I really think, I do. not consider religion the most adequate means of keeping it under lock and key. For that, literature alone avails, humanistic science, the ideal of the free and beautiful human being. [italics mine]

The path to this concept of enlightenment is not to be found in the pursuit of self-pity, or of self-love. Of course to be merely a political animal is to miss Mann’s point; while, as ever, to be an apolitical animal is to leave fellow-citizens at the mercy of Ideolo’. For the sake of argument, then, one must never let a euphemism or a false consolation pass uncontested. The truth seldom lies, but when it does lie it lies somewhere in between.”
― Christopher Hitchens, For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports

“Denn der Mensch liebt und ehrt den Menschen , solange er ihn nicht zu beurteilen vermag, und die Sehnsucht ist ein Erzeunis mangelhafter Erkenntnis.”
― Thomas Mann, Death in Venice

“...for example, if Freud is wrong, as i and many others believe, where does that leave any number of novels and virtually the entire corpus of surrealism, Dada, and certain major forms of expressionism and abstraction, not to mention Richard Strauss' 'Freudian' operas such as Salome and Elektra, and the iconic novels of numerous writers such as D.H. Lawrence, Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann and Virginia Woolf? It doesn't render these works less beautiful or pleasurable, necessarily, but it surely dilutes their meaning. They don't owe their entire existence to psychoanalysis. But if they are robbed of a large part of their meaning, can they retain their intellectual importance and validity? Or do they become period pieces? I stress the point because the novels, paintings and operas referred to above have helped to popularise and legitimise a certain view of human nature, one that is, all evidence to the contrary lacking, wrong.”
― Peter Watson, A Terrible Beauty : The People and Ideas That Shaped the Modern Mind - A History

“ჩვენ ჩვეულებრივ ამბებს აღვწერთ, მაგრამ ჩვეულებრივი ამბავი არაჩვეულებრივი ხდება, როცა იგი არაჩვეულებრივი მიზეზებითაა გამოწვეული.”
― Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

“İblis: "Müzik her ne kadar Hristiyanlık tarafından kullanılıp geliştirilse de, aynı zamanda reddedildi ve şeytani bir alan olarak dışlandı-işte görüyorsun. Müzik fevkalade teolojik bir mesele; tıpkı günah gibi, benim gibi...”
― Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus

“Een schrijver is een persoon voor wie schrijven moeilijker is dan voor andere mensen.”
― Thomas Mann

“Parfümierte, wortreiche, handlungsarme Ideenromane, die deshalb von den Deutschen geliebt werden, weil dieser Mann [Thomas Mann] genauso ein Heuchler war wie sie selbst.”
― Maxim Biller

“ბედნიერება იმაში კი არ არის, რომ უყვარდეთ; ეს გაძლევს მხოლოდ კმაყოფილების გრძნობას. იყო ბედნიერი - ნიშნავს გიყვარდეს, დაიჭირო წარმავალი, შესაძლოა მაცდური წამიერი გაელვებები, შენი სიყვარულის ობიექტის სიახლოვეს”
― Thomas Mann, Tonio Kröger

“En faisant de la personnalité un mystère, vous courez le risque d'incliner à l'idolâtrie. Vous vénérez un masque. Vous voyez une mystique où il n'y a que mystification.”
― Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

“Aschenbach noticed with astonishment the lad's perfect beauty. His faced recalled the noblest moment of Greek sculpture—pale, with a sweet reserve, with clustering honey-coloured ringlets, the brow and nose descending in one line, the winning mouth, the expression of pure and godlike serenity. Yet with all this chaste perfection of form it was of such unique personal charm that the observer though he had never seen, either in nature or art, anything so utterly happy and consummate.”
― Thomas Mann, Death in Venice and Other Stories

“Sun and sea air could not burn his skin, it was the same creamy marble hue as at first—though he did look a little pale, either from the cold or in the bluish moonlight of the arc-lamps. The shapely brows were so delicately drawn, the eyes so deeply dark—lovelier he was than words could say, and as often the thought visited Aschenbach, and brought its own pang, that language could but extol, not reproduce, the beauties of the sense.”
― Thomas Mann, Death in Venice and Other Stories

“The sight of that dear form was unexpected, it had appeared unhoped-for, without giving him time to compose his features. Joy, surprise, and admiration might have painted themselves quite openly upon his face - and just at this second it happened that Tadzio smiled. Smiled at Aschenbach, unabashed and friendly, a speaking, winning, captivating smile, with slowly parting lips. With such a smile it might be that Narcissus bent over the mirroring pool, a smile profound, infatuated, lingering, as he put out his arms to the reflection of his own beauty; the lips just slightly pursed, perhaps half-realizing his own folly in trying to kiss the cold lips of his shadow—with a mingling of coquetry and curiosity and a faint unease, enthralling and enthralled.”
― Thomas Mann, Death in Venice and Other Stories

“No use appealing to justice either human or divine.
I suppose they knew no other god than that terrible little Corsicsan.”
― Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family

“Cling to everything which to you is by nature and tradition holy as a son of the god like west.”
― Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

“A hell hound is coming. Howling. A huge explosive shell. A disgusting sugarloaf from the infernal regions.”
― Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

“(...) sapere che coloro ai quali tu aneli, vi resistono con severa inaccessibilità, fa molto male.”
― Thomas Mann, Death in Venice and Other Tales

“მოძრაობა, რომელიც დღეს ცნობილია როგორც ნაციონალ-სოციალიზმი და რომელმაც დაამტკიცა თავისი დიდი მიმზიდველი ძალა, შერწყმულია ექსცენტრიული ბარბაროსობის და პრიმიტიულად დემოკრატიული ბაზრული უხეშობის ძლიერ ტალღასთან, რამაც წალეკა მთელი სამყარო”
― Thomas Mann

“ტოლსტოი იასნაია პოლიანადან სიკვდილს გაექცა, რადგან იგრძნო, რომ მიქელ გაბრიელმა მოაკითხაო. გაექცა, მაგრამ მას სიკვდილი გზაში, რკინიგზის ერთ პატარა სადგურში მაინც დაეწია.”
― Thomas Mann

“De même qu'un aliment non digéré ne fortifie pas un homme, de même le temps que l'on a passé à attendre ne le vieillit pas.”
― Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

“Je crois que l'humanité commence là où les gens sans génie figurent qu'elle s'arrête.”
― Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

“a pair of young dandies who were nicknamed Max and Moritz bore a great reputation for breaking out of bounds.”
― Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

“Ik wil alleen een hand
om mij aan vast te houden. Geen waarheid,
maar een goed verhaal, wat woorden om
het duister door te komen.

(Schwarzenbach revisited)”
― Johanna Pas

“Thomas Mann - Der Zauberberg. A moment in Time, I was a bit nervous, to pay him all the respect, he deserves according to my deepest opinion.”
― Petra Hermans

“Zweig, who had made frequent journeys around Italy before World War l, was delighted to discover that "the Germans, formerly the largest contingent of travelers, are reduced to a modest number, among whom only the 'Thomas Mann German, the quiet, cultivated one' is to be found.”
― Sabine Arque, The Grand Tour: The Golden Age of Travel

“In the face, the human race was seen.”
― Petra Hermans, Voor een betere wereld

“THOMAS MANN. Un humanista és tot el contrari d’un esteta: no és l’home que toca el violí —o l’instrument que siga— mentre Roma està cremant-se. Ell és el primer a lluitar contra els piròmans.”
― Joan Fuster, Aforismes

“»So yes, Mann, Proust, and Joyce showed that the universal gesture was possible, though the nature of the gesture in their work remains deeply ambiguous. The books are crammed with real life, but they are also dream books, fantasies. They explore a range of ways of explaining the world and then retract them. They offer paths to freedom but are almost hermetically sealed; they speak for everyone, yet they are self-absorbed; they are new but also oddly archaic; they contain the whole of reality but are wholly devoted to art.«

– Edwin Frank: Stranger than Fiction : Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel. - London : Fern Press, 2024. - Page 186”
― Edwin Frank, Stranger Than Fiction