Thomas Mann Quotes

This fantastic state of mind, of a humanity that has outrun its ideas, is matched by a political scene in the grotesque style, with Salvation Army methods, hallelujahs and bell-ringing and dervishlike repetition of monotonous catchwords, until everybody foams at the mouth. Fanaticism turns into a means of salvation, enthusiasm into epileptic ecstasy, politics becomes an opiate for the masses, a proletarian eschatology; and reason veils her face.

Hans Castorp loved music from his heart; it worked upon him much the same way as did his breakfast porter, with deeply soothing, narcotic effect, tempting him to doze.

Ako vam je suviše stalo do onoga što imate kazati, ako vam je ono suviše priraslo srcu, možete biti sigurni, da ćete doživeti potpuni neuspeh. Postat ćete patetični, postati ćete sentimentalni, pod vašim rukama nastaće nešto nezgrapno, nespretno, neozbiljno, neobuzdano, bez ironije, neslano, dosadno, banalno a kraj priče biće: samo ravnodušnost u ljudi, samo razočaranje i jad u vama.
Jer tako vam je to , Lizaveto: Osećaj, topli, srdačni osećaj uvek je banalan i neupotrebljiv a umetnička je samo razdraženost i hladna ekstaza našeg pokvarenog, našeg artističkog živčanog sistema

A harmful truth is better than a useful lie.

Here and there, among a thousand other peddlers, are slyly hissing dealers who urge you to come along with them to allegedly "very beautiful" girls, and not only to girls. They keep at it, walk alongside, praising their wares until you answer roughly. They don't know that you have resolved to eat nothing but rice just to escape from sexuality!

I hope that you have nothing against malice, my good engineer. In my eyes it is the brightest sword that reason has against the powers of darkness and ugliness. Malice, sir, is the spirit of criticism, and criticism marks the origin of progress and enlightenment.

Only indifference is free. What is distinctive is never free, it is stamped with its own seal, conditioned and chained.

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.

What we call National-Socialism is the poisonous perversion of ideas which have a long history in German intellectual life.

And then the sly arch-lover that he was, he said the subtlest thing of all: that the lover was nearer the divine than the beloved; for the god was in the one but not in the other - perhaps the tenderest, most mocking thought that ever was thought, and source of all the guile and secret bliss the lover knows.

Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunderstorm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols.

It was young Schneermann, Anton Schneermann, who sat at Mademoiselle Kleefeld’s table. You see, his place is empty. It will soon be filled up again, I am not worried about that — but Anton is off, on the wings of the wind, in the twinkling of an eye, rapt away before he knew where he was. Sixteen years old, and had been up here a year and a half, with six months to go. But how did it happen? Who knows? Perhaps somebody dropped a little word to Madame his mother; anyhow, she got wind of his goings-on, in Baccho et ceteris. She appears unannounced on the scene, some three heads taller than I am, white-haired and exceeding wroth; fetches Herr Anton a couple of boxes on the ear, takes him by the collar, and puts him on the train. ‘If he is going to the dogs,’ she says, ‘he can do it just as well down below.’ And off they go.

I love and reverence the Word, the bearer of the spirit, the tool and gleaming ploughshare of progress.

...when life still hesitates to touch us, when neither duty nor guilt dares lay a hand upon us

A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also a truth.