Why does almost everything seem to me like its own parody? Why must I think that almost all, no, all the methods and conventions of art today are goo… - Thomas Mann

This longing for the bliss of the commonplace.

Whoever is unable to stand up for an ideal with his person, his arm, his blood, is unworthy of that ideal, and no matter how intellectual one may become, what matters is that one remains a man.

Even as it applies to the individual, art is a heightened mode of existence. It gives deeper pleasures, it consumes more quickly. It carves upon the faces of its votaries the marks of imaginary and spiritual adventures; and though their external existence may be as quiet as a monk’s,