It is not good when people no longer believe in war. Pretty soon they no longer believe in many other things which they absolutely must believe in if… - Thomas Mann

The experience of death must ultimately be the experience of life, or else it is only a wraith.

"But admiration and sadness, admiration and worry, is not that almost a definition of love?"
"There are people with whom it is not easy to live, but whom it is impossible to leave."

I stand between two worlds, am at home in neither, and in consequence have rather a hard time of it. You artists call me a commoner, and commoners feel tempted to arrest me ... I do not know which wounds me more bitterly. Commoners are stupid; but you worshippers of beauty who call me phlegmatic and without yearning, ought to reflect that there is an artistry so deep, so primordial and elemental, that no yearning seems to it sweeter and more worthy of tasting than that for the raptures of common-placeness.