For the myth is the foundation of life; it is the timeless schema, the pious formula into which life flows when it reproduces its traits out of the unconscious. Thomas Mann More Quotes by Thomas Mann More Quotes From Thomas Mann What pleases the public is lively and vivid delineation which makes no demands on the intellect; but passionate and absolutist youth can only be enthralled by a problem. Thomas Mann vivid demand passionate 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 horizon eye sea I don't think anyone is thinking long-term now. Thomas Mann term long thinking To allow only the kind of art that the average man understands is the worst small-mindedness and the murder of mind and spirit. It is my conviction that the intellect can be certain that in doing what most disconcerts the crowd, in pursuing the most daring, unconventional advances and explorations, it will in some highly indirect fashion serve man - and in the long run, all men. Thomas Mann fashion running art 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 secret-love blue children The observations and encounters of a solitary, taciturn man are vaguer and at the same times more intense than those of a sociable man; his thoughts are deeper, odder and never without a touch of sadness. Images and perceptions that could be dismissed with a glance, a laugh, an exchange of opinions, occupy him unduly, become more intense in the silence, become significant, become an experience, an adventure, an emotion. Solitude produces originality, bold and astonishing beauty, poetry. But solitude also produces perverseness, the disproportionate, the absurd and the forbidden. Thomas Mann sadness adventure men A man’s dying is more the survivors’ affair than his own. Thomas Mann love men death The accouterments of life were so rich and varied, so elaborated, that almost no place at all was left for life itself. Each and every accessory was so costly and beautiful that it had an existence above and beyond the purpose it was meant to serve – confusing the observer and absorbing attention. Thomas Mann accessories confusing beautiful I stand between two worlds. I am at home in neither, and I suffer in consequence. You artists call me a bourgeois, and the bourgeois try to arrest me...I don't know which makes me feel worse. Thomas Mann artist home two All interest in disease and death is only another expression of interest in life. Thomas Mann interest-in-life disease-and-death expression Distance in a straight line has no mystery. The mystery is in the sphere. Thomas Mann spheres distance lines 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 safe mouths men Innate in nearly every artistic nature is a wanton, treacherous penchant for accepting injustice when it creates beauty and showing sympathy for and paying homage to aristocratic privilege. Thomas Mann artistic injustice privilege One must die to life in order to be utterly a creator. Thomas Mann creator dies order It is most certainly a good thing that the world knows only the beautiful opus but not its origins, not the conditions of its creation; for if people knew the sources of the artist's inspiration, that knowledge would often confuse them, alarm them, and thereby destroy the effects of excellence. strange hours! strangely enervating labor! bizarrely fertile intercourse of the mind with a body! Thomas Mann artist inspiration beautiful Forbearance in the face of fate, beauty constant under torture, are not merely passive. They are a positive achievement, an explicit triumph. Thomas Mann triumph fate achievement He probably was mediocre after all, though in a very honorable sense of that word. Thomas Mann honorable mediocrity mediocre Only love, and not reason, yields kind thoughts. Thomas Mann kind-thoughts yield reason Speech is civilization itself. Thomas Mann speech civilization 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 intense talking men
