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 More Quotes by Thomas Mann More Quotes From Thomas Mann Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil. Thomas Mann tolerancepoliticsevil Order and simplification are the first steps toward the mastery of a subject. Thomas Mann simplicitystepsorder Stupid — well, there are so many kinds of stupidity, and cleverness is one of the worst. Thomas Mann stupiditydifferentkind A harmful truth is better than a useful lie. Thomas Mann truth-islying If the years of youth are experienced slowly, while the later years of life hurtle past at an ever-increasing speed, it must be habit that causes it. We know full well that the insertion of new habits or the changing of old ones is the only way to preserve life, to renew our sense of time, to rejuvenate, intensify, and retard our experience of time - and thereby renew our sense of life itself. That is the reason for every change of scenery and air. Thomas Mann airpastyears War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace. Thomas Mann militarywarpeace In books we never find anything but ourselves. Strangely enough, that always gives us great pleasure, and we say the author is a genius. Thomas Mann geniusgivingbook Laughter is a sunbeam of the soul. Thomas Mann sunbeamslaughtersoul A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. Thomas Mann difficultwritingpeople It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death. Thomas Mann marriagelovelife Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunder-storm 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. Thomas Mann new-yearwisdomtime Art is the funnel, as it were, through which spirit is poured into life. Thomas Mann art-isspiritart Nothing is more curious and awkward than the relationship of two people who only know each other with their eyes — who meet and observe each other daily, even hourly and who keep up the impression of disinterest either because of morals or because of a mental abnormality. Between them there is listlessness and pent-up curiosity, the hysteria of an unsatisfied, unnaturally suppressed need for communion and also a kind of tense respect. Because man loves and honors man as long as he is not able to judge him, and desire is a product of lacking knowledge. Thomas Mann hysteriaeyemen Everything is politics. Thomas Mann reality Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous - to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd. Thomas Mann oppositesbeautygiving If you are possessed by an idea, you find it expressed everywhere, you even smell it. Thomas Mann possessedsmellideas We don't love qualities, we love persons; sometimes by reason of their defects as well as of their qualities. Thomas Mann funny-marriagelovelife A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also a truth. Thomas Mann truthoppositeslying What good would politics be, if it didn’t give everyone the opportunity to make moral compromises. Thomas Mann moralopportunitygiving This was love at first sight, love everlasting: a feeling unknown, unhoped for, unexpected--in so far as it could be a matter of conscious awareness; it took entire possession of him, and he understood, with joyous amazement, that this was for life. Thomas Mann sightfeelingslove
