Thomas Mann Quotes

Quotes about:

• Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil.

  Thomas Mann

  Evil, Tolerance, Politics

  Thomas Mann (1995). “The magic mountain: a novel”, Random House, Inc.

  75 Copy quote

• War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.

  Thomas Mann

  Peace, War, Military

  "This I Believe" with Edward R. Murrow, 1951.

  44 Copy quote

• Stupid — well, there are so many kinds of stupidity, and cleverness is one of the worst.

  Thomas Mann

  Stupidity, Different, Kind

  "The Magic Mountain".

  45 Copy quote

• A harmful truth is better than a useful lie.

  Thomas Mann

  Lying, Truth Is

  38 Copy quote

• Order and simplification are the first steps toward the mastery of a subject.

  Thomas Mann

  Order, Simplicity, Steps

  Thomas Mann (1969). “The Magic Mountain”, Vintage

  66 Copy quote

• Laughter is a sunbeam of the soul.

  Thomas Mann

  Laughter, Soul, Sunbeams

  Thomas Mann (1970). “Stories of a lifetime”

  42 Copy quote

• 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

  Book, Giving, Genius

  41 Copy quote

• 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

  Past, Air, Years

  43 Copy quote

• Art is the funnel, as it were, through which spirit is poured into life.

  Thomas Mann

  Art, Spirit, Art Is

  36 Copy quote

• People's behavior makes sense if you think about it in terms of their goals, needs, and motives.

  Thomas Mann

  Inspirational, Education, Thinking

  16 Copy quote

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

  Thomas Mann

  Truth, Lying, Opposites

  "Essay on Freud". May 16, 1929.

  20 Copy quote

• We don't love qualities, we love persons; sometimes by reason of their defects as well as of their qualities.

  Thomas Mann

  Love, Life, Funny Marriage

  20 Copy quote

• It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death.

  Thomas Mann

  Love, Life, Marriage

  Halldór Laxness, Maurice Maeterlinck, Thomas Mann (1971). “Halldór Laxness, Maurice Maeterlinck [and] Thomas Mann”

  39 Copy quote

• If you are possessed by an idea, you find it expressed everywhere, you even smell it.

  Thomas Mann

  Ideas, Smell, Possessed

  Thomas Mann (2010). “Death in Venice: And Seven Other Stories”, p.95, Vintage

  11 Copy quote

• Only love, and not reason, yields kind thoughts.

  Thomas Mann

  Yield, Kind Thoughts, Reason

  Thomas Mann (1995). “The magic mountain: a novel”, Random House, Inc.

  5 Copy quote

• Every reasonable human being should be a moderate Socialist.

  Thomas Mann

  Should, Socialist, Humans

  "Thomas Mann: A Critical Study". Book by R. J. Hollingdale. Chapter 2, 1971.

  8 Copy quote

• A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.

  Thomas Mann

  Writing, People, Difficult

  "Essays of Three Decades". Book by Thomas Mann, 1942.

  46 Copy quote

• 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

  Wisdom, New Year, Time

  'The Magic Mountain' (1924) ch. 4, sect. 4 (translation by H. T. Lowe-Porter)

  61 Copy quote

• He who loves the more is the inferior and must suffer.

  Thomas Mann

  Suffering, Inferiors

  Thomas Mann (2010). “Death in Venice: And Seven Other Stories”, p.77, Vintage

  11 Copy quote

• 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

  Beauty, Opposites, Giving

  Thomas Mann (2010). “Death in Venice: And Seven Other Stories”, p.24, Vintage

  54 Copy quote

• Distance in a straight line has no mystery. The mystery is in the sphere.

  Thomas Mann

  Distance, Lines, Spheres

  Thomas Mann (1934). “Joseph and His Brothers”, New York : A.A. Knopf

  11 Copy quote

• There is only one real misfortune: to forfeit one's own good opinion of oneself. Lose your complacency, once betray your own self-contempt and the world will unhesitatingly endorse it.

  Thomas Mann

  Respect, Real, Self

  12 Copy quote

• No man remains quite what he was when he recognizes himself.

  Thomas Mann

  Men, Discovery, Political

  7 Copy quote

• What a wonderful phenomenon it is, carefully considered, when the human eye, that jewel of organic structures, concentrates its moist brilliance on another human creature!

  Thomas Mann

  Eye, Jewels, Wonderful

  Thomas Mann (1992). “Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man: The Early Years”, Vintage

  15 Copy quote

• For to be poised against fatality, to meet adverse conditions gracefully, is more than simple endurance; it is an act of aggression, a positive triumph.

  Thomas Mann

  Positive, Simple, Endurance

  Thomas Mann (1965). “Death in Venice”

  19 Copy quote

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