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.

  77 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.

  47 Copy quote

• A harmful truth is better than a useful lie.

  Thomas Mann

  Lying, Truth Is

  39 Copy quote

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

  Thomas Mann

  Art, Spirit, Art 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

  68 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".

  47 Copy quote

• Laughter is a sunbeam of the soul.

  Thomas Mann

  Laughter, Soul, Sunbeams

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

  45 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

  13 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

  42 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

  45 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

  18 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.

  21 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”

  40 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

  23 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.

  47 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.

  6 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

  12 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)

  63 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

  56 Copy quote

• A man lives not only his personal life, as an individual, but also, consciously or unconsciously, the life of his epoch and his contemporaries.

  Thomas Mann

  Men, Consciousness, Individual

  Thomas Mann (1953). “The magic mountain: Der Zauberberg”, Vintage

  19 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

  12 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

  13 Copy quote

• Animals do not admire each other. A horse does not admire its companion.

  Thomas Mann

  Horse, Animal, Doe

  11 Copy quote

• 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

  Eye, Men, Hysteria

  38 Copy quote

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