Thomas Mann Quotes (117 Quotes)

We do not fear being called meticulous, inclining as we do to the view that only the exhaustive can be truly interesting.

What good would politics be, if it didnÆt give everyone the opportunity to make moral compromises.

You have never spent any time in theatrical circles, have you? So you do not know those thespian faces that can embody the features of a Julius Caesar, a Goethe and a Beethoven all in one, but whose owners, the moment they open their mouths, prove to be the most miserable ninnies under the sun.

And for its part, what was life? Was it perhaps only an infectious disease of matterùjust as the so-called spontaneous generation of matter was perhaps only an illness, a cancerous stimulation of the immaterial?

And then he'd rub his cheeks with cold cream because he'd just shaved and the tears stung.

But was it not true that there were people, certain individuals, whom one found it impossible to picture dead, precisely because they were so vulgar? That was to say: they seemed so fit for life, so good at it, that they would never die, as if they were unworthy of the consecration of death.

But what would be our readersÆ reaction if we simply refused to get to the bottom of that question?

Frau St÷hr found his remarks amphibious and unfeeling.

Frau St÷hr, however, who happened to be sitting not all that far from the trio, had apparently abandoned herself to the film; her red, uneducated face was contorted with pleasure.

He probably was mediocre after all, though in a very honorable sense of that word.

He thought what a fine thing it was that people made music all over the world, even in the strangest settings û probably even on polar expeditions.

He was simply not a ôheroö, which is to say, he did not let his relationship with the man be determined by the woman.

I hope that you have nothing against malice, my good engineer. In my eyes it is the brightest sword that reason has against the powers of darkness and ugliness. Malice, sir, is the spirit of criticism, and criticism marks the origin of progress and enlightenment.

Is not the pastness of the past the more profound, the more legendary, the more immediately it falls before the present ?

It is remarkable how a man cannot summarize his thoughts in even the most general sort of way without betraying himself completely, without putting his whole self into it, quite unawares, presenting as if in allegory the basic themes and problems of his life.

It was, however, strikingùin the best sense of the wordùthat precisely those rules that corresponded exactly to their overseersÆ economic interests enjoyed unconditional veneration, whereas rules for which said correspondence was less applicable were more likely to be winked at.

I love and reverence the Word, the bearer of the spirit, the tool and gleaming ploughshare of progress.

It could become much worse. I could imagine a scenario in the next presidential election in which we would look back fondly on the experience of 1996. We really have to deal with issue with soft money and issue advocacy together.

The meeting in the open of two dogs, strangers to each other, is one of the most painful, thrilling, and pregnant of all conceivable encounters it is surrounded by an atmosphere of the last canniness, presided over by a constraint for which I have no precise name they simply cannot pass each other, their mutual embarrassment is frightful to behold.

Whether this has any long-term impact depends on whether a party or presidential candidate seizes the opportunity to elevate political reform as a campaign and governing issue.

Opinions cannot survive if one has no chance to fight for them.

Psycho-analyses, how disgusting.

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.

For the beautiful word begets the beautiful deed.

This president, in particular, tends to be very much opposed to members of his administration being forced out of office by others. In his view, it amounts to a sign of culpability on the president's part.

Her foreign policy influence in 2005 was very impressive and constructive, in contrast to her time as National Security Council adviser her role in the first term of the Bush administration. She has charisma - that rock star appearance at the football game in Alabama was really something. Whether that makes her a viable candidate for the presidency is another matter entirely.

Every reasonable human being should be a moderate Socialist.

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

Middle and working-class families continue to struggle with stagnant wages, high gas, health care and college expenses and bleaker prospects for good jobs.

An art whose medium is language will always show a high degree of critical creativeness, for speech is itself a critique of life it names, it characterizes, it passes judgment, in that it creates.

I expect him to settle comfortably on the right of the court and write careful and intelligent decisions that support his longstanding ideological views and values.

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

Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous - to poetry. But it also gives birth to the opposite to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd.

I tell them that if they will occupy themselves with the study of mathematics they will find in it the best remedy against the lusts of the flesh.

The writer's joy is the thought that can become emotion, the emotion that can wholly become a thought.

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

Some of the men stood talking in this room, and at the right of the door a little knot had formed round a small table, the center of which was the mathematics student, who ws eagerly talking. He had made the assertion that one could draw through a given point more than one parallel to a straight line Frau Hagenstrom had cried out that this was impossible, and he had gone on to prove it so conclusively that his hearers were constrained to behave as though they understood.

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

For the sake of goodness and love, Man shall let Death have No sovereignty over his thoughts.

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

Democracy is timelessly human, and timelessness always implies a certain amount of potential youthfulness.

Disease makes men more physical, it leaves them nothing but body.

Speech is civilization itself. The word, even the most contradictions word, preserves contact it is silence which isolates.

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

The only religious way to think of death is as part and parcel of life.

I think Governor Bush can feel very confident that Cheney will not be a negative and will be a marvelous positive, ... if he is fortunate enough to be elected to the White House.

In the old days, the committee raised small amounts of money, doled it out to people who didn't need it and sat back and waited to see who would win.

You ask what is the use of classification, arrangement, systemization I answer you order and simplification are the first steps toward the mastery of a subject-the actual enemy is the unknown.

What is uttered is finished and done with.

This is a choice that makes overwhelming sense.