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
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
There is something suspicious about music, gentlemen. I insist that she is, by her nature, equivocal. I shall not be going too far in saying at once that she is politically suspect. Thomas Mann
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. Thomas Mann
The Freudian theory is one of the most important foundation stones for an edifice to be built by future generations, the dwelling of a freer and wiser humanity. Thomas Mann
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
Respectable means rich, and decent means poor. I should die if I heard my family called decent. Thomas Mann
I love and reverence the Word, the bearer of the spirit, the tool and gleaming ploughshare of progress. Thomas Mann
The writer's joy is the thought that can become emotion, the emotion that can wholly become a thought. Thomas Mann
One has the idea of a stupid man as perfectly healthy and ordinary, and of illness as making one refined and clever and unusual. Thomas Mann
Democracy is timelessly human, and timelessness always implies a certain amount of potential youthfulness. Thomas Mann