Thomas Mann

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

— Thomas Mann

#music

Wahrscheinlich kann man vom Nichtwollen seelisch nicht leben; eine Sache nicht tun wollen, das ist auf Dauer kein Lebensinhalt. ↗

— Thomas Mann

#meaning-of-life #negativity #refusal #resistance #life

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

#intellect

He took in the squeaky music, the vulgar and pining melodies, because passion immobilizes good taste and seriously considers what soberly would be thought of as funny and to be resented. ↗

— Thomas Mann

#life #love #romance #death

Innate in nearly every artistic nature is a wanton, treacherous penchant for accepting injustice when it creates beauty and showing sympathy for and paying homage to aristocratic privilege. ↗

— Thomas Mann

#beauty #bias #bourgeois #capitalism #creativity

Is not life in itself a thing of goodness, irrespective of whether the course it takes for us can be called a 'happy' one? ↗

— Thomas Mann

#life

Passion-means to live for life's sake but I am well aware you Germans live for the sake of experience. Passion means to forget ones self. But you do things in order to enrich yourselves. ↗

— Thomas Mann

#the-magic-mountain #experience

Denn der Mensch liebt und ehrt den Menschen , solange er ihn nicht zu beurteilen vermag, und die Sehnsucht ist ein Erzeunis mangelhafter Erkenntnis. ↗

— Thomas Mann

#thomas-mann #tod-in-venedig #death

.. that language could but extol, not reproduce, the beauties of the sense. ↗

— Thomas Mann

#beauty

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

— Thomas Mann

#loves #more #must #suffer #who