This was Venice, the flattering and suspect beauty – this city, half fairy tale and half tourist trap, in whose insalubrious air the arts once rankly and voluptuously blossomed, where composers have been inspired to lulling tones of somniferous eroticism. Thomas Mann
War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace. Thomas Mann
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. Thomas Mann
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
Order and simplification are the first steps toward mastery of a subject – the actual enemy is the unknown. Thomas Mann
Paradox is the poisonous flower of quietism, the iridescent surface of the rotting mind, the greatest depravity of all. Thomas Mann
I have always been an admirer, I regard the gift of admiration to be indispensable if one is to amount to something; I don’t know where I would be without it. Thomas Mann