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Thomas Mann Biography

Paul Thomas Mann (German: [paʊ̯l toːmas man]; 6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas are noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual. His analysis and critique of the European and German soul used modernized German and Biblical stories, as well as the ideas of Goethe, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer.

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Thomas Mann Quotes

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.

Flesh, Lust, Math, Remedy, Study, Tell

What good would politics be, if it didn’t give everyone the opportunity to make moral compromises.

Give, Giving, Good, Make, Moral, Opportunity

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.

Men, Problems, Remarkable, Self, Summarize, Way

Thought that can merge wholly into feeling, feeling that can merge wholly into thought - these are the artist's highest joy.

Artist, Feelings, Highest, Joy, Thought, Wholly

I stand between two worlds. I am at home in neither, and I suffer in consequence. You artists call me a bourgeois, and the bourgeois try to arrest me. . . I don't know which makes me feel worse.

Artist, Artists, Call, Home, Two

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.

Beauty, Opposites, Giving, Perverse, Birth, Opposite

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

Views, Interesting, Meticulous, View, Fear

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.

Endurance, Fatality, Positive, Simple, Triumph

A man's dying is more his survivor's affair than his own.

Affair, Death, Dying, Love, Men

Even in a personal sense, after all, art is an intensified life. By art one is more deeply satisfied and more rapidly used up. It engraves on the countenance of its servant the traces of imaginary and intellectual adventures, and even if he has outwardly existed in cloistral tranquility, it leads in the long term to overfastidiousness, over-refinement, nervous fatigue and overstimulation, such as can seldom result from a life of the most extravagant passions and pleasures.

Adventure, Adventures, Art, Overstimulation, Passion, Used

Nothing is stranger or more ticklish than a relationship between people who know each other only by sight, who meet and observe each other daily - no hourly - and are nevertheless compelled to keep up the pose of an indifferent stranger, neither greeting nor addressing each other, whether out of etiquette or their own whim.

People, Pose, Sight, Ticklish

Distance in a straight line has no mystery. The mystery is in the sphere.

Distance, Lines, Mystery, Spheres, Straight

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

Horse, Animal, Doe, Animals, Admire, Companion

Forbearance in the face of fate, beauty constant under torture, are not merely passive. They are a positive achievement, an explicit triumph.

Achievement, Beauty, Explicit, Fate, Triumph, Under

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

Inferior, Inferiors, Loves, Suffer, Suffering

A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.

Writing, People, Difficult, Somebody, Writer

Every reasonable human being should be a moderate Socialist.

Humans, Moderate, Reasonable, Should, Socialist

The books and magazines streamed in. He could buy them all, they piled up around him and even while he read, the number of those still to be read disturbed him. … they stood in rows, weighing down his life like a possession which he did not succeed in subordinating to his personality.

Book, Numbers, Personality, Disturbed, Like, Succeed

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.

Eye, Hourly, Knowledge, Men, Relationship, Two

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.

Artistic, Beauty, Injustice, Privilege, Showing, Wanton

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