Quote

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.

Thomas Mann

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Thomas Mann
Age: 80 †
Born: 1875
Born: June 6
Died: 1955
Died: August 12
Autobiographer
Diarist
Essayist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Short Story Writer
Social Critic
University Teacher
Writer
Hanseatic City of Lübeck
Perreo
Life
Cannot
Basic
Unawares
Problem
Putting
Betraying
Without
General
Allegory
Self
Completely
Themes
Whole
Thoughts
Presenting
Even
Problems
Betray
Way
Sort
Theme
Men
Quite
Remarkable
Summarize

More quotes by Thomas Mann

Image
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
Image
A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also a truth.
Thomas Mann
Image
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.
Thomas Mann
Image
War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.
Thomas Mann
Image
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
Image
For the sake of goodness and love, man shall let death have no sovereignty over his thoughts.
Thomas Mann
Image
I shall need to sleep three weeks on end to get rested from the rest I've had.
Thomas Mann
Image
(T)here was a story they used to tell at home about a girl whose punishment was that every time she opened her mouth, snakes and toads came out, snakes and toads with every word. The book didn't say what she did about it, but I've always assumed she probably ended up keeping her mouth shut.
Thomas Mann
Image
And then the sly arch-lover that he was, he said the subtlest thing of all: that the lover was nearer the divine than the beloved for the god was in the one but not in the other - perhaps the tenderest, most mocking thought that ever was thought, and source of all the guile and secret bliss the lover knows.
Thomas Mann
Image
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.
Thomas Mann
Image
I don't think anyone is thinking long-term now.
Thomas Mann
Image
…What our age needs, what it demands, what it will create for itself, is—terror.
Thomas Mann
Image
Distance in a straight line has no mystery. The mystery is in the sphere.
Thomas Mann
Image
A man lives not only his personal life, as an individual, but also, consciously or unconsciously, the life of his epoch and his contemporaries.
Thomas Mann
Image
One must die to life in order to be utterly a creator.
Thomas Mann
Image
He who loves the more is the inferior and must suffer.
Thomas Mann
Image
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
Image
Has the world ever been changed by anything save the thought and its magic vehicle the Word?
Thomas Mann
Image
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
Image
There is only one real misfortune: to forfeit one's own good opinion of oneself. Lose your complacency, once betray your own self-contempt and the world will unhesitatingly endorse it.
Thomas Mann