Thomas Mann citáty

page 3

„Spisovateľ je človek, pre ktorého je písanie zložitejšie ako pre iných ľudí.“

„Samota v nás vyvoláva originalitu, krásu neznámu a nebezpečnú - poéziu. Ale tiež v nás môže vyvolať ten pravý opak - zvrátenosť, nezákonnosť, absurdnosť.“

„Život nie je prostriedkom na dosiahnutie estetického ideálu dokonalosti, naopak, práca je etickým symbolom života.“

„Každý okamih je posvätný. Dajte každému okamihu jasnosť a zmysel, každému váhu svojho vedomia, každému jeho pravé a náležité naplnenie.“

„Každý rozumný človek by mal byť umierneným socialistom.“

„Je to láska, nie rozum, ktorá je silnejšia ako smrť.“

„Kto vie, aká cenná je láska? Iba ten, kto ľúbi, no koho neľúbia.“

„Pre hlúpe ženy máme galantnosť, ale čo si počať s múdrymi?“

„Pre hlúpe ženy sú na svete šperky, čo však môžeme ponúknuť tým šikovným?“

„Vojna je iba zbabelý útek od problémov v mieri.“

„Kto nepozná minulosť, nepochopí budúcnosť.“

„Človek má iba jeden život a žiaľ, často ani ten nepatrí jemu.“

„Ktorý mladý muž, ktorému sa oddá milenka, to nepovažuje za totožné s povýšením na pána sveta?“

„Myšlienky nemožno prežiť, ak človek zaň nemôže bojovať.“

„Zbožnosť je druhom múdrosti, je to Božia múdrosť.“

„Kto ti hovorí o chybách druhých bude aj druhým rozprávať aj o tvojich chybách.“

„Ľudia, ktorí príliš žijú, netvoria.“

„Omyl je o to nebezpečnejší, o čo viac pravdy obsahuje.“

„Pochvala je hrozne odporná strava. Chutná síce dobre, ale človek sa jej veľmi rýchlo preje.“

„Pravda, ktorá bolí, je mnohokrát lepšia ako lož.“

„Dobre písať bolo takmer to isté ako dobre myslieť a dobre myslieť bolo skoro to isté ako dobre konať.“

“Absolutely everything beloved and cherished of the bourgeoisie, the conservative, the cowardly, and the impotent — the State, family life, secular art and science — was consciously or unconsciously hostile to the religious idea, to the Church, whose innate tendency and permanent aim was the dissolution of all existing worldly orders, and the reconstitution of society after the model of the ideal, the communistic City of God.”

“The only religious way to think of death is as part and parcel of life; to regard it, with the understanding and the emotions, as the the inviolable condition of life.”

“What was it that drove these thousands into the arms of his art — what but the blissfully sensuous, searing, sense-consuming, intoxicating, hypnotically caressing, heavily upholstered — in a word, the luxurious quality of his music?”

“Has the world ever been changed by anything save the thought and its magic vehicle the Word?”

“Love for him, for the human body, was extremely humanitarian an interest and had more educational power than the whole teaching skills of the world!”

“Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunderstorm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols.”

“I have an epic, not a dramatic nature. My disposition and my desires call for peace to spin my thread, for a steady rhythm in life and art.”

“What was life? It was warmth, the warmth generated by a form-preserving instability, a fever of matter, which accompanied the process of ceaseless decay and repair of protein molecules that were too impossibly ingenious in structure.”

“In effect it seemed to him that, though honor might possess certain advantages, yet shame had others, and not inferior: advantages, even, that were well-nigh boundless in their scope.”

“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.”

“A man lives not only his personal life, as an individual, but also, consciously or unconsciously, the life of his epoch and his contemporaries.”

“A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also a truth.”

“Gustav Aschenbach was the writer who spoke for all those who work on the brink of exhaustion, who labor and are heavy-laden, who are worn out already but still stand upright, all those moralists of achievement who are slight of stature and scanty of resources, but who yet, by some ecstasy of the will and by wise husbandry, manage at least for a time to force their work into a semblance of greatness.”

“By the approach through abnormality we have succeeded in penetrating most deeply into the darkness of human nature … The literary person should be the last person to be surprised at this fact. Sooner might he be surprised that he, considering his strong generally and individual tendency, should have so late become aware of the close sympathetic relations which connected his own existence with psychoanalytic research and the life-work of Sigmund Freud. I realized this connection only at a time when his achievement was no longer thought of as merely a therapeutic method, whether recognized or disputed; when it had long since outgrown his purely medical implications and become a world movement which penetrated into every field of science and every domain of the intellect: literature, the history of art, religion and prehistory; mythology, folklore, pedagogy, and what not.”

“Beauty can pierce one like pain.”

“In the Word is involved the unity of humanity, the wholeness of the human problem, which permits nobody to separate the intellectual and artistic from the political and social, and to isolate himself within the ivory tower of the "cultural" proper.”

“The deep conviction... that nothing good for Germany or the world can come out of the present German regime, has made me avoid the country in whose spiritual tradition I am more deeply rooted than are those who for three years have been trying to find courage enough to declare before the world that I am not a German. And I feel to the bottom of my heart that I have done right in the eyes of my contemporaries and of posterity.”

“Our air up here is good for the disease — I mean good against the disease,… but it is also good for the disease.”

“I admire the proud and cold who go adventuring on the paths of great and demoniac beauty, and scorn "man" — but I do not envy them. For if anything is capable of making a poet out of a man of letters, it is this plebeian love of mine for the human, living, and commonplace. All warmth, all goodness, all humor is born of it, and it almost seems to me as if it were that love itself, of which it is written that a man might speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and yet without it be no more than sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.”

“We are most likely to get angry and excited in our opposition to some idea when we ourselves are not quite certain of our own position, and are inwardly tempted to take the other side.”

“Frau Stöhr … began to talk about how fascinating it was to cough…. Sneezing was much the same thing. You kept on wanting to sneeze until you simply couldn’t stand it any longer; you looked as if you were tipsy; you drew a couple of breaths, then out it came, and you forgot everything else in the bliss of the sensation. Sometimes the explosion repeated itself two or three times. That was the sort of pleasure life gave you free of charge.”

“A black pall, you know, with a silver cross on it, or R. I. P. — requiescat in pace — you know. That seems to me the most beautiful expression — I like it much better than ‘He is a jolly good fellow,’ which is simply rowdy.”

“It is a pregnant complex, gleaming up from the unconscious, of mother-fixation, sexual desire, and fear.”

“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.”

“The invention of printing and the Reformation are and remain the two outstanding services of central Europe to the cause of humanity.”

“The positive thing about the sceptic is that he considers everything possible!”

“This music of yours. A manifestation of the highest energy — not at all abstract, but without an object, energy in a void, in pure ether — where else in the universe does such a thing appear? We Germans have taken over from philosophy the expression ‘in itself,’ we use it every day without much idea of the metaphysical. But here you have it, such music is energy itself, yet not as idea, rather in its actuality. I call your attention to the fact that is almost the definition of God. Imitatio Dei — I am surprised it is not forbidden.”

“The purifying, healing influence of literature, the dissipating of passions by knowledge and the written word, literature as the path to understanding, forgiveness and love, the redeeming might of the word, the literary spirit as the noblest manifestation of the spirit of man, the writer as perfected type, as saint.”

“He is no longer with me—by my orders—but then that is merel the carrying-out of an order, after all a kind of negative being-with-me, as he would say. As for any independent life which Bashan might lead without me during these hours—that is not to be thought of.”