"Hans was mediocre in the most honorable sense of the word."
"A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also the truth."
"Speaking French is, for me, like speaking without saying anything -- as in a dream."
“Don't you like the sight of a coffin? I really do. I find it a handsome piece of furniture, even empty; when someone is lying in it, then, in my eyes, it is positively sublime.”
“Malice, my dear sir, is the animating spirit of criticism."
"Terror is what our age needs, what it demands, and what it will get."
"“Yes, like watching someone flog a dead horse into obedience,” Settembrini scoffed; to which Naphta replied that since for our sin God had visited our bodies with the gruesome ignominy of rot and decay, there was no indignity in the same body’s receiving an occasional beating—which immediately brought them to the topic of cremation.”
[The picture is unrelated to the quotations.]
Thomas Mann?
Posted by: mark minton | January 26, 2025 at 12:13 AM
Mark, you're right!
Posted by: David Lehman | January 26, 2025 at 12:10 PM