Thomas Mann citáty

strana 3

„Samota v nás vyvolává originalitu, krásu neznámou a nebezpečnou - poezii. Ale také v nás může vyvolat ten pravý opak - zvrácenost, nezákonnost, absurdnost.“

„Každý okamžik je posvátný. Dejte všemu význam a smysl, všemu váhu své pozornosti, všemu skutečné a náležité naplnění.“

„Život není prostředkem k dosažení estetického ideálu dokonalosti; dílo je naopak etickým symbolem života.“

„Každá rozumná lidská bytost by měla být umírněný socialista.“

„Dobře psát bylo téměř totéž, co dobře myslet, a dobře myslet byla druhá nejdůležitější věc, hned po dobrém chování.“

„Myšlenky nemohou přežít, jestliže za ně člověk nemůže bojovat.“

„Pochvala je odporná potrava. Chutná sice dobře, ale člověk se jí rychle přejí.“

„Citliví lidé bývají výrazní, neboť výraz odpovídá potřebě citu uplatňovati se, a ten se projevuje nezastřeně a jasně…“

„Lidé, kteří příliš 'žijí', netvoří.“

„Krása a vědění bývají ve světě jen zřídkakdy spojeny.“

„Půvab a krása by měly býti veskrze půvabné a krásné, masivní, ze vzácného materiálu, a nikoli slizem a neřádem vyplněné.“

„Krása nikdy není dokonalá, a svádí proto k ješitnosti…“

„Zklamání je jako zmrzlá ruka, může se vyléčit, ale pořád bolí.“

„Láska zbavená mlčenlivosti by ztratila svoji nesmrtelnou chuť a vůni.“

„Kdo ti povídá o chybách druhých, bude i druhým povídat o chybách tvých.“

„Vůle odolává krutosti, podléhá však lásce a dobrotě.“

„Myšlenková hloubka se má usmívat. Čím větší hlupák, tím větší kakabus.“

„Na skeptikovi je pozitivní, že všechno je možné.“

„Knihy jsou nádobami ducha.“

„Nemoc mívá zpočátku jen těžce rozeznatelné příznaky, ale dá se léčit. Když už příznaky pozná každý hlupák, bývá na léčení pozdě.“

„Smích je sluneční paprsek duše.“

„Ironie bývá snahou udělat z nouze ctnost.“

„Všechno velké, co tu kdy bylo, bylo tu vždy jaksi navzdory tomu.“

„Ta dáma vděčí za svůj dobrý vzhled svému otci. Je plastickým chirurgem.“

„Tajemství nemá času; ale co nemá času, jest nyní a jest na tomto místě.“

„Zármutek můžeme nést sami. Ale abychom se dovedli těšit z radosti, musíme se o ni s někým podělit.“

„Smrt, znovu tvoříc, zachovává.“

„Touha je výplodem nedostatečného poznání.“

„Minulost jest strašlivá a přítomnost mocná, neboť bije do očí. Ale není pochyby o tom, že nejsvěžejší je budoucnost, a to utěšuje sličné srdce toho, komu jest přislíbena.“

„Dějiny jsou to, co se událo a co se stále znovu děje.“

„Pozitivní na skeptikovi je, že podle něho je všechno možné.“

„Lehkost, lehkost; posledním a nejvyšším účinkem umění je pocit půvabu. Jen ta mračnopozorná vznešenost, třeba i v schillerovském lesku a třpytu, stojí tu tragicky vyčerpaná jakožto výplod morálky! Hlubokost se má usmívat.“

„Talent je, když si něco znesnadníme - zase dovedeme rozeznat, jak si to usnadnit.“

„Kdo miluje víc, je podmaněn a musí trpět.“

„Skutečně tvůrčí člověk nepracuje, aby žil, ale žije, aby pracoval a tvořil.“

“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.”