We don't love qualities, we love persons; sometimes by reason of their defects as well as of their qualities.
Thomas MannBut my deepest and most secret love belongs to the fair-haired and the blue-eyed, the bright children of life, the happy, the charming and the ordinary.
Thomas MannIf the years of youth are experienced slowly, while the later years of life hurtle past at an ever-increasing speed, it must be habit that causes it. We know full well that the insertion of new habits or the changing of old ones is the only way to preserve life, to renew our sense of time, to rejuvenate, intensify, and retard our experience of time - and thereby renew our sense of life itself. That is the reason for every change of scenery and air.
Thomas MannI 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 MannA lonely, quiet person has observations and experiences that are at once both more indistinct and more penetrating than those of one more gregarious; his thoughts are weightier, stranger, and never without a tinge of sadness. . . . Loneliness fosters that which is original, daringly and bewilderingly beautiful, poetic. But loneliness also fosters that which is perverse, incongruous, absurd, forbidden.
Thomas Mann