Thomas Mann - The Magic Mountain (1924)

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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
Analysis as an instrument of enlightenment and civilization is good, in so far as it shatters absurd convictions, acts as a solvent upon natural prejudices, and undermines authority; good, in other words, in that it sets free, refines, humanizes, makes slaves ripe for freedom. But it is bad, very bad, in so far as it stands in the way of action, cannot shape the vital forces, maims life at its roots. Analysis can be a very unappetizing affair, as much so as death.

Thomas Mann
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.

Thomas Mann
Asia surrounds us — wherever one's glance rests, a Tartar physiognomy.

Thomas Mann
Irony, forsooth! Guard yourself, Engineer, from the sort of irony that thrives up here; guard yourself altogether from taking on their mental attitude! Where irony is not a direct and classic device of oratory, not for a moment equivocal to a healthy mind, it makes for depravity, it becomes a drawback to civilization, an unclean traffic with the forces of reaction, vice and materialism.

Thomas Mann
Space, like time, engenders forgetfulness; but it does so by setting us bodily free from our surroundings and giving us back our primitive, unattached state. Yes, it can even, in the twinkling of an eye, make something like a vagabond of the pedant and Philistine. Time, we say, is Lethe; but change of air is a similar draught, and, if it works less thoroughly, does so more quickly.

Thomas Mann
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.

Thomas Mann
I, for one, have never in my life come across a perfectly healthy human being.

Thomas Mann
Beer, tobacco, and music, he went on. Behold the Fatherland.

Thomas Mann
Hans Castorp loved music from his heart; it worked upon him much the same way as did his breakfast porter, with deeply soothing, narcotic effect, tempting him to doze.

Thomas Mann
Paradox is the poisonous flower of quietism, the iridescent surface of the rotting mind, the greatest depravity of all.

Thomas Mann
I never can understand how anyone can not smoke — it deprives a man of the best part of life … with a good cigar in his mouth a man is perfectly safe, nothing can touch him — literally.

Thomas Mann