Thomas mann

For the myth is the foundation of life; it is the timeless schema, the pious formula into which life flows when it reproduces its traits out of the unconscious.

One always has the idea of a stupid man as perfectly healthy and ordinary, and of illness as making one refined and clever and unusual.

Only he who desires is amiable and not he who is satiated.

The task of a writer consists of being able to make something out of an idea.

Human reason needs only to will more strongly than fate, and she is fate.

All interest in disease and death is only another expression of interest in life.

If you are possessed by an idea, you find it expressed everywhere, you even smell it.

I shall need to sleep three weeks on end to get rested from the rest I've had.

A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.

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