Quotes from Doctor Faustus

“Technology and comfort - having those, people speak of culture, but do not have it.”
― Thomas Mann, quote from Doctor Faustus

“Genius is a form of the life force that is deeply versed in illness, that both draws creatively from it and creates through it.”
― Thomas Mann, quote from Doctor Faustus

“What an absurd torture for the artist to know that an audience identifies him with a work that, within himself, he has moved beyond and that was merely a game played with something in which he does not believe.”
― Thomas Mann, quote from Doctor Faustus

“To allow only the kind of art that the average man understands is the worst small-mindedness and the murder of mind and spirit. It is my conviction that the intellect can be certain that in doing what most disconcerts the crowd, in pursuing the most daring, unconventional advances and explorations, it will in some highly indirect fashion serve man - and in the long run, all men.”
― Thomas Mann, quote from Doctor Faustus

“Disease, and most specially opprobrious, suppressed, secret disease, creates a certain critical opposition to the world, to mediocre life, disposes a man to be obstinate and ironical toward civil order, so that he seeks refuge in free thought, in books, in study.”
― Thomas Mann, quote from Doctor Faustus

“You will lead, you will strike up the march of the future, boys will swear by your name, and thanks to your madness they will no longer need to be mad.”
― Thomas Mann, quote from Doctor Faustus

“To be young means to be original, to have remained nearer to the sources of life: it means to be able to stand up and shake off the fetters of an outlived civilization, to dare -- where others lack the courage-- to plunge again into the elemental.”
― Thomas Mann, quote from Doctor Faustus

“However opinionated, perhaps even high-handed his presentations were, he was unquestionably an ingenious man--that was evident in the stimulating, thought-provoking effect his words had on a highly gifted young mind like Adri Leverkühn's. What had chiefly impressed him, as he revealed on the way home and the following day in the schoolyard, was the distinction Kretzschmar had made between cultic and cultural epochs and his observation that the secularization of art, its separation from worship, was of only a superficial and episodic nature. The high-school sophomore was manifestly moved by an idea that the lecturer had not even articulated, but that had caught fire in him:: that the separation of art from any liturgical context, its liberation and elevation to the isolated and personal, to culture for culture's sake, had burdened it with a solemnity without any point of reference, an absolute seriousness, a pathos of suffering epitomized in Beethoven's terrible appearance in the doorway--but that did not have to be its abiding destiny, its perpetual state of mind. Just listen to the young man! With almost no real, practical experience in the field of art, he was fantasizing in a void and in precocious words about art's apparently imminent retreat from its present-day role to a happier, more modest one in the service of a higher fellowship, which did not have to be, as at one time, the Church. What it would be, he could not say.”
― Thomas Mann, quote from Doctor Faustus

“But admiration and sadness, admiration and worry, is not that almost a definition of love?"
"There are people with whom it is not easy to live, but whom it is impossible to leave.”
― Thomas Mann, quote from Doctor Faustus

“Even the piquant can forfeit popularity if tied to something intellectual.”
― Thomas Mann, quote from Doctor Faustus

“These artists pay little attention to an encircling present that bears no direct relation to the world of work in which they live, and they therefore see in it nothing more than an indifferent framework for life, either more or less favorable to production.”
― Thomas Mann, quote from Doctor Faustus

“İblis: "Müzik her ne kadar Hristiyanlık tarafından kullanılıp geliştirilse de, aynı zamanda reddedildi ve şeytani bir alan olarak dışlandı-işte görüyorsun. Müzik fevkalade teolojik bir mesele; tıpkı günah gibi, benim gibi...”
― Thomas Mann, quote from Doctor Faustus

“Aber für ihn war Musik - Musik, wenn es eben nur welche war, und gegen das Wort von Goethe: 'Die Kunst beschäftigt sich mit dem Schweren und Guten' fand er einzuwenden, daß das Leichte auch schwer ist, wenn es gut ist, was es ebensowohl sein kann wie das Schwere. Davon ist etwas bei mir hängengeblieben, ich habe es von ihm. Allerdings habe ich ihn immer dahin verstanden, daß man sehr sattelfest sein muß im Schweren und Guten, um es so mit dem Leichten aufzunehmen.”
― Thomas Mann, quote from Doctor Faustus

“There is a great deal of illusion in a work of art; one could go farther and say that it is illusory in and of itself, as a "work." Its ambition is to make others believe that it was not made but rather simply arose, burst forth from Jupiter's head like Pallas Athena fully adorned in enchased armor. But that is only a pretense. No work has ever come into being that way. It is indeed work, artistic labor for the purpose of illusion-and now the question arises whether, given the current state of our consciousness, our comprehension, and our sense of truth, the game is still permissible, still intellectually possible, can still be taken seriously; whether the work as such, as a self-sufficient and harmonically self-contained structure, still stands in a legitimate relation to our problematical social condition, with its total insecurity and lack of harmony; whether all illusion, even the most beautiful, and especially the most beautiful, has not become a lie today.”
― Thomas Mann, quote from Doctor Faustus

“›Nun, Neffe, was man da heut von dir hörte, darin hast du dich nicht zum ersten Male geübt.‹
›Wie meinst du, Onkel Niko?‹
›Wende nicht Unschuld vor! Du musizierst ja.‹
›Was für ein Ausdruck!‹
›Der hat schon für Dümmeres herhalten müssen [...].‹”
― Thomas Mann, quote from Doctor Faustus

“For a brief moment I felt I was the older, the more mature.

"A gift of life," I responded, "if not to say, a gift of God, such as music, should not have the mocking charge of paradox leveled at it for things that are merely evidence of the fullness of its nature. One should love them."

"Do you believe love is the strongest emotion?" he asked.

"Do you know any stronger?"

"Yes, interest."

"By which you probably mean a love that has been deprived of its animal warmth, is that it?"

"Let's agree on that definition!" he said with a laugh.

"Good night!"

We had arrived again at the Leverkühn house, and he opened his front door.”
― Thomas Mann, quote from Doctor Faustus

“But a man of tender sensitivities finds disruption unpleasant; he finds it unpleasant to break in on a well-constructed train of thought with his own logical or historical objections culled from memory, and even in the anti-intellectual he will honor and respect the intellect. Today we can see clearly enough that it was the mistake of our civilization to have been all too generous in exercising such forbearance and respect—since on the opposing side we were indeed dealing with naked insolence and the most determined intolerance.”
― Thomas Mann, quote from Doctor Faustus

“Feci per uscire, ma egli mi trattenne, chiamandomi col cognome:
– Zeitblom! – e anche questo richiamo fu duro. Quando mi volsi, disse:
– Ho trovato che non dev’essere.
– Che cosa, Adrian, non dev’essere?
– Ciò che è buono e nobile, – mi rispose – ciò che si dice umano, benché sia buono e nobile. Ciò per cui gli uomini hanno combattuto, per cui hanno dato l’assalto alle rocche, ciò che i vincitori hanno annunciato trionfanti, ecco, non deve essere. Viene ritirato. Io lo voglio ritirare.
– Scusa, caro, non ti comprendo del tutto. Che cosa vuoi ritirare?
– La Nona Sinfonia – rispose. E non disse altro, per quanto io stessi aspettando.”
― Thomas Mann, quote from Doctor Faustus

“ceea ce te’nalta, ceea ce iti sporeste sentimentul de putere si vigoare si dominare, la dracu asta’i adevarul – chiar daca vazut din punctul de vedere al moralei ar fi de zece ori minciuna. ce vreau sa spun este ca un neadevar de natura a produce o sporire a puterii se poate masura cu orice adevar virtuos dar sterp.”
― Thomas Mann, quote from Doctor Faustus

“Leider sei eben heute alles Politik, es gebe keine geistige Reinheit mehr.”
― Thomas Mann, quote from Doctor Faustus

“Dennoch gibt es etwas, was einige von uns in Augenblicken, die ihnen selbst as verbrecherisch erscheinen, andere aber frank und permanent, mehr fürchten als die deutsche Niederlage, und das ist der deutsche Sieg.”
― Thomas Mann, quote from Doctor Faustus

“Es ist nur ärgerlich – wenn du es nicht erfreulich nennen willst -, dass es in der Musik – Wenigstens in der Musik – Dinge gibt, für die im ganzen Bereich der Sprache beim besten Willen kein wirklich charakterisierendes Beiwort, auch keine Kombination von Beiworten aufzutreiben ist. Ich habe mich dieser Tage damit geplagt, - du findest keine adäquate Bezeichnung für den Geist, die Haltung, die Gebärde dieses Themas. Denn es ist viel Gebärde darin. Tragisch-kühn? Trotzig, emphatisch, das Elanhafte ins Erhabene getrieben? Alles nicht gut. Und ‚herrlich‘! Ist natürlich nur eine alberne Kapitulation. Man landet zuletzt bei der sachlichen Vorschrift, dem Namen: Allegro appassionato, das ist noch das Beste.”
― Thomas Mann, quote from Doctor Faustus

“Die wissenschaftliche Überlegenheit der liberalien Theologie, heißt es nun, sei zwar unbestreitbar, aber ihre theologische Position sei schwach, denn ihrem Moralismus und Humanismus mangle die Einsicht in den dämonischen Charakter der meschlichen Existenz.”
― Thomas Mann, quote from Doctor Faustus

“Bei einem Volk von der Art des unsrigen”, trug ich vor, “ist das Seelische immer das Primäre und eigentlich Motivierende; die politische Aktion ist zweiter Ordnung, Reflex, Ausdruck, Instrument.”
― Thomas Mann, quote from Doctor Faustus

“The pendule always swings widely to and fro twixt good cheer and melancholy, that is customary, and is, so to speak, still of the more civilly moderate, more Nurembergish sort, in comparison with what we purvey. For in this respect we purvey in extremes: We furnish upliftings and illuminations, experiences of release and unshackling, of liberty, security, facility, such states of power and triumph that our man trusts not his senses-incorporating, moreover, a colossal admiration of his own achievement, for which he could easily forgo that of any stranger and alien the self-glorious shudder, yea the precious horror of himself, in which he seems to himself a mouthpiece well graced, a divine monster. And commensurably deep, venerably deep, is likewise his descent at intervals-not only into emptiness and waste and rich sorrow, but also into pain and nauseas-companions, by the by, who were always there, who are part of the propensity, yet now
most worthily enhanced by illumination and sensible pot-valiance. They are pains that one gladly and proudly takes in the bargain with pleasures so enormous, pains such as one knows from a fairy tale, pains like slashing knives, like those the little mermaid felt in the beautiful human legs she had acquired for a tail.”
― Thomas Mann, quote from Doctor Faustus

“Свобода сама себе внутренне противоречит, поскольку вынуждена, самоутверждаясь, ограничивать свободу своих противников, а стало быть, отменять самое себя.”
― Thomas Mann, quote from Doctor Faustus

“Есть люди, с которыми нелегко жить, но которых невозможно покинуть.”
― Thomas Mann, quote from Doctor Faustus

“The past was only tolerable if one felt above it, instead of having to stare stupidly at it aware of one’s present impotence.”
― Thomas Mann, quote from Doctor Faustus

“He remained seated on his revolving stool, turned toward us, hands between his knees, in a position the same as ours, and with a few words concluded his lecture on the question of why Beethoven had not written a third movement to Opus 111. We had needed only to hear the piece, he said, to be able to answer the question ourselves. A third movement? A new beginning, after that farewell? A return — after that parting? Impossible! What had happened was that the sonata had found its ending in its second, enormous movement, had ended never to return. And when he said, “the sonata,” he did not mean just this one, in C minor, but he meant the sonata per se, as a genre, as a traditional artform — it had been brought to an end, to its end, had fulfilled its destiny, reached a goal beyond which it could not go; canceling and resolving itself, it had taken its farewell - the wave of goodbye from the D-G-G motif, consoled melodically by the C-sharp, was a farewell in that sense, too, a farewell as grand as the work, a farewell from the sonata.”
― Thomas Mann, quote from Doctor Faustus

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.