"What I have done is nothing, not much — as good as nothing. I shall do better things, Lisaveta — this is a promise. While I am writing, the sea's roar is coming up to me, and I close my eyes. I am looking into an unborn and shapeless world that longs to be called to life and order, I am looking into a throng of phantoms of human forms which beckon me to conjure them and set them free: some of them tragic, some of them ridiculous, and some that are both at once — and to these I am very devoted. But my deepest and most secret love belongs to the blond and blue-eyed, the bright-spirited living ones, the happy, amiable, and commonplace. Do not speak lightly of this love, Lisaveta; it is good and fruitful. There is longing in it and melancholy envy, and a tiny bit of contempt, and an unalloyed chaste blissfulness."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
LGBT peopleNobel laureates in LiteratureEssayists from GermanyNovelists from GermanyAutobiographers from Germany
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Thomas Mann
1875 – 1955
deutscher Schriftsteller
167 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Thomas Mann →
Related Quotes
"A man lives not only his personal life, as an individual, but also, consciously or unconsciously, the life of his epo…"
"An art whose medium is language will always show a high degree of critical creativeness, for speech is itself a criti…"
"Everything is politics."
"I, for one, have never in my life come across a perfectly healthy human being."
"Only indifference is free. What is distinctive is never free, it is stamped with its own seal, conditioned and chained."
"There is both rhyme and reason in what I say, I have made a dream poem of humanity. I will cling to it. I will be goo…"
"Profundity must smile."
"It is not easy to speak on the coming victory of democracy at a moment when the aggressive brutality of fascism seems…"
"It is not good when people no longer believe in war. Pretty soon they no longer believe in many other things which th…"
"Order and simplification are the first steps toward the mastery of a subject — the actual enemy is the unknown."