For I must tell you that we artists cannot tread the path of Beauty without Eros keeping company with us and appointing himself as our guide. – Thomas Mann
For to be poised against fatality, to meet adverse conditions gracefully, is more than simple endurance it is an act of aggression, a positive triumph. – Thomas Mann
For the sake of goodness and love, man shall let death have no sovereignty over his thoughts. – Thomas Mann
It is a strange fact that freedom and equality, the two basic ideas of democracy, are to some extent contradictory. Logically considered, freedom and equality are mutually exclusive, just as society and the individual are mutually exclusive. – Thomas Mann