The task of a writer consists of being able to make something out of an idea.
Thomas MannRead
A solitary, unused to speaking of what he sees and feels, has mental experiences which are at once more intense and less articulate than those of a gregarious man.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the contrasting mental experiences of solitary individuals compared to sociable ones.
Thomas Mann's quote suggests that solitary individuals have deeper, intense emotions and perceptions but often find them difficult to express compared to those who are more outgoing and communicative. The solitude allows for profound introspection, yet this depth of experience can lead to a struggle in articulating those feelings, highlighting a tension between inner depth and external expression.
In practice
During a lecture on the importance of introspection in creative writing.
The task of a writer consists of being able to make something out of an idea.
Stupid β well, there are so many kinds of stupidity, and cleverness is one of the worst.
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.
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.
Literature... is the union of suffering with the instinct for form.
The Freudian theory is one of the most important foundation stones for an edifice to be built by future generations, the dwelling of a freer and wiser humanity.
Freedom sees in religion the companion of its struggles and its triumphs, the cradle of its infancy, the divine source of its rights. It considers religion as the safeguard of mores; and mores as the guarantee of laws and the pledge of its duration.
Pittsburgh isn't fancy, but it is real. It's a working town and money doesn't come easy. I feel as much a part of this city as the cobblestone streets and the steel mills, people in this town expect an honest day's work, and I've it to them for a long, long time.
We have to stop and be humble enough to understand that there is something called mystery.
Each moment is defined by a multitude of histories, the past constantly converging upon us, perpetually decaying and reforming itself on the steady pulse of now, now, now, now.
I have learned, by some experience, that virtue and patriotism, vice and selfishness, are found in all parties, and that they differ less in their motives than in the policies they pursue.
On 16 September 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire died.
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