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.
In the end, they wanted security more than they wanted freedom.
Pope had been flattered till he thought himself one of the moving powers of the system of life. When he talked of laying down his pen, those who sat round him intreated and implored; and self-love did not suffer him to suspect that they went away and laughed.
For," I said, "a murdered man or woman dies not in God's time, but in Man's. He... or she... is cut short before he... or she... can atone for sin, and so all errors must be forgiven. When you think of it that way, all murderers are a gateway for heaven.
This you may say of man - when theories change and crash, when schools, philosophies, when narrow dark alleys of thought, national, religious, economic, grow and disintegrate, man reaches, stumbles forward, painfully, mistakenly sometimes. Having stepped forward, he may slip back, but only half a step, never the full step back.
It is easy for me to imagine that the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines.
Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.
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