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Two principles, according to the Settembrinian cosmogony, were in perpetual conflict for possession of the world: force and justice, tyranny and freedom, superstition and knowledge; the law of permanence and the law of change, of ceaseless fermentation issuing in progress.

— Thomas Mann The Magic Mountain (1924)

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More quotes by Thomas Mann

I stand between two worlds, am at home in neither, and in consequence have rather a hard time of it.

Tonio Kröger (1902)

The writer's joy is the thought that can become emotion, the emotion that can wholly become a thought.

Death in Venice (1912)

Time cools, time clarifies, no mood can be maintained quite unaltered through the course of hours.

The Magic Mountain (1924)

Order and simplification are the first steps toward the mastery of a subject — the actual enemy is the unknown.

The Magic Mountain (1924)

If you are possessed by an idea, you find it expressed everywhere, you even smell it.

Tonio Kröger (1902)

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Thomas Mann (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.