The palm at the end of the mind, beyond the last thought, rises in the bronze distance. A gold feathered bird sings in the palm, without human meaning, without human feeling, a foreign song. You know then that it is not the reason that makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine. The palm stands on the edge of space. The wind moves slowly in the branches. The bird's fire-fangled feathers dangle down.

Monday, March 3, 2008

Thomas Mann on life and art

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

Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous- to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd.

Only he who desires is amiable and not he who is satiated.

Literature... is the union of suffering with the instinct for form.

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

I love and reverence the Word, the bearer of the spirit, the tool and gleaming ploughshare of progress.

Has the world ever been changed by anything save the thought and its magic vehicle the Word?

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.

For the beautiful word begets the beautiful deed.

It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death.

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