Rather babble away and at least partially express something difficult than reproduce impeccable clich s

A stimulus is a stimulus. The body doesn't give a damn about the meaning of the stimulus. Whether minnows or communion, the sebaceous glands stand up erect.

The Ladies Buddenbrook from Breite Strasse did not weep, however - it was not their custom. Their faces, a little less caustic than usual at least, expressed a gentle satisfaction at death's impartiality.

Because man loves and honors man as long as he is not able to judge him, and desire is a product of lacking knowledge.

Čudno je to. Kad čoveka obuzme neka misao, onda je nalazi svuda, čak je i miriše u vetru.

What they, in their innocence, cannot comprehend is that a properly constituted, healthy, decent man never writes, acts, or composes.

...only the exhaustive can be truly interesting.

You will lead, you will strike up the march of the future, boys will swear by your name, and thanks to your madness they will no longer need to be mad.

Whoever is unable to stand up for an ideal with his person, his arm, his blood, is unworthy of that ideal, and no matter how intellectual one may become, what matters is that one remains a man.

Even the piquant can forfeit popularity if tied to something intellectual.

...when life still hesitates to touch us, when neither duty nor guilt dares lay a hand upon us

How can I free myself from sexuality? Eat nothing but rice?

Every reasonable human being should be a moderate Socialist.

To find peace in the presence of the faultless is the desire of the one who seeks excellence; and is not nothingness a form of perfection?

Travelers prove their lack of education if they make fun of the customs and values of their hosts, and the qualities that do a person honour are many and varied.

Passion-means to live for life's sake but I am well aware you Germans live for the sake of experience. Passion means to forget ones self. But you do things in order to enrich yourselves.

The sweet spot is where duty and delight converge.

The happiness of writers is the thought that can be entirely emotion and the emotion that can be entirely thought. Such a pulsing thought, such a

Man loves and honors man as long as he is not able to judge him, and desire is a product of lacking knowledge.

A human being lives out not only his personal life as an individual, but also, consciously or subconsciously, the lives of his epoch and his contemporaries

But what would be our readers’ reaction if we simply refused to get to the bottom of that question?

For the sake of goodness and love, man shall let death have no sovereignty over his thoughts.

Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty, unfamiliar and perilous.

Almost every artistic nature is born with a revealing connoisseurial tendency that appreciates injustice so long as it results in beauty and applauds, even worships aristocratic privilege.

... a secret and ardent stirring within the frozen chastity of the universal.

Thoughts come c.early while one walks.

Like any lover, he desired to please; suffered agonies at the thought of failure.

And then he'd rub his cheeks with cold cream because he'd just shaved and the tears stung.

Deep is the well of the past. Should we not call it bottomless?

He was simply not a “hero”, which is to say, he did not let his relationship with the man be determined by the woman.

Solitude favors the original, the daringly and otherworldly beautiful, the poem. But it also favors the wrongful, the extreme, the absurd, and the forbidden.

The perishableness of life...imparts value, dignity, interest to life.

But he discovered that his thoughts and inspirations were like the intimations of a dream, which always seem inspired at the time but prove utterly shallow and useless to the waking mind.

The average man thinks that a little falseness goes with beauty.

It is impossible for ideas to compete in the marketplace if no forum for their presentation is provided or available.

Strangely fruitful intercourse this, between one body and another mind

...nearly everything great owes its existence to “despites”: despite misery and affliction, poverty, desolation, physical debility, vice, passion, and a thousand other obstacles.

.. that language could but extol, not reproduce, the beauties of the sense.

Thomas Buddenbrook's existence was no different from that of an actor - an actor whose lfe has become one long production, which but for a few hours for relaxation, consumes him unceasingly.

His steps were dictated by the demon who delights in destroying manfs reason and dignity.