Friday, March 29, 2024 Text is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 licence.

Thomas Mann

« All quotes from this author
 

The intellect longs for the delights of the non-intellect, that which is alive and beautiful dans sa stupidité.
--
Madame Houpflé, Bk. 2, Ch. 9

 
Thomas Mann

» Thomas Mann - all quotes »



Tags: Thomas Mann Quotes, Authors starting by M


Similar quotes

 

There are then two kinds of intellect: the one able to penetrate acutely and deeply into the conclusions of given premises, and this is the precise intellect; the other able to comprehend a great number of premises without confusing them, and this is the mathematical intellect. The one has force and exactness, the other comprehension. Now the one quality can exist without the other; the intellect can be strong and narrow, and can also be comprehensive and weak. 2

 
Blaise Pascal
 

Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating.

 
Carl von Clausewitz
 

The sensitive eye can never be able to survey, the orb of the sun, unless strongly endued with solar fire, and participating largely of the vivid ray. Everyone therefore must become divine, and of godlike beauty, before he can gaze upon a god and the beautiful itself. Thus proceeding in the right way of beauty he will first ascend into the region of intellect, contemplating every fair species, the beauty of which he will perceive to be no other than ideas themselves; for all things are beautiful by the supervening irradiations of these, because they are the offspring and essence of intellect. But that which is superior to these is no other than the fountain of good, everywhere widely diffusing around the streams of beauty, and hence in discourse called the beautiful itself because beauty is its immediate offspring. But if you accurately distinguish the intelligible objects you will call the beautiful the receptacle of ideas; but the good itself, which is superior, the fountain and principle of the beautiful; or, you may place the first beautiful and the good in the same principle, independent of the beauty which there subsists.

 
Plotinus
 

Allah, the Exalted, gave the angels intellect without desires, He gave the animals desires without intellect, and He gave both to the sons of Adam. So a man whose intellect prevails over his desires is better than the angels, whilst a man whose desire prevails over his intellect is worse than the animals.

 
Ali ibn Abi Talib
 

Life seems to me essentially passion, conflict, rage... It is only intellect that keeps me sane; perhaps this makes me overvalue intellect against feeling.

 
Bertrand Russell
© 2009–2013Quotes Privacy Policy | Contact