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Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family

Book by Thomas Mann · 9 quotes · Individuality, Death, Protestantism

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Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family Quotes

“His games have a deeper meaning and fascination that adults can no longer fathom and require nothing more than three pebbles, or a piece of wood with a dandelion helmet, perhaps; but above all they require only the pure, strong, passionate, chaste, still-untroubled fantasy of those happy years when life still hesitates to touch us, when neither duty nor guilt dares lay a hand upon us, when we are allowed to see, hear, laugh, wonder, and dream without the world's demanding anything in return, when the impatience of those whom we want so much to love has not yet begun to torment us for evidence, some early token, that we will diligently fulfill our duties. Ah, it will not be long, and all that will rain down upon us in overwhelming, raw power, will assault us, stretch us, cramp us, drill us, corrupt us.”

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“Is not every human being a mistake, a product of misunderstanding? No sooner is he born than he is thrust into a prison. Prison! Prison! Chains and walls everywhere! Through the barred windows of his individuality, a person hopelessly gazes at the ramparts of external circumstances until death calls him home to freedom... Individuality! Ah, what we are, what we can do and have, seems to us paltry, gray, insufficient, and dull; but what we are not, what we cannot do, what we do not have, we regard with envious longing that turns into love—if only out of fear that it will turn into hatred.”

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“Was not every human being a mistake, a blunder? Did we not, at the very moment of birth, stumble into agonizing captivity? A prison, a prison with bars and chains everywhere! And, staring out hopelessly from between the bars of his individuality, a man sees only the surrounding walls of external circumstance, until death comes and calls him home to freedom. Individuality! Oh, what a man is, can, and has seems to him so poor, gray, inadequate, and boring. But what a man is not, cannot, and does not have—he gazes at all that with longing envy—envy that turns to love, because he fears it will turn to hate.”

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“I bear within me the seed, the rudiments, the possibility of life's capacities and endeavors. Where might I be, if I were not here? Who, what, how could I be, if I were not me, if this outward appearance that is me did not encase me, separating my consciousness from that of others who are not me? An organism—a blind, rash, pitiful eruption of the insistent assertion of the will. Far better, really, if that will were to drift free in a night without time or space, than to languish in a prison cell lit only by the flickering, uncertain flame of the intellect.”

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“I know from life and from history something you have not thought of: often the outward, visible, material signs and symbols of happiness and success only show themselves when the process of decline has already set in. The outer manifestations take time - like the light of that start up there which may in reality already be quenched when it looks to us to be shining at its brightest.”

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“We are the bourgeoisie—the third estate, as they call us now—and what we want is a nobility of merit, nothing more. We don't recognize this lazy nobility we now have, we reject our present class hierarchy. We want all men to be free and equal, for no one to be someone else's subject, but for all to be subject to the law. There should be an end of privileges and arbitrary power. Everyone should be treated equally as a child of the state, and just as there are no longer any middlemen between the layman and his God, so each citizen should stand in direct relation to the state. We want freedom of the press, of employment, of commerce. We want all men to compete without any special privileges, and the only crown should be the crown of merit.”

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