Thomas E. Mann Quotes

The obsessions we have are pretty much the same our whole lives. Mine are people, the human condition, life.

Life is only a dream and we are the imagination of ourselves.

People will feel the way they feel.

I try to say something about the human condition whenever I can when I'm lucky.

Consciousness in the individual is that area where the totality of life is located.

Life in the true sense is perceiving or thinking.

This was what it meant to be human, to know that time moved and all things changed.

Why can't I believe? she asked the darkness. Behind her eyelids she saw an animal. It was golden colour, with gentle green eyes and canine teeth, and curly wool instead of fur. It opened its mouth, but it did not speak. Instead, it yawned.It gazed at her. She gazed at it. "You are the effect of a carefully calibrated blend of plant toxins," she told it.Then she fell asleep.

I know myself a Man-- Which is a proud and yet a wretched thing.

You see everything is about belief, whatever we believe rules our existence, rules our life.

She liked to imagine that when she passed the world looked after her, but she also knew how anonymous she was.

Mortalhood is a fine state to visit, but you'd better not call it home.

Human beings are not creatures of logic; we are creatures of emotion. And we do not care what's true. We care how it feels.

You think you have a memory; but it has you!

Every emotion, from despair all of the way up to ecstasy; from complete Connection to who-you-really-are, all the way to pinching yourself off pretty severely, all of those emotions are about your perception of freedom, or your perception of bondage—every one of them.

It is remarkable how liberating it feels to be able to see that your thoughts are just thoughts and that they are not 'you' or 'reality.' For instance, if you have the thought that you have to get a certain number of things done today and you don't recognize it as a thought but act as if it's the 'the truth,' then you have created a reality in that moment in which you really believe that those things must all be done today.

What a piece of work is a man

I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one. . . . Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too—in a net of good and evil. . . . There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well—or ill?

I think it's miraculous that anybody survives themselves.

It is dangerous to explain too clearly to man how like he is to the animals without pointing out his greatness. It is also dangerous to make too much of his greatness without his vileness. It is still more dangerous to leave him in ignorance of both, but it is most valuable to represent both to him. Man must not be allowed to believe that he is equal either to animals or to angels, nor to be unaware of either, but he must know both.

Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. Life is like a train of moods like a string of beads, and, as we pass through them, they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue. . . .

To one who said, "I do not believe that there is an honest man in the world," another replied, "It is impossible that any one man should know all the world, but quite possible that one may know himself."

True philosophy must start from the most immediate and comprehensive fact of consciousness: "I am life that wants to live, in the midst of life that wants to live."

We live our lives based on who we think we are.