Mann

“ But quite apart from all actual greatness and high-calling, there is always what I call Highness, select and sadly isolated forms of life, towards which an attitude of the tenderest sympathy should be adopted. ”

“ Is it enough if you have made the condition of a man or of a race a little better, or any better, if you have not made it as much better as you can? What standard of morals do gentlemen propose to themselves? ”

“ It is farther to be observed, for the credit of this most useful class of men, that they commonly contribute, by their personal manners, no less than by the sale of their wares, to the refinement of the people among whom they travel. ”

“ When I say 'demands,' I mean chiefly the duties of a ceremonial and representative nature which are inseparable from my position—and that's the bond of connexion with the conversation we had just now at Ditlinde's. The performance of these duties may be a happiness when a contact with the people, a relationship, a beating of hearts in unison exists. ”

“ Manners first, then conversation. Later, we see that, as life was not in manners, so it is not in talk. Manners are external; talk is occasional: these require certain material conditions, human labor for food, clothes, house, tools, and, in short, plenty and ease,—since only so can certain finer and finest powers appear and expand. ”

“ In this manner it is that men, born in the social state, acquire the habits of moral acting, and certain affections connected with it, before they are capable of reflecting upon the grounds which recommend the acts either to praise or blame. ”

“ But if any one wishes to consider them in a more separate manner, he may divide them into the intention, and the person of the doer, and extraneous circumstances. The virtue of the mind is that concerning the parts of which we have lately spoken; the virtues of the body are health, dignity, strength, swiftness. Extraneous circumstances are honour, money, relationship, family, friends, country, power, and other things which are understood to be of a similar kind. ”

“ Manners, with some, are the gracious legacy of inheritance, education, and environment; with others they are the growth of the careful-19- cultivation of years, and carry with them the calm self-poise of the man who has conquered circumstances and established his own position. ”

“ How can I know with what constancy and endurance one will bear up against reproach and obloquy and popular odium, if he has grown old amidst the applauses of the world, if he has never encountered misfortune, and has been followed by the indiscriminating favor of men?... ”

“ Sir, if there is any thing for which I would go back to childhood, and live this weary life over again, it is for the burning, exalting, transporting thrill and ecstasy with which the young faculties hold their earliest communion with knowledge. When the panting and thirsting soul first drinks the delicious waters of truth; when the moral and intellectual tastes and desires first seize the fragrant fruits that flourish in the garden of knowledge ”

“ I dwelled on the birth of the Ego out of the mythical collective, the Abrahamitic Ego which is pretentious enough to assume that man should serve only the Highest, from which assumption the discovery of God followed. ”

“ Every man depends on the quantity of sense, wit, or good manners he brings into society for the reception he meets with in it. ”

“ The converse is mere humanity, but I have no hearty love for humanity, I'm quite content to leave it out of account. One must, in a certain sense, be one of those of whom the people say: ‘They are, after all, mortal men too’—or one is as deadly dull as an usher. ”

“ Him; one who is not only the hero of his stories, but also their director, indeed the one who poetically "adorns" them; one who, it is true, still participates in the collective and mythical, but in a banteringly spiritualized and playful, purposefully conscious manner. In short, we see how the ego, in the process of its emancipation, soon becomes an artistic ego, attractive, delicate and—endangered, a tender concern for the respectable father, but with inborn possibilities of development and maturing, as have not existed before. ”

“ Like every man whose natural abilities stimulate an aristocratic interest in his ancestry, he was accustomed to think of his forbears in connexion with the accomplishments and successes of his life, to assure himself of their approval, their satisfaction, their undeniable respect. ”

“ Your Excellency must allow me to profess once more my belief in the idealism of the people. The people want to see their best, their highest, their dream, what stands for their soul, represented in their princes—not their money bags. ”

“ And so, with the thoughtfulness for others which had proclaimed him Gentleman in that inferior society where it had pleased him to move, he hid his suffering from the man who sat weeping like a woman beside him, and died. ”

“ He saw Imma Spoelmann sitting in a languid pose in her red-gold dress at the table, with a look as of a spoilt child on her face; sitting in comfortable assurance, and uttering remarks with a sting in them, such as were good coin in the United States, where clearness, hardness, and a ready wit were essentials of life. And why? Klaus Heinrich could understand now, and never a day passed that he did not try to realize it better. ”

“ Behind the glass and gilded window-frames sat Imma Spoelmann in veil and wreath, with an old Court lady as lady of honour at her side. Her dress of shimmering silk glittered like snow in the sunshine, and on her lap she held the white bouquet which Prince Klaus Heinrich had sent her an hour before. Her strangely childlike face was as pale as an ocean-pearl, and a smooth wisp of dark hair fell across her forehead under the veil, while her big black eyes threw glances of pleading eloquence over the close-packed throng. ”

“ Our persons are near to each other; but should I not greatly deceive myself, were I to suppose that our opinions were as near together as our persons? We are within shaking-hands’ distance of each other; still, our convictions and sentiments on certain subjects may be wide asunder as the poles. ”

“ But only of his own accord, mind you, of his free will, for I believe he'd rather let himself be whipped to death than submit to any training or teaching of tricks. He is, one might say, his own trainer by nature, and though sometimes unruly he is never rough. He is a gentleman, an aristocrat, and full of character. ”

“ This laudable quality is commonly known by the name of Manners and Good-breeding, and consists in a fashionable habit, acquired by precept and example, of flattering the pride and selfishness of others, and concealing our own with judgment and dexterity. ”

“ Did not foreigners with guide-books ask to be taken out to Delphinenort, there to gloat over the sight of Spoelmann's house—many of them before they had seen the Old Schloss?
Were not both Schlosses, the Old and Delphinenort, about equally centres and foci of the city? To what circle of society belonged that human being who had been born Samuel Spoelmann's daughter, that creature without counterpart, without analogy? To whom should she attach herself, with whom have intercourse? Nothing could be less surprising, nothing more obvious and natural than to see Klaus Heinrich at her side. ”

“ Hermann Hagenström looked the City man to the life: an imposing Stock Exchange figure, in a coat the fur of which seemed a foot long, standing open over an English winter suit of good fuzzy yellow-green tweed. He was so uncommonly fat that not only his chin, but the whole lower part of his face, was double—a fact which his full short-trimmed blond beard could not disguise. When he moved his forehead or eyebrows, deep folds came even in the smoothly shorn skin of his skull. His nose lay flatter upon his upper lip than ever, and breathed down into his moustaches. ”

“ The truth is that I care for the 'Hi!' of the people just as little as any living soul possibly could care. I say soul, not body. The flesh is weak—there's something in one which expands at applause and contracts at cold silence. ”

“ Noble and illustrious bravery of the soul, which, when the yelling fiends of popular passion and prejudice beset the ascending pathway of virtue, can look to conscience, to posterity, and to God, and defy them all! Follow their example, gentlemen, and, whatever fierce sounds of public condemnation may be now rung in your ears, you will have the same glorious reward, and your children, and all the good men of your country, will honor your memories. ”

“ More than once Klaus Heinrich showed in his face the look of pained bewilderment which he had noticed on a previous occasion on the face of the good sister, and yet he felt convinced that it was not Imma Spoelmann's intention to wound his feelings, that she did not consider him humbled because he was not successful in standing up to her, that she rather let his poor answers pass, as if she considered that he had no need of a sharp wit to defend him—it was only she who had. ”

“ We are separated from it only by the rows of poplars, by a strip of fenced-in grass which is planted with young maples and an elevated road which is fringed by great aspens, giants which conduct themselves in the same bizarre manner as willows and snow up the whole region with their white, seed-bearing fluff at the beginning of June. ”

“ and so little regard the Manners or Behaviour of their Heroes, that more Knowledge may be gained of a Man's real Character, by a short Conversation with one of his Servants, than from a formal and studied Narrative, begun with his Pedigree, and ended with his Funeral. ”

“ Class interests, no doubt, but romanticised out of all recognition. Romantic prostration at the feet of a master who just confers enough of his power upon his subjects to enable them to crush lesser men. ”

“ In order that a significant work of the mind may exert immediately some broad and deep effect, a secret relationship, or even conformity, must exist between the personal destiny of the author and the common destiny of his contemporaries. ”

“ That I will, Imma, loudly and surely. But only on one condition, namely, that we don't only think of our own happiness in a selfish and frivolous way, but regard it all from the point of view of the Mass, the Whole. For the public weal and our happiness, you see, are interdependent. ”

“ it was a discovery, the formula of his life and reputation, the key to his work. ”

“ Sir, it is one of the noblest attributes of man that he can derive knowledge from his predecessors. We possess the accumulated learning of ages. From ten thousand confluent streams, the river of truth, widened and deepened, has come down to us ”

“ He saw himself again in a semicircle of people, stared at, alone, in front of Miss Spoelmann, and separated from her by the stall-counter, with its vases, jugs, its white and coloured groups of porcelain. He saw her in her red fancy dress, which, made in one piece, clung close to her neat though childish figure, while it exposed dark shoulders and arms, which were round and firm and yet like those of a child just by the wrist. ”

“ Rest on the human faces that pass by,
Each with its gay or busy interest:
And then I muse upon their lot, and read
Many a lesson in their changeful cast,
And so grow kind of heart, as if the sight
Of human beings were humanity. ”

“ Even in our time there were far too many people who pursued their own personal interests, unconcerned about the common weal, and who were contented when they could fulfil the ignoble needs of a selfish life of pleasure by basking in the sun of some one's approval. ”

“ Such portraitures of human peculiarities, gauged by their moral or social desirability as examples to be followed or avoided, form an attractive compendium for the interpretation of men and their ways. Their consideration, ranging from gossip to philosophy, supplies the common touch of nature that makes the world of every time and clime akin, and presents graphically for our psychological contemplation the outward issues of disposition as shaped by opportunity and circumstance. ”

“ All I have to say in answer is, that if the observations I have been able to make on the human character are well founded, there are certain considerations which never entirely lose their influence on the minds of men, even when they are in the height of passion. ”

“ Behold then all human faculties developed, memory and imagination in full play, egoism interested, reason active, and the mind almost at the highest point of its perfection. Behold all the natural qualities in action, the rank and condition of every man assigned him; not merely his share of property and his power to serve or injure others, but also his wit, beauty, strength or skill, merit or talents: and these being the only qualities capable of commanding respect, it soon became necessary to possess or to affect them. ”

“ And in that day shall be discovered every inward working of every human soul: every appetite, passion, inclination, affection, with the various combinations of them, with every temper and disposition that constitute the whole complex character of each individual. ”

“ When we recount the activity of his life, when we contemplate the dignity of his character and of his course, and how exceptional it has been, what an example it is for us! Should we not be tending upward too and continually so? ”

“ And he was. He talked with men; ate with men; lived with men; understood men. Scales that dip into earth-dust and swing again to regions of exquisite idealism—the eternal weight and counter-weight of Self. ”