Quotes
The silliest woman can manage a clever man; but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool!
People talk about the conscience, but it seems to me one must just bring it up to a certain point and leave it there. You can let your conscience alone if you're nice to the second housemaid.
Most English talk is a quadrille in a sentry-box.
There's no more usual basis of union than a mutual misunderstanding.
The curious thing is that the more the mind takes in, the more it has space for, and that all one's ideas are like the Irish people at home who live in the different corners of a room and take boarders.
Probably the closest things to perfection are the huge absolutely empty holes that astronomers have recently discovered in space. If there's nothing there, how can anything go wrong?
p. 15
I didn't know the full dimensions of forever, but I knew it was longer than waiting for Christmas to come.
p. 38
There are seductions that should be in the Smithsonian Institute, right next to The Spirit of St. Louis.
I have said elsewhere that parents are the bones on which children sharpen their teeth.
The social sciences were for all those who had not yet decided what to do with their lives, and for all those whose premature frustrations led them into the sterile alleys of confrontation.
My aversion from music rests on political grounds.
Hans Castorp loved music from his heart; it worked upon him much the same way as did his breakfast porter, with deeply soothing, narcotic effect, tempting him to doze.
