Death in Venice

by Thomas Mann

beauty, dear Phaedrus, beauty alone, is charming and visible at the same time; remember this: it is the only form of intellectuality which we perceive with, and can tolerate with, our senses.

the lover is more divine than the beloved, because the god dwells in the former but not in the latter—perhaps the most delicate and ironical thought that has ever occurred to man,

the idea that nature trembles with rapture when the intellect bows in homage to beauty.

so now he allowed all his daily strengthening by sunshine, leisure and sea air to be devoted, magnanimously but uneconomically, to mental intoxication and sentiment.

skin was just the same yellowish marble color it had been from the outset;

He was more beautiful than words can say, and Aschenbach felt painfully, as he had often done, that words are able to praise physical beauty but not to reproduce it.

he had not had time to settle his features into an expression of dignified calm.

Like anyone in love, he wished to please his partner,

The master’s pose of our style is a lie and folly, our fame and honorable status are a farce, the confidence the crowd has in us couldn’t be more laughable, and education of the people and of youth by means of art is a risky enterprise that ought to be prohibited.