Death in Venice

To him it seemed his work had ceased to be marked by that fiery play of fancy which is the product of joy, and more, and more potently, than any intrinsic content, forms in turn the joy of the receiving world.

— Death in Venice

Mirror and image! His eyes took in the proud bearing of that figure there at the blue water’s edge; with an outburst of rapture he told himself that what he saw was beauty’s very essence; form as divine thought, the single and pure perfection which resides in the mind, of which an image and likeness, rare and holy, was here raised up for adoration.

— Death in Venice

Amor, in sooth, is like the mathematician who in order to give children a knowledge of pure form must do so in the language of pictures; so, too, the god, in order to make visible the spirit, avails himself of the forms and colours of human youth, gilding it with all imaginable beauty that it may serve memory as a tool, the very sight of which then sets us afire with pain and longing.

— Death in Venice

Beauty … is the sole aspect of the spiritual which we can perceive through our senses.

— Death in Venice

Beauty, then, is the beauty-lover’s way to the spirit—but only the way, only the means.

— Death in Venice

Socrates … said the subtlest thing of all: that the lover was nearer the divine than the beloved.

— Death in Venice

When Aschenbach put aside his work and left the beach he felt exhausted, he felt broken—conscience reproached him, as it were after a debauch.

— Death in Venice