"No, not of course at all— it is really all hocus-pocus. The days lengthen in the winter-time, and when the longest comes, the twenty-first of June, the beginning of summer, they begin to go downhill again, toward winter. You call that —of course'; but if one once loses hold of the fact that it is of course, it is quite frightening, you feel like hanging on to something. It seems like a practical joke— that spring begins at the beginning of winter, and autumn at the beginning of summer. You feel you're being fooled, led about in a circle, with your eye fixed on something that turns out to be a moving point. A moving point in a circle. For the circle consists of nothing but such transitional points without any extent whatever; the curvature is incommensurable, there is no duration of motion, and eternity turns out to be not —straight ahead' but —merry-go-round'!"

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About Thomas Mann

Thomas Mann was a German novelist and essayist, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929. Born in Lübeck on 1875-06-06, he wrote major works including Buddenbrooks, Death in Venice, and The Magic Mountain. He died near Zürich on 1955-08-12.

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