Stefan Zweig Quotes - Page 3

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Everything in life that deviates from the straight and, so to speak, normal line, makes people first curious and then indignant.

Stefan Zweig

People, Lines, Firsts

"Beware of Pity". Book by Stefan Zweig, 1939.

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For the more a man limits himself, the nearer he is on the other hand to what is limitless.

Stefan Zweig

Men, Hands, Limits

Stefan Zweig (1989). “The burning secret: and other stories”, Plume Books

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Hearing, seeing and understanding each other, humanity from one end of the earth to the other now lives simultaneously, omnipresent like a god thanks to its own creative ability. And, thanks to its victory over space and time, it would now be splendidly united for all time, if it were not confused again and again by that fatal delusion which causes humankind to keep on destroying this grandiose unity and to destroy itself with the same resources which gave it power over the elements.

Stefan Zweig

Confused, Space, Creative

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In chess, as a purely intellectual game, where randomness is excluded, - for someone to play against himself is absurd ... It is as paradoxical, as attempting to jump over his own shadow.

Stefan Zweig

Games, Play, Intellectual

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Fear is a distorting mirror in which anything can appear as a caricature of itself, stretched to terrible proportions; once inflamed, the imagination pursues the craziest and most unlikely possibilities. What is most absurd suddenly seems the most probable.

Stefan Zweig

Fear, Mirrors, Imagination

Stefan Zweig (2009). “The Post Office Girl”, Sort of

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Only ambition is fired by the coincidences of success and easy accomplishment but nothing is quite as splendidly uplifting to the heart as the defeat of a human being who battles against the invincible superiority of fate. This is always the most grandiose of all tragedies, one sometimes created by a dramatist but created thousands of times by life.

Stefan Zweig

Uplifting, Heart, Ambition

"Stellar Moments in Human History". Book by Stefan Zweig, 1953.

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Hairdressers are professional gossips; when only the hands are busy, the tongue is seldom still.

Stefan Zweig

Hands, Gossip, Tongue

Stefan Zweig (2008). “The Post-office Girl”, New York Review of Books

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There are two types of compassion. One - is faint-hearted and sentimental. Actually, it is nothing more than impatience of the heart, that is hurrying to get rid of that hard feeling when you see other peoples' sufferings; this is not a compassion, but just an instinct will to defence yourself from misfortunes of others. But there is another compassion - real one, that demands for actions, not sentiments, it knows what it wants, and it is full of determination to do everything, what is in human power and even beyond it.

Stefan Zweig

Love, Dream, Determination

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The world has always needed human beings who refuse to believe that history is nothing but a dull, monstrous selfrepetition, a selfperpetuating, meaningless game, only varied in outer garb, who cannot be converted from their conviction that history signifies progress in morality, that our race is ascending on an invisible ladder from an animal nature towards divinity, from brutal violence to the wisely ordering intellect, and that the ultimate stage of complete understanding is already close at hand, indeed has almost been attained.

Stefan Zweig

Believe, Animal, Hands

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Being sent to bed is a terrible command to all children, because it means the most public possible humiliation in front of adults, the confession that they bear the stigma of childhood, of being small and having a child's need for sleep.

Stefan Zweig

Children, Mean, Sleep

Stefan Zweig (2015). “The Collected Novellas of Stefan Zweig: Burning Secret, A Chess Story, Fear, Confusion, Journey into the Past”, p.19, Pushkin Press

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I had learned and written too much history not to know that the great masses always and at once respond to the force of gravity in the direction of the powers that be. I knew that the same voices which yelled "Heil Schuschnigg" today would thunder "Heil Hitler" tomorrow.

Stefan Zweig

Voice, Today, Too Much

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What is noble, lyrical, tender in the upper level shown is also with the servants, scoundrels, and scamps, as in a distorting mirror. This contrast seems to me a most appealing musical theme--to show love in its noble and crude forms, romanticism and crass realism mixed as in everyday life.

Stefan Zweig

Mirrors, Musical, Everyday

Richard Strauss, Stefan Zweig (1977). “A Confidential Matter: The Letters of Richard Strauss and Stefan Zweig, 1931-1935”, p.70, Univ of California Press

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The transformation of the impossible into reality is always the mark of a demonic will. The only way to recognize a military genius is by the fact that, during the war, he will mock the rules of warfare and will employ creative improvisation instead of tested methods and he will do so at the right moment.

Stefan Zweig

Military, War, Creativity

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It is better to pay tribute of gold to the enemy than tribute of blood in war.

Stefan Zweig

War, Blood, Enemy

Stefan Zweig (1929). “Jeremiah: A Drama in Nine Scenes”, p.73, Library of Alexandria

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Nothing whets the intelligence more than a passionate suspicion, nothing develops all the faculties of an immature mind more than a trail running away into the dark.

Stefan Zweig

Running, Dark, Mind

Stefan Zweig (2015). “The Collected Novellas of Stefan Zweig: Burning Secret, A Chess Story, Fear, Confusion, Journey into the Past”, p.27, Pushkin Press

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Once shame touches your being at any point, even the most distant nerve is implicated, whether you know it or not; any fleeting encounter or random thought will rake up the anguish and add to it.

Stefan Zweig

Encounters, Add, Nerves

Stefan Zweig (2008). “The Post-office Girl”, New York Review of Books

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On the whole, more men had perhaps escaped into the war than from it.

Stefan Zweig

War, Men, Whole

"Beware of Pity". Book by Stefan Zweig, 1939.

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But don't despise error. When touched by genius, when led by chance, the most superior truth can come into being from even the most foolish error. The important inventions which have been brought about in every realm of science from false hypotheses number in the hundreds, indeed in the thousands.

Stefan Zweig

Errors, Numbers, Important

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It is better to be the servant of God than the ruler of men.

Stefan Zweig

Men, Servant Of God, Servant

Stefan Zweig (1929). “Jeremiah: A Drama in Nine Scenes”, p.74, Library of Alexandria

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Heroic ages are not and never were sentimental and those daring conquistadores who conquered entire worlds for their Spain or Portugal received lamentably little thanks from their kings.

Stefan Zweig

Gratitude, Kings, Age

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As one who knows many things, the humanist loves the world precisely because of its manifold nature and the opposing forces in itdo not frighten him. Nothing is further from him than the desire to resolve such conflictsand this is precisely the mark of the humanist spirit: not to evaluate contrasts as hostility but to seek human unity, that superior unity, for all that appears irreconcilable.

Stefan Zweig

Tolerance, Unity, Desire

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The union of opposites, in so far as they are really complementary, always results in the most perfect harmony; and the seemingly incongruous is often the most natural.

Stefan Zweig

Opposites, Perfect, Unions

"Beware of Pity". Book by Stefan Zweig, 1939.

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But, in history, practical usefulness never determines the moral value of an achievement. Only the person who increases the knowledge humanity has about itself and enhances its creative consciousness permanently enriches humanity.

Stefan Zweig

Knowledge, Achievement, Creative

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The strength of a love is always misjudged if we evaluate it by its immediate cause and not the stress that went before it, the dark and hollow space full of disappointment and loneliness that precedes all the great events in the heart's history.

Stefan Zweig

Disappointment, Loneliness, Stress

Stefan Zweig (2015). “The Collected Novellas of Stefan Zweig: Burning Secret, A Chess Story, Fear, Confusion, Journey into the Past”, p.15, Pushkin Press

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Formerly man had only a body and a soul. Now he needs a passport as well for without it he will not be treated like a human being.

Stefan Zweig

Men, Soul, Needs

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Born: November 28, 1881
Died: February 22, 1942
Occupation: Novelist
Cite this Page: Citation

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