Stefan Zweig Quotes

For the first time in my life I began to realize that it is not evil and brutality, but nearly always weakness, that is to blame for the worst things that happen in this world.

He was the kind of young man whose handsome face has brought him plenty of success in the past and is now ever-ready for a new encounter, a fresh-experience, always eager to set off into the unknown t...

About Author

Stefan Zweig ( ZWYGHE, SWYGHE, German: [ˈʃtɛfan ˈtsvaɪk] ; 28 November 1881 – 22 February 1942) was an Austrian writer. At the height of his literary career, in the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most widely translated and popular writers in the world.
Zweig was raised in Vienna, Austria-Hungary. He wrote historical studies of famous literary figures, such as Honoré de Balzac, Charles Dickens, and Fyodor Dostoevsky in Drei Meister (1920; Three Masters), and decisive historical events in Decisive Moments in History (1927). He wrote biographies of Joseph Fouché (1929), Mary Stuart (1935) and Marie Antoinette (Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman, 1932), among others. Zweig's best-known fiction includes Letter from an Unknown Woman (1922), Amok (1922), Fear (1925), Confusion of Feelings (1927), Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman (1927), the psychological novel Ungeduld des Herzens (Beware of Pity, 1939), and The Royal Game (1941).
In 1934, as a result of the Nazi Party's rise in Germany and the establishment of the Ständestaat regime in Austria, Zweig emigrated to England and then, in 1940, moved briefly to New York and then to Brazil, where he settled. In his final years, he would declare himself in love with the country, writing about it in the book Brazil, Land of the Future. Nonetheless, as the years passed Zweig became increasingly disillusioned and despairing at the future of Europe, and he and his wife Lotte were found dead of a barbiturate overdose in their house in Petrópolis on 23 February 1942; they had died the previous day. His work has been the basis for several film adaptations. Zweig's memoir, Die Welt von Gestern (The World of Yesterday, 1942), is noted for its description of life during the waning years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire under Franz Joseph I and has been called the most famous book on the Habsburg Empire.

Erst im Unglück weiß man wahrhaft, wer man ist.

A lame creature, a cripple like myself, has no right to love. How should I, broken, shattered being that I am, be anything but a burden to you, when to myself I am an object of disgust, of loathing. A...

Derinlerdeki mahzenlerde, köklerin yayıldığı mağaralarda ve yüreğin karanlık kuyularında tutkunun hakiki ve tehlikeli canavarları fosforlu pırıltılarını saçarak dolaşırken, gizlice çiftleşir ve en akı...

Was bedeutet Kultur anderes, als der groben Materie des Lebens ihr Feinstes, ihr Zartestes, ihr Subtilstes durch Kunst und Liebe zu entschmeicheln?

The instinct of self-deception in human beings makes them try to banish from their minds dangers of which at the bottom they are perfectly aware by declaring them nonexistent, and a warning such as mi...

A well-chosen tie could make me almost merry; a good book, an excursion in a motor car or an hour with a woman left me fully satisfied. It particularly pleased me to ensure that this way of life, like...

Has this new dress, this new world made me so different? Or was this inside me all along, and I was just too fainthearted, too timid? That’s what Mother always said. Maybe everything’s not so hard, ma...

Für mich ist Emersons Axiom, daß gute Bücher die beste Universität ersetzen, unentwegt gültig geblieben, und ich bin noch heute überzeugt, daß man ein ausgezeichneter Philosoph, Historiker, Philologe,...

For the first time I began to perceive that true sympathy cannot be switched on and off like an electric current, that anyone that identifies himself with the fate of another is robbed to some extent...

Avrei dovuto sapere che i libri si fanno solo per legarsi agli uomini al di là del nostro breve respiro e difendersi così dall'inesorabile avversario di ogni vita: la caducità e l'oblio.

Hem çok eski hem de yepyeni, düzeneği hem mekanik hem de hayal gücüne bağlı, hem sabit geometrik bir alanla sınırlı hem de bileşimleri sınırsız, hem sürekli gelişen hem de kısır, hiçbir şeye götürmeye...

Wie ich heimschritt bemerkte ich mit einemmal vor mir meinen eigenen Schatten so wie ich den Schatten des anderen Krieges hinter dem jetzigen sah. Er ist durch all diese Zeit nicht mehr von mir gewich...

Her şey olması gerektiği gibi olmuştu; çünkü bazı insanlar dünyaya aşk için gelmezler, kavuşmanın acı verici mutluluklarını taşıyamayacak kadar zayıf oldukları için onlarda sadece beklentinin kutsal ü...

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.

Talleyrand define con enojo el cargo de ministro de Policia: El ministro de Policia es un hombre que se ocupa, en primera línea, de todos los asuntos que le importan, y en segundo lugar, de todos los...

Იმდენი ვიოცნებე,რომ, თუ შეიძლება ასე ითქვას ოცნება გადავცვითე...

Ვიცი,რომ ქალები,მაშინაც კი ,როცა დანებების სურვილით იწვიან,ჩვეულებრივად თავს იკანუნებენ,თითქოს შეეშინდათ ან აღშფოთდნენო,იციან,რომ ეს უარი დაძნეული იქნება მუდარით,სიცრუით, ფიცითა და დაპირებებით...

We are happy when people/things conform and unhappy when they don't. People and events don't disappoint us, our models of reality do. It is my model of reality that determines my happiness or disappoi...