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Stefan Zweig

Stefan Zweig Quotes

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Famous Stefan Zweig Quotes

“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.”

WayWarMomentsFactsRealityCreativityCreativeImpossibleMilitaryGeniusVictoryMarkTransformationMethodWarfareTestedImprovisationMockDemonicRight Moment
Author:Stefan Zweig
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“The greater part of our best years has been passed for our generation in these two great worldconvulsions. All will be changed after this war, which spends in one month more than nations earned before in yearsthere is no more security in our time than in those of the Reformation or the fall of Rome.”

YearsHas BeensTwoWarHumanityFallNationsGreaterGenerationsSecurityChangedMonthsDestructionOur TimeRomeReformationOur GenerationBest YearFall Of Rome
Author:Stefan Zweig
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“I am not fooling myself with dreams of immortality, know how relative all literature is, don't have any faith in mankind, derive enjoyment from too few things. Sometimes these crises give birth to something worth while, sometimes they simply plunge one deeper into depression, but, of course, it is all part of the same thing.”

KnowsGivingSometimesDreamCoursesLiteratureKnow HowMankindBirthDespairDepressionCrisisDeeperImmortalityEnjoymentRelativePlunge
Book:Stefan and Friderike Zweig: their correspondence, 1912-1942
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“(Brazil:) I've never beheld such a paradise. The people are enchanting and--a mercy on this earth of ours--this is the only placewhere there isn't any race question. Negroes and whites and Indians, three-quarters, oneeighth, the wonderful Mulatto and Creole women, Jews and Christians, all dwell together in a peace that passes describing. The Jewish immigrants are in seventh heaven; all of them have jobs and feel at home.”

PeopleFeelsHomeEarthChristianTogetherJobsThreeHeavenFreedomRaceWonderfulMercyPrejudiceJewParadiseImmigrantsQuartersDescribingBrazilEnchantingCreoleSeventh HeavenMulattoes
Author:Stefan Zweig
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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.”

IfsEndsEarthHumanityCausesUnderstandingAbilitySpaceUnitedCreativeSeeingVictoryElementsResourcesDestructionUnityHearingAll TimeThanksConfusedDelusionDestroyingHumankindAgain And AgainTime And SpaceGrandioseUnderstanding Each Other
Author:Stefan Zweig
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“(Heinrich von) Kleist would not be a Prussian if his first thought would not have been orderlinessand he would not be a German if he had not placed all his hopes of developing this inner orderliness into education. Education is the secret of life for him as for every German: studying, learning a lot from books, sitting in lectures, keeping notebooks, listening intently to professors.”

IfsFirstsHas BeensBookSecretEducationLearningStudyListeningSittingDevelopingProfessorsLecturesNotebookSecret LifeOrderliness
Author:Stefan Zweig
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“As nature requires whirlwinds and cyclones to release its excessive force in a violent revolt against its own existence, so the spirit requires a demonic human being from time to time whose excessive strength rebels against the community of thought and the monotony of moralityonly by looking at those beyond its limits does humanity come to know its own utmost limits.”

KnowsHumansDoeSpiritHumanityForceCommunityHuman BeingsExistenceProgressLimitsViolentReleaseRebelRevoltMonotonyDemonicCyclonesExcessive Force
Author:Stefan Zweig
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“Human life is so strangely constituted that even perfected intellectual understanding combined with the richest experience is incapable of conquering innate weaknesses. Even if it thoroughly analyzes itself, psychology (and this is one of the dubious aspects of psychoanalysis) can, to be sure, recognize its flawed native characteristics, but it cannot eliminate them. Understanding (them) is not the same as overcoming (them) and, again and again, we see the wisest of human beings helpless in the fact of their small follies which everyone else observes with a smile.”

IfsHumansFactsLife IsUnderstandingHuman BeingsPsychologyHuman NatureIntellectualWeaknessAspectOvercomingConquerHuman LifeCharacteristicsFollyNativeAgain And AgainHelplessIncapableFlawedInnatePsychoanalysisWisestDubious
Author:Stefan Zweig
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“Fate forces its way to the powerful and violent. With subservient obedience it will assume for years dependency on one individual:Caesar, Alexander, Napoleon, because it loves the elemental human being who grows to resemble it, the intangible element. Sometimes, and these are the most astonishing moments in world history, the thread of fate falls into the hands of a complete nobody but only for a twitching minute.”

WorldWayYearsHumansSometimesMomentsHandsFallIndividualForceGrowsLeadershipHuman BeingsPowerfulFateMinutesGreatnessElementsAssumingViolentObedienceThreadWorld HistoryAstonishingDependencyIntangibleElementalsSubservientTwitching
Author:Stefan Zweig
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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.”

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Author:Stefan Zweig
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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.”

WorldBelieveHumansHandsGamesUnderstandingGrowthHuman BeingsAnimalRaceProgressViolenceStageNeededMoralityGoodnessUltimateRefuseConvictionIntellectInvisibleDullDivinityMeaninglessBrutalLaddersMonstrousAscending
Author:Stefan Zweig
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“Even from the abyss of horror in which we try to feel our way today, half-blind, our hearts distraught and shattered, I look up again and again to the ancient constellations that shone on my childhood, comforting myself with the inherited confidence that, some day, this relapse will appear only an interval in the eternal rhythm of progress onward and upward.”

WayFeelsTryingLooksHeartTodayHalfProgressChildhoodHorrorEternalBlindAncientRhythmLook UpAgain And AgainAbyssComfortingShatteredConstellationsIntervalsRelapseDistraughtOnward And Upward
Book:The Society of the Crossed Keys
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“For I regard memory not as a phenomenon preserving one thing and losing another merely by chance, but as a power that deliberately places events in order or wisely omits them. Everything we forget about our own lives was really condemned to oblivion by an inner instinct long ago.”

LongOrderMemoriesChanceForgetOne ThingEventsLosingRegardInstinctPhenomenonLong AgoOblivion
Book:The World of Yesterday: Memoirs of a European
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“He was welcome everywhere he went, and was well-aware of his inability to tolerate solitude. He felt no inclination to be alone and avoided it as far as possible; he didn't really want to become any better acquainted with himself. He knew that if he wanted to show his talents to best advantage, he needed to strike sparks off other people to fan the flames of warmth and exuberance in his heart. On his own he was frosty, no use to himself at all, like a match left lying in its box.”

PeopleIfsWantWellsHeartUseShowsWantedLyingLeftFeltFansTalentNeededSolitudeAdvantageBoxesStrikesWelcomeFlamesWarmthSparksTolerateInabilityInclinationAvoidedExuberance
Book:Burning Secret
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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.”

IfsHeartCausesDarkSpaceLove IsEventsLonelinessStressDisappointmentHollowEvaluateGreat Events
Book:The Collected Novellas of Stefan Zweig: Burning Secret, A Chess Story, Fear, Confusion, Journey into the Past
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“She was at that crucial age when a women begins to regret having stayed faithful to a husband she never really loved, when the glowing sunset colors of her beauty offer her one last, urgent choice between maternal and feminine love. At such a moment a life that seemed to have chosen its course long ago is questioned once again, for the last time the magic compass needle of the will hovers between final resignation and the hope of erotic experience.”

LoveLongMomentsAgeLastsChoicesCoursesMagicColorRegretOffersHusbandFinalsLustChosenFaithfulSunsetFeminineCrucialLong AgoLast TimeCompassEroticUrgentFidelityNeedlesGlowingResignationHer Beauty
Author:Stefan Zweig
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“He was, like everyone of a strongly erotic disposition, twice as good, twice as much himself when he knew that women liked him, just as many actors find their most ardent vein when they sense that they have cast their spell over the audience, the breathing mass of spectators before them.”

ActorsAudienceMassCastsBreathingSpellsDispositionVeinsEroticSpectatorsArdent
Book:The Collected Novellas of Stefan Zweig: Burning Secret, A Chess Story, Fear, Confusion, Journey into the Past
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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.”

NeedsMeanChildrenSleepChildhoodFrontsBearsTerribleBedAdultsCommandConfessionHumiliationStigma
Book:The Collected Novellas of Stefan Zweig: Burning Secret, A Chess Story, Fear, Confusion, Journey into the Past
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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.”

MindRunningDarkPassionateFacultyRunning AwaySuspicionTrailsImmatureCuriousity
Book:The Collected Novellas of Stefan Zweig: Burning Secret, A Chess Story, Fear, Confusion, Journey into the Past
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“For this quiet, unprepossessing, passive man who has no garden in front of his subsidised flat, books are like flowers. He loves to line them up on the shelf in multicoloured rows: he watches over each of them with an old-fashioned gardener's delight, holds them like fragile objects in his thin, bloodless hands.”

MenBookHandsLinesWatchesFrontsObjectsFlowerQuietGardenDelightFlatsFragilePassiveShelvesOld FashionedGardener
Book:The Post Office Girl
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“We live through myriads of seconds, yet it is always one, just one, that casts our entire inner world into turmoil, the second when (as Stendhal has described it) the internal inflorescence, already steeped in every kind of fluid, condenses and crystallizes—a magical second, like the moment of generation, and like that moment concealed in the warm interior of the individual life, invisible, untouchable, beyond the reach of feeling, a secret experienced alone. No algebra of the mind can calculate it, no alchemy of premonition divine it, and it can seldom perceive itself.”

WorldMindKindMomentsFeelingsIndividualSecretGenerationsDivineCastsWarmInvisiblePerceiveJust OneInternalsThat MomentSecondsInteriorsFluidConcealedAlchemyTurmoilAlgebraInner WorldPremonitionIndividual LifeUntouchables
Book:The Collected Novellas of Stefan Zweig: Burning Secret, A Chess Story, Fear, Confusion, Journey into the Past
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“There are two kinds of pity. One, the weak and sentimental kind, which is really no more than the heart's impatience to be rid as quickly as possible of the painful emotion aroused by the sight of another's unhappiness, that pity which is not compassion, but only an instinctive desire to fortify one's own soul agains the sufferings of another; and the other, the only one at counts, the unsentimental but creative kind, which knows what it is about and is determined to hold out, in patience and forbearance, to the very limit of its strength and even beyond.”

KnowsHeartKindTwoSoulDesireSufferingEmotionCompassionCreativeLimitsWeakSightPainfulDeterminedPityUnhappinessSentimentalImpatienceForbearance
Author:Stefan Zweig
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