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Stefan Zweig

Stefan Zweig Quotes

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Famous Stefan Zweig Quotes

“There's an inherent limit to the stress that any material can bear. Water has its boiling point, metals their melting points. The elements of the spirit behave the same way. Happiness can reach a pitch so great that any further happiness can't be felt. Pain, despair, humiliation, disgust, and fear are no different. Once the vessel is full, the world can't add to it.”

WorldWayDifferentPainSpiritFeltWaterMaterialsBearsLimitsDespairElementsStressAddBehaveMetalsDisgustingInherentHumiliationVesselMeltingBoilingBoiling Point
Book:The Post-office Girl
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“In their overestimation of the role of civilization, the humanists misunderstand the primary forces of the world of primitive human drives with their untamable violence. With their optimistic view of the role of culture, they (the humanists) trivialize the terrifying, hardly solvable problems of mass hatred and of the great passionate psychoses of the human race.”

WorldHumansProblemHateHumanityCultureForceViewsRaceRolesViolenceCivilizationMassHatredPassionateOptimisticPrimariesHuman RacePrimitivePsychosisGreat Passion
Author:Stefan Zweig
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“This is the first time in history that a war has involved the whole world, and also it may last many years more; this thought is soul-shattering for all of us as human beings. It is horrible to think that the crimes committed by this one man Hitler have these many years been destroying the lives of hundreds of thousands and millions, and one would despair entirely were it not certain that the majority, the innumerable majority which opposes him openly or secretly, will succeed in wiping out once and for all him and his.”

ThinkingMenWorldLifeYearsFirstsHumansMayWarSoulWholeLastsCertainHumanityHuman BeingsMillionsCrimeInvolvedSucceedDespairFirst TimeMajorityCommittedWhole WorldHorribleOne ManDestroyingShatteringWiping Out
Book:Stefan and Friderike Zweig: their correspondence, 1912-1942
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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.”

KnowsWorldHumansSpiritDesireForceMarkUnityToleranceSuperiorsResolveHumanistContrastHostilityEvaluateOpposingManifold
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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“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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“All my life I have been passionately interested in monomaniacs of any kind, people carried away by a single idea. The more one limits oneself, the closer one is to the infinite; these people, as unworldly as they seem, burrow like termites into their own particular material to construct, in miniature, a strange and utterly individual image of the world.”

PeopleWorldKindHas BeensIdeasSeemsIndividualParticularStrangeMaterialsLimitsInfiniteOneselfConstructsCarried AwayMiniaturesKind People
Author:Stefan Zweig
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“In 1938, after Austria, our universe had become accustomed to inhumanity, to lawlessness, and brutality as never in centuries before. In a former day the occurrences in unhappy Vienna alone would have been sufficient to cause international proscription, but in 1938 the world conscience was silent or merely muttered surlily before it forgot and forgave.”

WorldHas BeensUniverseCausesCenturyConscienceSilentInternationalUnhappyFormerSufficientAccustomedBrutalityInhumanityViennaAustriaLawlessness
Author:Stefan Zweig
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“Decisive inventions and discoveries always are initiated by an intellectual or moral stimulus as their actual motivating force, but, usually, the final impetus to human action is given by material impulses ... merchants stood as a driving force behind the heroes of the age of discovery; this first heroic impulse to conquer the world emanated from very mortal forces”

WorldFirstsHumansAgeActionGivenForceBehindsMoralMaterialsHeroIntellectualDiscoveryFinalsDrivingInventionMortalsConquerImpulseHeroicStimulusMerchantsDriving ForceHuman ActionsImpetusConquer The World
Author:Stefan Zweig
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