Stefan Zweig Quotes

Pain is a coward. He flees when faced by the irresistible power of the will-to-live, which is more strongly rooted in the flesh than the intensest passion is rooted in the spirit.

Why is it that the stupidest people are always the most good-natured?

If you are going to sell yourself, you should at least get a good price.

Someone who's on top of the world isn't much of an observer: happy people are poor psychologists. But someone who's troubled about something is on the alert. The perceived threat sharpens his senses - he takes in more than he usually does.

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

Something indefinite is always worse than something definite, a strong fear that doesn't last very long is easier than one that's nebulous but doesn't go away.

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.

All the pale horses of the apocalypse have stormed through my life, revolution, starvation, devaluation of currency and terror, epidemics, emigration; I have seen the great ideologies of the masses grow and spread out before my eyes. Fascism in Italy, National Socialism in Germany, Bolshevism in Russia, and, above all, that archpestilence, nationalism, which poisoned our flourishing European culture.

England rose before our eyes; the island girdled by the stormy waters in which all the continents of the globe are laved. In that sea-girt isle, the ocean holds sway. The cold and clear gaze of the watery element is reflected in the eyes of the inhabitants. Every one of the dwellers in that land is one of the sea-folk, is himself an island. The storms and dangers of the sea have left their mark, and live on to-day in these English, whose ancestors for centuries were vikings and sea-raiders. Now peace broods over the isle. But the dwellers therein, used to storms, crave for the lie of the sea with its daily perils. When it is denied them, they create its stormy likeness for themselves in blood-sports. They build wooden lists for beast-baiting. The voluptuous horror of the spectators is stimulated in bestial fashion by watching cock-fights or by looking on while bears are torn by dogs. Soon here is a demand for a loftier tension of the senses, such as can be derived from the spectacle of heroic human conflicts. Thus there grows out of the medieval religious mysteries, the great drama of human effort, in which the adventures and the voyages of earlier days are depicted - voyages no longer sailed on a real sea, but on the inner sea of man's feelings. A new infinity, another ocean with spring tides of passion and an uprush of the spirit; a determination to steer a course through the waters on which heretofore they were driven at the mercy of winds and waves - such are the new longings of the late-born and vigorous Anglo-Saxon race. Such is the origin of the Elizabethan drama.

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.

Adultery is in most cases a theft in the dark. At such moments almost every woman betrays her husband's innermost secrets; becomes a Delilah who discloses to a stranger, discloses to her lover, the mysteries of her husband's strength or weakness. What seems to me treason is, not that women give themselves, but that a woman is prone, when she does so, to justify herself to herself by uncovering her husband's nakedness, exposing it to the inquisitive and scornful gaze of a stranger.

Youth is always right. Those who follow the counsels of youth are wise.

There is nothing more vindictive, nothing more underhanded, than a little world that would like to be a big one.

Gratitude is a rare frame of mind; and those who are grateful can seldom find a way to express what they feel. They are overwhelmed by silence; are shamefaced; and, sometimes, actually try to hide their feelings.

The subject of a rumor is always the last to hear it.