Austrian novelist, playwright & journalist (1881-1942)
Almost all gamesters learn to control their faces ... The Hand blabs secrets shamelessly.
STEPHAN ZWEIG
Four-and-Twenty Hours in a Woman's Life
Dickens was the incorporation of the artistic needs of the England of his day. And precisely because he happened to be born at that time, he fulfilled his nation's requirements, and therewith ascended the ladder of fame. It was a tragedy for him, however, that the nation's needs in his day should have been what they were. His art was nourished upon the disingenuous moral code of a well-fed England which desired nothing so much as to be comfortable. Were it not for the outstanding powers of the author's imagination, did not his delectable sense of humour pervade and irradiate the vapid emotional content of the work, his achievement would have had value for the English world of that day alone. His novels would have meant no more to us than a thousand others of his own land and century. It is only when one is able to hate the insincerity and narrow-mindedness of the Victorian era with one's whole heart and soul, that one can fully appreciate the amazing genius of the man who could make interesting this smug and detestable world, make it not only interesting but even lovable, turning the most platitudinous and prosy of social outlooks and conditions into living poetry.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Balzac, Dickens, Dostoevsky: Master Builders of the Spirit
A child when afraid thrusts out his arms, and those that are falling hold out the hand to passers-by for aid; similarly, creative artists project their sorrows and joys and all their sudden pain which is greater than their own strength. They hold them out like a net with which to ensnare, like a rope by which to escape. Like beggars on the street weighed down with misery and want, they give their words to passers-by. Each syllable gives relief because they thus project their own life into that of strangers. Their fortune and misfortune, their rejoicing and complaint, too heavy for them, are sown in the destiny of others.
STEFAN ZWEIG
prelude, Paul Verlaine
It is never until one realizes that one means something to others that one feels there is any point or purpose in one's own existence.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Beware of Pity
The soul is made of stuff so mysteriously elastic that a single event can make it big enough to contain the infinite.
STEFAN ZWEIG
The Post Office Girl
Through suffering we have endured the assaults of time; reverses have ever been our beginning; and out of the depths God has gathered us to his heart.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Jeremiah: a drama in nine scenes
No sooner had he said it than she understood, and he placed the room-key, heavy and shining, in his hand, so abruptly did that one sharply outlined, bright association plucked from the sleeping depths of memory come to the surface. The shadows there on the path had touched and woken her own words, and more besides. With a shiver running down his spine, he suddenly felt the full truth and sense of them. Had not those spectres searching for their past been muted questions, asked of a time that was no longer real, mere shadows wanting to come back to life but unable to do so now? Neither she nor he was the same any more, yet they were searching for each other in a vain effort, fleeing one another, persisting in disembodied, powerless efforts like those black spectres at their feet.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Journey Into the Past
No guilt is forgotten so long as the conscience still knows of it.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Beware of Pity
One can run away from anything but oneself.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Beware of Pity
It is a blessing not yet to have acquired that over-keen, diagnostic, misanthropic eye, and to be able to look at people and things trustfully when one first sees them.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Beware of Pity
A word is nothing unless it has values and an atmosphere, unless you grasp its historical significance.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Confusion of Feelings or Confusion
On the whole, more men had perhaps escaped into the war than from it.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Beware of Pity
We who have been hunted through the rapids of life, torn from our former roots, always driven to the end and obliged to begin again, victims and yet also the willing servants of unknown mysterious powers, we for whom comfort has become an old legend and security, a childish dream, have felt tension from pole to pole of our being, the terror of something always new in every fibre. Every hour of our years was linked to the fate of the world. In sorrow and in joy we have lived through time and history far beyond our own small lives, while they knew nothing beyond themselves. Every one of us, therefore, even the least of the human race, knows a thousand times more about reality today than the wisest of our forebears. But nothing was given to us freely; we paid the price in full.
STEFAN ZWEIG
The World of Yesterday
Boldly, perhaps still warm from human bodies, the unmade double bed bore visible witness to the point and purpose of this room.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Journey Into the Past
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.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Confusion of Feelings or Confusion
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
The Burning Secret and Other Stories
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.
STEFAN ZWEIG
The World of Yesterday
Only a numskull is pleased at being a so-called "success" with women, only a dunderhead is puffed up by it. A real man is much more likely to be dismayed at realizing that a woman has lost her heart to him when he can't reciprocate her feelings.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Beware of Pity
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.
STEFAN ZWEIG
The Post Office Girl
It is usual for a woman, even though she may ardently desire to give herself to a man, to feign reluctance, to simulate alarm or indignation. She must be brought to consent by urgent pleading, by lies, adjurations, and promises. I know that only professional prostitutes are accustomed to answer such an invitation with a perfectly frank assent -- prostitutes, or simple-minded, immature girls.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Letter from an Unknown Woman