Quotes from Stefan Zweig

When they are preparing for war, those who rule by force speak most copiously about peace until they have completed the mobilization process.

for the more a man restricts himself the closer he is, conversely, to infinity.

On the whole, more men had perhaps escaped into the war than from it.

It is better to be the servant of God than the ruler of men.

States of profound happiness, like all other forms of intoxication, are apt to befuddle the wits; intense enjoyment of the present always makes one forget the past.

Often the presence of mind and energy of a person remote from the spotlight decide the course of history for centuries to come.

It remains an irrefragable law of history that contemporaries are denied a recognition of the early beginnings of the great movements which determine their times.

It would be foolhardy to count on the conscience of the world.

In history as in human life, regret does not bring back a lost moment and a thousand years will not recover something lost in a single hour.

Dostoevsky was the first to reveal to us this teeming multiplicity of emotions, this complexity of our spiritual universe.

Only ambition is fired by the coincidences of success and easy accomplishment.

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

It is the way of youth that each fresh piece of knowledge of life should go to its head, and that once uplifted by an emotion it can never have enough of it.

Unless our souls had root in soil divine We could not bear earth's overwhelming strife. The fiercest pain that racks this heart of mine, Convinces me of everlasting life.

Life is futile unless it be directed towards a definite goal.

Every wave, regardless of how high and forceful it crests, must eventually collapse within itself.

Fate is never too generous even to its favorites. Rarely do the gods grant a mortal more than one immortal deed.

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.

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.

In history, the moments during which reason and reconciliation prevail are short and fleeting.

Today, for a Jew who writes in the German language, it is totally impossible to make a living. In no group do I see as much misery, disappointment, desperation and hopelessness as in Jewish writers who write in German.

Truth to tell, we are all criminals if we remain silent.

It is a law of life that human beings, even the geniuses among them, do not pride themselves on their actual achievements but that they want to impress others, want to be admired and respected because of things of much lower import and value.

People and events don't disappoint us, our models of reality do. It is my model of reality that determines my happiness or disappointments.