Quotes from Stefan Zweig

Sólo porque creía conocer un secreto le fue posible a Magallanes descifrar el secreto geográfico más grande de su época. Sólo

The will-to-power, when it can find no outlet, is directed inwards; the frustrated impulse plays havoc with the sufferer's own nerves. Before puberty, Mary had not infrequently had convulsive seizures and had given other signs of excessive nervous excitability. When it became obvious to her that such attacks aroused sympathy and attention, she began consciously or unconsciously (the border line is hard to define) to cultivate these hysterical fits.

Zweig's golden age of security was shattered forever by the outbreak of the First World War which he viewed, with rather one-dimensional oversimplification, as "a war of brothers brought about by clumsy diplomats and brutal munitions-manufacturers.

the beauty of the creative gesture is wild, unwilling and painful.

En toda la noche no pude pensar sino en ti, aun antes de conocerte. Yo sólo tenía una docena de libros baratos, encuadernados con cartones rotos, y los quería más que a nada en el mundo, los leía una y otra vez. Y ahora me asediaba la pregunta de cómo sería el hombre que poseía y había leído tantos y tan maravillosos libros.

o güne kadar okulda kay?ts?z ve s?radan bir öÄŸrenci iken,ans?z?n birinci oldum,gecenin geç saatlerine kadar pek çok kitap okuyordum,zira senin kitaplar sevdiÄŸini biliyordum...

for all he himself wanted was repose, repose, repose.

Toda nuestra fantasía y toda nuestra lógica no pueden facilitarnos sino una idea insuficiente del origen de una obra de arte.

great creative gifts do not mean fulness and giving out of abundance. On the contrary the expression is that of one who seeks help and strives to emancipate himself.

pity is a double-edged weapon. If you don't know how to handle it you had better not touch it, and above all you must steel your heart against it. Pity, like morphine, does the sick good only at first. It is a means of helping them feel better, but if you don't get the dose right and know where to stop it becomes a murderous poison.

He saw "the nationalism as of horned cattle", of brute beasts whose highest conception was selfishness based upon a narrow interpretation of history

Es gehört zur Tragik aller Despoten, daß sie den unabhängigen Menschen selbst dann noch fürchten, wenn sie ihn politisch machtlos und mundtot gemacht haben. Es genügt ihnen nicht, daß er schweigt und schweigen muß. Schon daß er nicht ja sagt, nicht dient und nicht buckelt, daß er sich nicht geschäftig in die Schar ihrer Schmeichler und Diener einreiht, macht sein Vorhandensein, sein Nochvorhandensein für sie zum Ärgernis.

La música me iba envolviendo de inquietud, mi nerviosismo era cada vez más apasionado, me tuve que poner en tensión para contenerme con todas mis fuerzas, hasta tal punto era intenso el afán de mis labios por acercarse a tu mano. (...) Era incapaz de soportar tenerte tan cerca y tan lejos a la vez, a mi lado en la penumbra.

Was it not intelligible that the new generation lost every trace of respect? It doubted parents, politicians, teachers; every decree, every proclamation of the State was read with a dubious eye. The post-war generation emancipated itself with a violent wrench from the established order and revolted against every tradition, determined to mold its own fate, to abandon bygones and to soar into the future.

Solo quien conoce las profundidades, conoce la vida completa. Solo el retroceso da al hombre toda su energía para avanzar. El genio creador necesita esta forzada soledad temporal para medir desde la lejanía de la exclusión el horizonte y la altura de su verdadera tarea.

Time to leave now, get out of this room, go somewhere, anywhere; sharpen this feeling of happiness and freedom, stretch your limbs, fill your eyes, be awake, wider awake, vividly awake in every sense and every pore.

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.

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.

Only the person who has experienced light and darkness, war and peace, rise and fall, only that person has truly experienced life.

Besides, isn't it confoundedly easy to think you're a great man if you aren't burdened with the slightest idea that Rembrandt, Beethoven, Dante or Napoleon ever lived?

No guilt is forgotten so long as the conscience still knows of it.

All I know is that I shall be alone again. There is nothing more terrible than to be alone among human beings.

In chess, as a purely intellectual game, where randomness is excluded, - for someone to play against himself is absurd ... It is as paradoxical, as attempting to jump over his own shadow.

How terrible this darkness was, how bewildering, and yet mysteriously beautiful!