Quotes by Stefan Zweig

“A life without envy, hatred and lies was not a life worth living.”

“He felt a kind of bridal expectation, sweet and sensuous yet vaguely mingled with anticipatory fear of its own fulfilment, with the mysterious shiver felt when something endlessly desired suddenly ...”

“He was welcome everywhere he went, and was well-aware of his inability to tolerate solitude. He felt no inclination to be alone and avoided it as far as possible; he didn't really want to become an...”

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

“And the childyour childwas born there in the midst of misery. It was a deadly place: strange, everything was strange, we women lying there were strange to each other, lonely and hating one another ...”

“Only in youth does coincidence seem the same as fate. Later, we know that the real course of our lives is decided within us; our paths may seem to diverge from our wishes in a confused and pointles...”

“But I see nothing miraculous about it. Nothing makes one as healthy as happiness, and there is no greater happiness than making someone else happy.”

“Arrived at an age when others had already long been married and had children and held important positions, and were obliged to produce the best that was in them with all their energy, I still regar...”

“For when a woman resists an unwelcome passion, she is obeying to the full the law of her sex; the initial gesture of refusal is, so to speak, a primordial instinct in every female, and even if she ...”

“Ambition had never troubled me, so I decided to begin by watching life at my leisure for a few years, waiting until I finally felt tempted to find some circle of influence for myself.”

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

“He was the kind of young man whose handsome face has brought him plenty of success in the past and is now ever-ready for a new encounter, a fresh-experience, always eager to set off into the unknow...”

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

“Homeward bound I suddenly noticed before me my own shadow as I had seen the shadow of the other war behind the actual one. During all this time it has never budged from me, that irremovable shadow,...”

“A lame creature, a cripple like myself, has no right to love. How should I, broken, shattered being that I am, be anything but a burden to you, when to myself I am an object of disgust, of loathing...”

“A first premonition of the rich variety of life had come to him; for the first time he thought he had understood the nature of human beings - they needed each other even when they appeared hostile,...”

“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.”

“One must be convinced to convince, to have enthusiasm to stimulate the others.”

“That...that was how I spent the day, just waiting, waiting, waiting...but waiting like a man running amok, senselessly, like an animal, with that headlong, direct persistance.”

“One can't have literary comprehension without real experience, mere grammatical knowledge of the words is useless without recognition of their values, and when you young people want to understand a...”