Austrian novelist, playwright & journalist (1881-1942)
Those whom fate has dealt hard knocks remain vulnerable for ever afterwards.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Beware of Pity
The sight of a wedding always has a disturbing effect on young girls; at such moments a mysterious sense of solidarity with their own sex takes possession of them.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Beware of Pity
For the more a man limits himself, the nearer he is on the other hand to what is limitless.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Chess Story
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.
STEFAN ZWEIG
The Post Office Girl
One only makes books in order to keep in touch with one's fellows after one has ceased to breathe, and thus to defend oneself against the inexorable fate of all that lives--transitoriness and oblivion.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Selected Stories
Balzac was himself one of those monomaniacs he delighted to portray! Discouraged by an unresponsive world which did not appreciate his first efforts in the field of literature, he withdrew into himself and created a symbolic world. This world was to belong to him, to be governed by him, to cease when he himself ceased. Reality rushed past him, and he never stirred a finger to arrest its flight and grasp it. He locked himself into his room, sat glued to his chair before his writing table, lived among the characters he created, like Elie Magus, the collector, among his pictures. From the time he was twenty-five, reality interested him merely in so far as it provided fuel to set the wheels of his own world in motion.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Balzac, Dickens, Dostoevsky: Master Builders of the Spirit
Memory is so corrupt that you remember only what you want to; if you want to forget about something, slowly but surely you do.
STEFAN ZWEIG
The Post Office Girl
Confidences are always risky: a secret entrusted to a stranger make him less of one. You've given away something of yourself, given him the advantage.
STEFAN ZWEIG
The Post Office Girl
Nothing is quite as splendidly uplifting to the heart as the defeat of a human being who battles against the invincible superiority of fate. This is always the most grandiose of all tragedies, one sometimes created by a dramatist but created thousands of times by life.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Stellar Moments in Human History
Brothers, if we believe that we shall arise, already we have arisen. What should we be without faith? Not to us, as to other nations, has a country been given to which we may cling; a home, where we may tarry; rest, that our hearts may wax fat! Not for peace have we been the chosen among the nations. Wandering is our habitation, trouble our heritage, God our home.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Jeremiah: a drama in nine scenes
He who is himself crossed in love is able from time to time to master his passion, for he is not the creature but the creator of his own misery; and if a lover is unable to control his passion, he at least knows that he is himself to blame for his sufferings. But he who is loved without reciprocating that love is lost beyond redemption, for it is not in his power to set a limit to that other's passion, to keep it within bounds, and the strongest will is reduced to impotence in the face of another's desire.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Beware of Pity
The works of the great artists are silent books of eternal truths.
STEFAN ZWEIG
prelude, Paul Verlaine
Dostoevsky was the first to reveal to us this teeming multiplicity of emotions, this complexity of our spiritual universe.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Balzac, Dickens, Dostoevsky: Master Builders of the Spirit