Austrian novelist, playwright & journalist (1881-1942)
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
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
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
Once shame touches your being at any point, even the most distant nerve is implicated, whether you know it or not; any fleeting encounter or random thought will rake up the anguish and add to it.
STEFAN ZWEIG
The Post Office Girl
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
Almost all gamesters learn to control their faces ... The Hand blabs secrets shamelessly.
STEPHAN ZWEIG
Four-and-Twenty Hours in a Woman's Life
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
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
One can run away from anything but oneself.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Beware of Pity
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
No guilt is forgotten so long as the conscience still knows of it.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Beware of Pity
The dressmaker doesn't have problems unless the dress has to hide rather than reveal.
STEFAN ZWEIG
The Post Office Girl
On the whole, more men had perhaps escaped into the war than from it.
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
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
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
Hairdressers are professional gossips; when only the hands are busy, the tongue is seldom still.
STEFAN ZWEIG
The Post Office Girl
How ugly this room was, how shaming their presence here seemed, how disappointing was this moment when they were together, a moment longed for so much over the years--but neither he nor she had wanted it to be so sudden, to show itself in all its shameless nudity! For the space of three, four, five breaths--he counted them--he looked out, too cowardly to speak first, but then he forced himself to do so. No, no, this would not do, he said. And just as he had known and feared in advance, she stood in the middle of the room as if turned to stone in her grey dustcoat, her arms hanging down as if they had snapped, as if she were something that did not belong here and had entered this unpleasant room only by the accident of force and chance. She had taken off her gloves, obviously to put them down, but then she must have felt revulsion against the idea of placing them anywhere here, and so they dangled empty from her fingers, like the husks of her hands. Her gaze was fixed, her eyes veiled, but when he turned they looked at him with a plea in them. He understood. "Why don't we--" and his voice stumbled over the breath he was expelling-- "why don't we go for a little walk? It's so gloomy in here."
STEFAN ZWEIG
Journey Into the Past