Austrian novelist, playwright & journalist (1881-1942)
No guilt is forgotten so long as the conscience still knows of it.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Beware of Pity
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
Long-protracted suffering is apt to exhaust not only the invalid, but the compassion of others; violent emotions cannot be prolonged endlessly.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Beware of Pity
A human being will accept the strictest disciplinary measures with a better grace if he knows that they will fall with equal severity on his neighbor.
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
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
Almost all gamesters learn to control their faces ... The Hand blabs secrets shamelessly.
STEPHAN ZWEIG
Four-and-Twenty Hours in a Woman's Life
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
The soul is made of stuff so mysteriously elastic that a single event can make it big enough to contain the infinite.
STEFAN ZWEIG
The Post Office Girl
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
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
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
One can run away from anything but oneself.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Beware of Pity
On the whole, more men had perhaps escaped into the war than from it.
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
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
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
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
We who have been hunted through the rapids of life, torn from our former roots, always driven to the end and obliged to begin again, victims and yet also the willing servants of unknown mysterious powers, we for whom comfort has become an old legend and security, a childish dream, have felt tension from pole to pole of our being, the terror of something always new in every fibre. Every hour of our years was linked to the fate of the world. In sorrow and in joy we have lived through time and history far beyond our own small lives, while they knew nothing beyond themselves. Every one of us, therefore, even the least of the human race, knows a thousand times more about reality today than the wisest of our forebears. But nothing was given to us freely; we paid the price in full.
STEFAN ZWEIG
The World of Yesterday
It is precisely those who are apparently aloof from the world who build for themselves a remarkable and thoroughly individual world in miniature, using their own special equipment, termite-like.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Chess Story