The 100 best phrases of Stefan Zweig
Stefan Zweig was an Austrian-born writer, biographer, novelist and activist who became known especially after the protests against the intervention of Germany during the First World War and for his biographies on great rulers of history such as Fouché, María Estuardo or Marie Antoinette.
His ideas have had a great influence on the development of European society; If you are interested in knowing his way of thinking, this selection of phrases by Stefan Zweig it will like you.
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Stefan Zweig's most memorable phrases
To learn a little more about the history and work of this character, we have brought a series with the best phrases and reflections of Stefan Zweig.
1. Sometimes it is nothing more than a very thin door that separates children from what we call the real world and a little wind can open it.
Children need to mature in their own time.
2. All science comes from pain.
For Zweig, pain is the most inspiring emotion.
3. It is not enough to think about death, but it must always be in front of you. Then life becomes more solemn, more important, more fruitful and joyful.
The only way to live to the fullest is by accepting the arrival of death.
4. Those who announce that they fight for God are always the least peaceful men on Earth.
Thousands of wars and massacres have been carried out "in the name of God".
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5. Pain always seeks the cause of things, while well-being is inclined to be still and not look back.
For the writer, it is when we are restless that we can improve.
6. Nothing makes people more unnatural and insubordinate than long and constant idleness.
People without an entertainment or trade become arrogant.
7. In pain one becomes more and more sensitive.
Understanding the pain of another leads us to generate empathy.
8. Books are only written to unite human beings, above their own breath, and thus defend us against the inexorable reverse of all existence: transience and oblivion.
All literature has the goal of uniting people regardless of their differences.
9. It is not until we realize that we mean something to others that we do not feel that there is a goal or purpose in our existence.
Sometimes we see our value when another person recognizes it.
10. And slowly, out of his dark fear, something began to well up that was not yet happiness, but an amazement at the diversity of life.
There are exciting moments that take away the discomfort of life.
11. Jealous, he takes his secrets to the cold land, to subsist himself as a secret, all scruples and darkness, a figure always hermetic, impenetrable.
There are secrets that go to the grave.
12. Fate has condemned me with an incorruptible look, a hard look, but a fragile heart.
Do you think that destiny is something already written?
13. This game belongs to all peoples and all times.
A role play within society.
14. Everything extraordinary and indomitable in our existence is shaped only by inner concentration, by a sublime monomania sacredly related to madness.
The valuable things we have is what is inside of us.
15. For the fact of being able to hold a valuable book in one's hands meant to Mendel what an encounter with a woman does to others...
Books can mean a radical change in someone's life.
16. The lie brazenly spreads its wings and the truth has been outlawed.
The lie always travels faster than the truth. It doesn't last forever though.
17. History has no time to be fair. As a cold chronicler, he only takes into account the results.
History is written through the facts that stand out the most.
18. There are many who love; very few who know how to love.
Love is free and not selfish. Something many still don't understand.
19. Only the person who has tasted light and darkness, war and peace, falling down and getting up, only that person has really experienced life.
Everything in life is important, both the good and the bad times.
20. Doubt is the mother of ideas; only the ignorant and the fanatical never waver.
Doubt is what drives us to continue developing.
21. At the decisive moment, nothing so enormous in moral superiority over others as having hardened the soul beforehand by pain.
Overcoming pain leads us to develop unbreakable strength.
22. Only misfortune gives a deep and extensive look at the reality of the world.
A wake-up call to the careless act of human beings.
23. I think it's better to end on a good time.
Even to close a cycle, you must take your time and do it well.
24. The spiritual man should not join any party.
Religion should stay away from politics.
25. But to call it a game, isn't it insultingly limiting yourself?
Reflections on the destiny that some people choose.
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26. This game belongs to all peoples and all times and no one can know what divinity gave it to Earth to kill boredom, sharpen the spirit and stimulate the soul.
We never know for sure where we are headed.
27. So now I am a being from nowhere, a stranger everywhere; guest, at best.
Talking about the time he had to defect from Germany.
28. One must be convinced to convince, have enthusiasm to stimulate others.
You can't motivate others if you don't believe in what you're doing.
29. No guilt is forgotten as long as the conscience remembers it.
Conscience sooner or later becomes our executioner, for all the acts we have committed.
30. Only those who have been struck by fate can be truly helped with love.
Not everyone deserves a chance to be helped.
31. There are two kinds of compassion. One, the weak and sentimental one that is not exactly compassion, but an instinctive defense of the soul against the pain of others.
Many confuse compassion with pity.
32. This is how wars are always born: from a play on dangerous words, from an overexcitement of national passions; and so also political crimes.
Wars are a sign of intolerance between governments, which has nothing to do with their people.
33. It is not enough to be independent, you must learn to make others depend on you.
Dependencies are not always good, because they can consume you.
34. What do we live for, if the wind behind our shoes is already taking away our last footprints?
Reflections on the end of our days.
35. In life, destinations are almost always separate: those who understand are not the executors, and those who act do not understand.
Two destinations that we tend to choose blindly.
36. These individuals move simply under the impulse of a magical force; a force impels them before they have time to realize their reckless recklessness.
About the almost impulsive bravery that some people show.
37. Everything existed only if it was related to you, my whole life only made sense if it was linked to you.
The worst despair is the one that arises after a love breakup.
38. It will also always be necessary for someone to highlight what unites peoples instead of separating them and renew in the heart of humanity the credibility of the idea of a more human future age.
It is necessary to highlight more strongly the things that unite us, instead of looking for excuses that divide us.
39. I don't blame you, I love you just the way you are, ardent and distracted, forgetful, devoted and unfaithful, I love you like this, just like that, as you have always been and as you still are.
Could it be that we should love someone with all his faults?
40. Novelist, in the ultimate and supreme sense of this word, is only the encyclopedic genius.
What exists behind the novelists.
41. So, for the first time, I had the feeling that I was speaking for myself and for the time.
The moment of courage to oppose the intervention of the Nazis.
42. Time, however, has a deep force and old age a singular power to reduce the intensity of feelings.
With old age, we learn to value things more for their essence than for their superficiality.
43. In moments of violent tension, it often lends individuals attitudes of such an extremely tragic expression that neither image nor word could reproduce them with sufficient intensity.
A tension that shows the helplessness of people for not knowing what to do.
44. If I know any art, it is knowing how to give up.
It is important to know when to leave a fight for our own good.
45. There is no happiness for one who has not walked the path of pain.
People who do not appreciate the sacrifices, do not give enough value to things.
46. Ports and stations are my passion.
The way he distracts himself and sees the beauty of the world.
47. As long as there are men in need of joy... Dickens's novels will also return incessantly.
For avid readers, books by their favorite authors are comforting.
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48. In history, the moments when reason and reconciliation prevail are brief and fleeting.
Unfortunately, there are more stories of conflict than peacetime.
49. The man reveals himself in the conversation not only by what he says, but by everything he keeps silent.
Silence can also be a sign of complicity in the unfair.
50. You always come back, but then you have already forgotten.
Even if you return to your past places, you will never have the same feelings.
51. It was no longer about two rivals who wanted to measure their own strength in the game, they were now two enemies who had sworn to annihilate each other.
When two people, in their ambition, end up destroying each other.
52. Fear is worse than punishment, because punishment is something concrete and either major or minor.
Fear is something we drag along forever if we don't face it.
53. Gratitude makes us happy because it is rarely visible to us.
Ml never stop thanking for the things you have, even if they are small.
54. The beautiful dream of insinuation, which only desires and does not dare to demand, which only promises and does not give.
Loves that never materialize.
55. There is nothing in the world that is comparable to the secret love of a girl who remains in the shadows and has little hope.
A platonic love that remains like a stake in the heart.
56. Only lonely children can accumulate all their loves.
Lonely children may have a better understanding of the world around them.
57. Responsibility almost always confers greatness on the human being.
Responsibility not only makes us educated, but it is a sign of our value.
58. Waves, no matter how high and powerful their crests, will eventually collapse in on themselves.
People can fall under the sheer weight of their greed.
59. I am not sorry that, out of a thousand written pages, eight hundred end up in the trash and only two hundred are preserved as quintessence.
It is not about accumulating a large amount, but that what you do is of quality.
60. In that single second he may have come closer to the truth than you have in your entire life.
There are those who do not want to see the truth and therefore do not appreciate it when they find it.
61. There is nothing more unbearable than spending a lifetime obsessed by a single point, by a single day of existence.
A life that is marked by bitterness and conformism.
62. My goal would be more than to become a famous critic or a literary celebrity, to be a moral authority.
A man who sought to give voice to various social causes.
63. Universal artist who… models an entire cosmos with his hands; which, next to the earthly world, raises its own world with its own laws of gravitation...
Artists have a mysticism in their hands that no one understands.
64. Wanting to play against oneself represents, in short, a paradox as great as wanting to jump on one's own shadow.
Why have us as enemies if we can be our best version?
65. Nothing is more terrible than loneliness among people.
A feeling of emptiness and lack of understanding that is difficult to counteract.
66. And that was exactly what they wanted, that I became more and more intoxicated with my own thoughts, until I couldn't take it anymore and had to spit them out, vomit, and had to confess.
Confessions that are forced out, even if they end up being distorted.
67. You were everything to me, my whole life.
People we love and they represent our whole world and they destroy it when they leave.
68. Can it be explained that certain individuals, who do not even know how to swim, try to jump from the top of a bridge to save someone who is drowning?
That instinct of urgency as a response to the need of the other.
69. Each port, each ship carries a different cargo. They are the world in our cities.
The charm that I saw in the ports.
70. One of those pure beings, idealists and believers, who tend to cause more evil with their faith and shed more blood with their idealism, than the most brutal politicians and the fiercest tyrants.
They are the most terrible people and the ones we need to watch out for.
71. No vice and no brutality on earth have shed so much blood as human cowardice.
Out of cowardice, nations have turned against each other, instead of opting for peace.
72. The only one that counts is the one devoid of the sentimental, willing to endure with patience and resignation until her last strength and even beyond.
There are times when we need to put aside our feelings and focus on finding a rational solution.
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73. Only they know how to love and be loved as one should love: with gratitude and humility.
Very few people understand this kind of true heat.
74. I have also lost my homeland proper, the one my heart had chosen, Europe, from the moment it committed suicide by tearing itself apart in two fratricidal wars.
Lamenting the fate of the troubled Europe of the 20th century.
75. You transformed my entire existence.
Stay with the person who helps you evolve.
76. You did not recognize me, then or at any other time, you have never recognized me.
Not all relationships are true.
77. His kingdom is that of justice, which everywhere is above all discussion.
Justice is the faith that moves the world to seek a correct and adequate solution.
78. Standing up a life in which intellectual work meant the purest joy and personal freedom the most precious asset on Earth.
A life where happiness can be achieved in a simple way.
79. The sum of all the resistances is the only one that always gives the measure of poverty and of the man who carries it out.
There is a point where it is not possible to endure the same situation any longer.
80. Every shadow is, after all, the daughter of light.
Positive and negative things are part of the cycle of life.
81. The surest measure of all strength is the resistance it overcomes.
Resistance to obstacles, instead of letting yourself be overcome by them.
82. Every delicacy produces a healthy effect on us.
A quiet thing is not full of extravagant luxuries.
83. Repressed passions, like other natural elements, often erupt at the least expected point.
When we do something we don't love, sooner or later we get upset about it.
84. The sewers are open and men breathe their stench like a perfume.
About getting carried away by the misdeeds of society, which make no sense.
85. One of the mysterious laws of life is that we discover its true and most essential values always late.
We learn to value things when they are gone.
86. She would sit, with a book in her hands, entire afternoons, for months and years...
A book is the greatest treasure of those who appreciate reading.
87. The time had passed when I could deceive myself about the provisional character of everything that began.
False promises lose their power over time.
88. Youth, when it disappears; health, as soon as it leaves us, and freedom, that most precious essence of our soul, only when it is about to be taken from us or has already been taken from us.
Speaking of the regret that comes to all of us when youth leaves.
89. The voluptuousness of the still-living effusion shone strangely in her gaze, like that of a woman who has just freed herself from a powerful embrace.
When we find our value, we put ourselves before any circumstance.
90. He who has no country possesses the world, he who has detached himself from everything possesses his entire life, and he who has no guilt enjoys peace.
Patriotism can also be a prison that prevents accepting the diversities of the world.
91. Each season is different, each one carries within itself a different distance.
Each season has its particular charm.
92. Among all those people, the most worthy of pity for me... were those who had no country or, worse still, those who, instead of one country, had two or three and did not know which one they belonged to.
About the pain of having to leave his nation forever.
93. There is nothing more terrible than being alone when you are surrounded by people.
A feeling of emptiness that is almost impossible to fill, because it comes from within.
94. The first sign of an authentic political vocation is, at all times, that a man renounces from the beginning to demand what is unattainable for him.
Politicians must have realistic aspirations and demonstrate their commitment to the people.
95. It is suffering that prepares and tills the ground for the soul, and the pain that the plow produces when tearing the interior, prepares all spiritual fruit.
Could it be that we grow better by going through different sufferings?
96. And I think that if you called me when I was already lying on my deathbed, I would have the strength to get up and go to you.
The love that remains beyond death.
97. The good is not forgotten. I will never forget you.
The things that mark us in a positive way become pleasant memories.
98. Love is like wine, and like wine too, it comforts some and destroys others.
Not everyone finds the love they want to have.
99. Since they believe they perceive heavenly messages, their ears are deaf to every word of humanity.
The arrogance of people who believe they are false spiritual leaders.
100. Old age means nothing more than to stop suffering from the past.
A moment when we can finally detach ourselves from everything unnecessary.
