Stefan Zweig

“He listened yet more intently to what was within him, to the past, to see whether that voice of memory truly foretelling the future would not speak to him again, revealing the present to him as well as the past.”

“Just as an astronomer, alone in an observatory, watches night after night through a telescope the myriads of stars, their mysterious movements, their changeful medley, their extinction and their flaming-up anew, so did Jacob Mendel, seated at his table in the Cafe Gluck, look through his spectacles into the universe of books, a universe that lies above the world of our everyday life, and, like the stellar universe, is full of changing cycles.”

“ولأول مرة في حياتي بدأت اتبين ان الضعف - لا الشر، ولا الوحشية - هو المسئول عن أسوأ الكوارث التي تقع في هذه الدنيا !”

“Alles nach dem ist Ernüchterung, Abschattung nach diesem Rausch von Farben und Formen, nach der göttlichen Vielfalt dieser Stadt.”

“The more one limits oneself, the closer one is to the infinite; these people, as unworldly as they seem, burrow like termites into their own particular material to construct, in miniature, a strange and utterly individual image of the world”

“Being beautiful in itself, youth needs no transfiguration: in its abundance of strong life it is drawn to the tragic, and is happy to let melancholy suck sweetly from its still inexperienced bloom, and the very same phenomenon accounts for the readiness of young people to face danger and reach out a fraternal hand to all spiritual suffering”

“Toutes nos créations originales et puissantes sont le fruitd'une concentration, d'une monomanie sublime, proche de la folie.”

“We live through myriads of seconds, yet it is always one, just one, that casts our entire inner world into turmoil, the second when (as Stendhal has described it) the internal inflorescence, already steeped in every kind of fluid, condenses and crystallizes—a magical second, like the moment of generation, and like that moment concealed in the warm interior of the individual life, invisible, untouchable, beyond the reach of feeling, a secret experienced alone. No algebra of the mind can calculate it, no alchemy of premonition divine it, and it can seldom perceive itself.”

“Sonuçta düşüncelerin de, ne kadar herhangi bir özden yoksunmuş gibi görünürlerse görünsünlet, bir destek noktasına ihtiyaçları vardır, aksi takdirde dönmeye ve anlamsız bir biçimde kendi etraflarında çember çizmeye başlarlar; onlar da hiçliğe dayanamazlar. İnsan birşey bekliyordu, sabahtan akşama kadar bekliyordu ve hiçbir şey olmuyordu. İnsan tekrar tekrar bekliyordu. Hiçbir şey olmuyordu. İnsan bekliyor, bekliyor, bekliyordu. Düşünüyor, düşünüyor, düşünüyordu.Şakakları ağrımaya başlayana kadar düşünüyordu. Hiçbir şey olmuyordu. İnsan yalnız kalıyordu. Yalnız. Yalnız.”

“Beware of pity.”

“Mais je t'attendais, je t'attendais, je t'attendais comme mon destin...”

“Devant chaque manifestation de l'animalité, devant la fatigue, la faim, la nudité, devant chaque besoin de la chair douloureuse toutes les barrières qui séparent les hommes s'effondrent; ces subtiles catégories qui partagent l'humanité en êtres justes et injustes, en honnêtes gens et en criminels disparaissent; il ne reste plus que l'éternel animal, la pauvre créature terrestre, qui doit manger, boire,dormir comme vous et moi, comme tout le monde”

“En la vida, los destinos están casi siempre separados: quienes comprenden no son los ejecutores, y quienes actúan no comprenden.”

“I hadn't had a book in my hands for four months, and the mere idea of a book where I could see words printed one after another, lines, pages, leaves, a book in which I could pursue new, different, fresh thoughts to divert me, could take them into my brain, had something both intoxicating and stupefying about it.”

“For the more a man limits himself, the nearer he is on the other hand to what is limitless; 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, termit-like.”

“Besides, isn't it confoundedly easy to think you're a great man if you aren't burdened with the slightest idea that Rembrandt, Beethoven, Dante or Napoleon ever lived?”

“Only the person who has experienced light and darkness, war and peace, rise and fall, only that person has truly experienced life.”

“One only makes books in order to keep in touch with one's fellows after one has ceased to breath, and thus to defend oneself against the inexorable fate of all that lives - transitoriness and oblivion.”

“¿Para qué vivimos, si el viento tras nuestros zapatos ya se está llevando nuestras últimas huellas?”

“Los libros sólo se escriben para, por encima del propio aliento, unir a los seres humanos, y así defendernos frente al inexorable reverso de toda existencia: la fugacidad y el olvido”

“In chess, as a purely intellectual game, where randomness is excluded, - for someone to play against himself is absurd ...It is as paradoxical, as attempting to jump over his own shadow.”

“Time to leave now, get out of this room, go somewhere, anywhere; sharpen this feeling of happiness and freedom, stretch your limbs, fill your eyes, be awake, wider awake, vividly awake in every sense and every pore.”

“In this instant, shaken to her very depths, this ecstatic human being has a first inkling that the soul is made of stuff so mysteriously elastic that a single event can make it big enough to contain the infinite.”

“For this quiet, unprepossessing, passive man who has no garden in front of his subsidised flat, books are like flowers. He loves to line them up on the shelf in multicoloured rows: he watches over each of them with an old-fashioned gardener's delight, holds them like fragile objects in his thin, bloodless hands.”

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

“Wer einmal sich selbst gefunden, kann nichts auf dieser Welt mehr verlieren.”

“Wie ich heimschritt bemerkte ich mit einemmal vor mir meinen eigenen Schatten so wie ich den Schatten des anderen Krieges hinter dem jetzigen sah. Er ist durch all diese Zeit nicht mehr von mir gewichen dieser Schatten er überhing jeden meiner Gedanken bei Tag und bei Nacht vielleicht liegt sein dunkler Umriß auch auf manchen Blättern dieses Buches. Aber jeder Schatten ist im letzten doch auch Kind des Lichts und nur wer Helles und Dunkles Krieg und Frieden Aufstieg und Niedergang erfahren nur der hat wahrhaft gelebt.”

“Freedom is not possible without authority - otherwise it would turn into chaos and authority is not possible without freedom - otherwise it would turn into tyranny.”

“La gratitud nos hace felices porque son raras las ocasiones en que se nos hace visible; toda delicadeza nos produce un efecto saludable, y para mí, naturaleza fría y mesurada, aquella superabundancia de sentimiento significaba algo nuevo, agradable y felicísimo.”

“¿Puede acaso explicarse que ciertos individuos, que ni siquiera saben nadar, intenten lanzarse desde lo alto de un puente para salvar a alguien que se ahoga? Esos individuos se mueven sencillamente a impulsos de una fuerza mágica; una fuerza los impele antes de que tengan tiempo a darse cuenta de se insensata temeridad; y exactamente así, sin meditarlo, sin una consciente reflexión, seguí yo a aquel desgraciado desde la sala de juego al vestíbulo del Casino, y desde el vestíbulo a la terraza.”

“Od onog ondašnjeg čovjeka ja sam se, i to upravo zbog onog doživljaja, potpuno odvojio, promatram ga sa strane, sasvim mirno i hladno, i mogu ga opisati kao prijatelja o kojem znam mnogo i sve ono što je bitno, ali ja uopće više nisam taj čovjek. Mogao bih pričati o njemu, prekoravati ga ili ga osuđivati a da uopće ne osjetim da je on jednom bio sastavni dio mene.”

“Innen tat noch leise etwas weh, aber es war ein verheißender Schmerz, glühend und doch so wie Wunden brennen, ehe sie für immer vernarben wollen.”

“Querer jugar contra uno mismo representa, en definitiva, una paradoja tan grande como querer saltar sobre la propia sombra”

“Y eso era justamente lo que pretendían, que me intoxicara cada vez más con mis propios pensamientos, hasta que ya no pudiera más y los tuviera que escupir, que vomitar, y tuviese que confesar”

“Aber jeder Schatten ist im letzen doch auch Kind des Lichts, und nur wer Helles und Dunkles, Krieg und Frieden, Aufstieg und Niedergang erfahren, nur der hat wahrhaft gelebt.”

“Neštěstí činí zranitelným a neustálé utrpení nespravedlivým.”

“Odvaha není často nic jiného než obrácená slabost.”

“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, and it was very sweet to be loved by them.”

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

“Nothing whets the intelligence more than a passionate suspicion, nothing develops all the faculties of an immature mind more than a trail running away into the dark.”

“Being sent to bed is a terrible command to all children, because it means the most public possible humiliation in front of adults, the confession that they bear the stigma of childhood, of being small and having a child's need for sleep.”

“He was, like everyone of a strongly erotic disposition, twice as good, twice as much himself when he knew that women liked him, just as many actors find their most ardent vein when they sense that they have cast their spell over the audience, the breathing mass of spectators before them.”

“She was at that crucial age when a women begins to regret having stayed faithful to a husband she never really loved, when the glowing sunset colors of her beauty offer her one last, urgent choice between maternal and feminine love. At such a moment a life that seemed to have chosen its course long ago is questioned once again, for the last time the magic compass needle of the will hovers between final resignation and the hope of erotic experience.”

“The strength of a love is always misjudged if we evaluate it by its immediate cause and not the stress that went before it, the dark and hollow space full of disappointment and loneliness that precedes all the great events in the heart's history.”

“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 unknown territory of a little adventure, never taken by surprise because he has worked out everything in advance and is waiting to see what happens, a man who will never overlook any erotic opportunity, whose first glance probes every woman's sensuality, and explores it, without discriminating between his friend's wife and the parlour-maid who opens the door to him. Such men are described with a certain facile contempt as lady-killers, but the term has a nugget of truthful observation in it, for in fact all the passionate instincts of the chase are present in their ceaseless vigilance: the stalking of the prey, the excitement and mental cruelty of the kill. They are constantly on the alert, always ready and willing to follow the trail of an adventure to the very edge of the abyss. They are full of passion all the time, but it is the passion of a gambler rather than a lover, cold, calculating and dangerous. Some are so persistent that their whole lives, long after their youth is spent, are made an eternal adventure by this expectation. Each of their days is resolved into hundreds of small sensual experiences - a look exchanged in passing, a fleeting smile, knees brushing together as a couple sit opposite each other - and the year, in its own turn, dissolves into hundreds of such days in which sensuous experience is the constantly flowing, nourishing, inspiring source of life.”

“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 any better acquainted with himself. He knew that if he wanted to show his talents to best advantage, he needed to strike sparks off other people to fan the flames of warmth and exuberance in his heart. On his own he was frosty, no use to himself at all, like a match left lying in its box.”

“For 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.”

“Even from the abyss of horror in which we try to feel our way today, half-blind, our hearts distraught and shattered, I look up again and again to the ancient constellations that shone on my childhood, comforting myself with the inherited confidence that, some day, this relapse will appear only an interval in the eternal rhythm of progress onward and upward.”

“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.”

“Moi qui pour mon malheur ai toujours eu une curiosité passionnée pour les choses de l'esprit... ”