The idea of Jewish unity, of a plan, an organization, unfortunately exists only in the brains of Hitler and Streicher. Stefan Zweig More Quotes by Stefan Zweig More Quotes From Stefan Zweig Whatever a woman's reason may say, her feelings tell her the truth. Stefan Zweig reason feelings may For the more a man limits himself, the nearer he is on the other hand to what is limitless. Stefan Zweig limits men hands Nothing that has ever been thought and said with a clear mind and pure ethical strength is totally in vain; even if it comes froma weak hand and is imperfectly formed, it inspires the ethical spirit to constantly renewed creation. Stefan Zweig inspirational inspire hands Immanuel Kant lived with knowledge as with his lawfully wedded wife, slept with it in the same intellectual bed for forty years and begot an entire German race of philosophical systems. Stefan Zweig philosophical race years A word is nothing unless it has values and an atmosphere, unless you grasp its historical significance. Stefan Zweig significance atmosphere historical Only the rare expands our minds, only as we shudder in the face of a new force do our feelings increase. Therefore the extraordinary is always the measure of all greatness. And the creative element always remains the value superior to all others and the mind superior to our minds. Stefan Zweig creativity greatness creative With Nietzsche, the black pirates' flag appears for the first time on the high sea of German knowledge. (He is) a different man, from a different race, (his,) a new kind of heroism, philosophywith bellicose weapons and armor. Stefan Zweig philosophical men knowledge 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. Stefan Zweig long-ago memories order What is noble, lyrical, tender in the upper level shown is also with the servants, scoundrels, and scamps, as in a distorting mirror. This contrast seems to me a most appealing musical theme--to show love in its noble and crude forms, romanticism and crass realism mixed as in everyday life. Stefan Zweig musical everyday mirrors Never can the innate power of a work be hidden or locked away. A work of art can be forgotten by time; it can be forbidden and rejected but the elemental will always prevail over the ephemeral. Stefan Zweig ephemeral power art The organic fundamental error of humanism was that it desired to educate the common people (on whom it looked down) from its lofty stance instead of trying to understand them and to learn from them. Stefan Zweig errors trying people Everything in life that deviates from the straight and, so to speak, normal line, makes people first curious and then indignant. Stefan Zweig lines people firsts Dostoevsky was the first to reveal to us this teeming multiplicity of emotions, this complexity of our spiritual universe. Stefan Zweig emotion spiritual firsts It is better to pay tribute of gold to the enemy than tribute of blood in war. Stefan Zweig war blood enemy He who has been impoverished for a long timewho has long stood before the door of the mighty in darkness and begged for alms,has filled his heart with bitterness so that it resembles a sponge full of gall; he knows about the injustice and folly of all human action and sometimes his lips tremble with rage and a stifled scream. Stefan Zweig heart doors long The greater part of our best years has been passed for our generation in these two great worldconvulsions. All will be changed after this war, which spends in one month more than nations earned before in yearsthere is no more security in our time than in those of the Reformation or the fall of Rome. Stefan Zweig war two fall In 1938, after Austria, our universe had become accustomed to inhumanity, to lawlessness, and brutality as never in centuries before. In a former day the occurrences in unhappy Vienna alone would have been sufficient to cause international proscription, but in 1938 the world conscience was silent or merely muttered surlily before it forgot and forgave. Stefan Zweig vienna brutality unhappy In my youth and comparative inexperience I had always regarded the yearning and pangs of love as the worst torture that could afflict the human heart. At this moment, however, I began to realize that there was another and perhaps grimmer torture than that of longing and desiring: that of being loved against one's will and of being unable to defend oneself against the urgency of another's passion; of seeing another human being seared by the flame of her desire and of having to look impotently, lacking the power, the capacity, the strength to pluck her from the flames. Stefan Zweig passion heart love Again and again, faith in a possible satisfaction of the human race breaks through at the very moments of most zealous discord because humankind will never be able to live and work without this consoling delusion of its ascent into morality, without this dream of final and ultimate accord. Stefan Zweig faith dream peace 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. Stefan Zweig mind dark running
