Stefan Zweig (1881 – 1942)
Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist and biographer.
When a man has a passion for a woman, and when that passion is of such a nature that he regards her with reverent admiration as an image of purity, none the less, in the unconscious, his desires turn towards bodily fulfillment, none the less the goal of physical possession is prefigured in the deepest recesses of his imagination. But when the passion is confined to the realm of the spirit, and, in that realm, is a man's passion for a man, how can it seek fulfillment? Unrestingly, the fancy wanders over the honored form, flaming up again and again to fresh ecstasy, but never finding repose in a last surrender. It flows on without pause in a current that can never empty the reservoir from which it comes. This passion is insatiable, as the spirit invariably is.
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.
The sight of a wedding always has a disturbing effect on young girls; at such moments a mysterious sense of solidarity with their own sex takes possession of them.
No one would ever believe how hard it is to be really alone in a city of millions when you don't have money.
Confidences are always risky: a secret entrusted to a stranger make him less of one. You've given away something of yourself, given him the advantage.
The word 'service' comes from serving, and serving means being dependent.
Fear is a distorting mirror in which anything can appear as a caricature of itself, stretched to terrible proportions; once inflamed, the imagination pursues the craziest and most unlikely possibilities. What is most absurd suddenly seems the most probable.
To grow old means to be rid of anxieties about the past.
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.
Those whom fate has dealt hard knocks remain vulnerable for ever afterwards.
Was it not the most wonderful thing on earth to be able to help one's fellow-creatures? I now knew that it was the only thing that was worth while.
Whatever a woman's reason may say, her feelings tell her the truth.
All office workers are afraid of being late for work.
Nothing makes you madder than wanting to defend yourself against something you can't even get hold of, something the human race is doing to you, but still there's nobody you can grab by the throat.
Only ambition is fired by the coincidences of success and easy accomplishment but nothing is quite as splendidly uplifting to the heart as the defeat of a human being who battles against the invincible superiority of fate. This is always the most grandiose of all tragedies, one sometimes created by a dramatist but created thousands of times by life.
He who studies without passion will never become anything more than a pedant. We must approach knowledge from the inside; inspired by passion.
On the whole, more men had perhaps escaped into the war than from it.
In the end one needs forbearance to get by in this world.
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.
States of profound happiness, like all other forms of intoxication, are apt to befuddle the wits; intense enjoyment of the present always makes one forget the past.