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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.

Stefan Zweig

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Stefan Zweig
Age: 60 †
Born: 1881
Born: November 28
Died: 1942
Died: February 22
Biographer
Essayist
Historian
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Prosaist
Translator
Writer
Vienna
Austria
Book
Oneself
Inexorable
Touch
Ceased
Fate
Oblivion
Books
Defend
Lives
Breath
Makes
Breaths
Keep
Fellows
Order
Thus
Transitoriness

More quotes by Stefan Zweig

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Whilst all the land was ringed with bristling arms And flames laid waste our world, All that was left me was a little garden And thou within it, my beloved, my comrade.
Stefan Zweig
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There is nothing more vindictive, nothing more underhanded, than a little world that would like to be a big one.
Stefan Zweig
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It remains an irrefragable law of history that contemporaries are denied a recognition of the early beginnings of the great movements which determine their times.
Stefan Zweig
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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
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We can't forever be spending our lives paying for political follies that never gave us anything but always took from us, and I amcontent with the narrowest metes and bounds provided I have peace and quiet for work.
Stefan Zweig
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Often the presence of mind and energy of a person remote from the spotlight decide the course of history for centuries to come.
Stefan Zweig
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Ah, how fatefully swift is the move from one feeling to another.
Stefan Zweig
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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
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It would be foolhardy to count on the conscience of the world.
Stefan Zweig
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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
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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.
Stefan Zweig
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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
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On the whole, more men had perhaps escaped into the war than from it.
Stefan Zweig
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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
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Names have a mysterious transforming power. Like a ring on a finger, a name may at first seem merely accidental, committing you to nothing but before you realize its magical power, it's gotten under your skin, become part of you and your destiny.
Stefan Zweig
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The transformation of the impossible into reality is always the mark of a demonic will. The only way to recognize a military genius is by the fact that, during the war, he will mock the rules of warfare and will employ creative improvisation instead of tested methods and he will do so at the right moment.
Stefan Zweig
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Every wave, regardless of how high and forceful it crests, must eventually collapse within itself.
Stefan Zweig
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Formerly man had only a body and a soul. Now he needs a passport as well for without it he will not be treated like a human being.
Stefan Zweig
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Something indefinite is always worse than something definite, a strong fear that doesn't last very long is easier than one that's nebulous but doesn't go away.
Stefan Zweig
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Why is it that the stupidest people are always the most good-natured?
Stefan Zweig