Quote

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.

Stefan Zweig

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Like
Present
Forget
Intoxication
Happiness
Wits
Makes
Wit
Form
Enjoyment
Past
Intense
States
Forms
Always
Profound

More quotes by Stefan Zweig

Image
Why is it that the stupidest people are always the most good-natured?
Stefan Zweig
Image
In some mysterious way, once one has gained an insight into human nature, that insight grows from day to day, and he to whom it has given to experience vicariously even one single form of earthly suffering acquires, by reason of this tragic lesson, an understanding of all its forms, even those most foreign to him, and apparently abnormal.
Stefan Zweig
Image
The idea of Jewish unity, of a plan, an organization, unfortunately exists only in the brains of Hitler and Streicher.
Stefan Zweig
Image
Sometimes I have the feeling that you are not quite aware--and this honors you--of the historical greatness of your position, that you think too modestly about yourself. Everything you do is destined to be of historic significance. One day, your letters, your decisions, will belong to all mankind, like those of Wagner and Brahms.
Stefan Zweig
Image
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.
Stefan Zweig
Image
And fate? No one alive has ever escaped it, neither brave man nor coward, I tell you-- it's born with us the day that we are born.
Stefan Zweig
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The instinct for self-deception in human beings makes them try to banish from their minds dangers of which at bottom they are perfectly aware by declaring them non-existent.
Stefan Zweig
Image
When they are preparing for war, those who rule by force speak most copiously about peace until they have completed the mobilization process.
Stefan Zweig
Image
But, in history, practical usefulness never determines the moral value of an achievement. Only the person who increases the knowledge humanity has about itself and enhances its creative consciousness permanently enriches humanity.
Stefan Zweig
Image
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
Image
One can run away from anything but oneself.
Stefan Zweig
Image
I am not fooling myself with dreams of immortality, know how relative all literature is, don't have any faith in mankind, derive enjoyment from too few things. Sometimes these crises give birth to something worth while, sometimes they simply plunge one deeper into depression, but, of course, it is all part of the same thing.
Stefan Zweig
Image
But don't despise error. When touched by genius, when led by chance, the most superior truth can come into being from even the most foolish error. The important inventions which have been brought about in every realm of science from false hypotheses number in the hundreds, indeed in the thousands.
Stefan Zweig
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
It would be foolhardy to count on the conscience of the world.
Stefan Zweig