"In history as in human life, regret does not bring back a lost moment and a thousand years will not recover something lost in a single hour."
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Quote collection
Stefan Zweig quotes (page 1 of 8)
147 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"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."
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"Truth to tell, we are all criminals if we remain silent."
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"It is never until one realizes that one means something to others that one feels there is any point or purpose in one's own existence."
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"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."
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"In history, the moments during which reason and reconciliation prevail are short and fleeting."
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"There is nothing more vindictive, nothing more underhanded, than a little world that would like to be a big one."
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"All I know is that I shall be alone again. There is nothing more terrible than to be alone among human beings."
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"There are two kinds of pity. One, the weak and sentimental kind, which is really no more than the heart's impatience to be rid as quickly as possible of the painful emotion aroused by the sight of another's unhappiness, that pity which is not compassion, but only an instinctive desire to fortify one's own soul agains the sufferings of another; and the other, the only one at counts, the unsentimental but creative kind, which knows what it is about and is determined to hold out, in patience and forbearance, to the very limit of its strength and even beyond."
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"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."
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"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."
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"Only the misfortune of exile can provide the in-depth understanding and the overview into the realities of the world."
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"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."
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"Hairdressers are professional gossips; when only the hands are busy, the tongue is seldom still."
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"Only that which points the human spirit beyond its own limitations into what is universally human gives the individual strength superior to his own. Only in suprahuman demands which can hardly be fulfilled do human beings and peoples feel their true and sacred measure."
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"Only the person who has experienced light and darkness, war and peace, rise and fall, only that person has truly experienced life."
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"Those whom fate has dealt hard knocks remain vulnerable for ever afterwards."
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"As nature requires whirlwinds and cyclones to release its excessive force in a violent revolt against its own existence, so the spirit requires a demonic human being from time to time whose excessive strength rebels against the community of thought and the monotony of moralityonly by looking at those beyond its limits does humanity come to know its own utmost limits."
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"When they are preparing for war, those who rule by force speak most copiously about peace until they have completed the mobilization process."
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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."
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