Stefan Zweig

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.

One must be convinced to convince, to have enthusiasm to stimulate the others.

Hairdressers are professional gossips when only the hands are busy the tongue is seldom still.

It is better to be the servant of God than the ruler of men.

Only the misfortune of exile can provide the in-depth understanding and the overview into the realities of the world.

It would be foolhardy to count on the conscience of the world.

Now I am discovering the world once more. England has widened my horizon.

Often the presence of mind and energy of a person remote from the spotlight decide the course of history for centuries to come.

It is better to pay tribute of gold to the enemy than tribute of blood in war.

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.

Every wave, regardless of how high and forceful it crests, must eventually collapse within itself.

Every wave, regardless of how high and forceful it crests, must eventually collapse within itself.

There is no sense to a sacrifice after you come to feel that it is a sacrifice.

Only the person who has experienced light and darkness, war and peace, rise and fall, only that person has truly experienced life.

Fate is never too generous even to its favorites. Rarely do the gods grant a mortal more than one immortal deed.

The free, independent spirit who commits himself to no dogma and will not decide in favor of any party has no homestead on earth.

When they are preparing for war, those who rule by force speak most copiously about peace until they have completed the mobilization process.

The idea of Jewish unity, of a plan, an organization, unfortunately exists only in the brains of Hitler and Streicher.

No guilt is forgotten so long as the conscience still knows of it.

In history, the moments during which reason and reconciliation prevail are short and fleeting.

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.

Today, for a Jew who writes in the German language, it is totally impossible to make a living. In no group do I see as much misery, disappointment, desperation and hopelessness as in Jewish writers who write in German.