371 Quotes by Stefan Zweig

That... that was how I spent the day, just waiting, waiting, waiting... but waiting like a man running amok, senselessly, like an animal, with that headlong, direct persistance.

Being sent to bed is a terrible command to all children, because it means the most public possible humiliation in front of adults, the confession that they bear the stigma of childhood, of being small and having a child’s need for sleep.

For the first time in my life I had received an assurance that I had been of use to someone on this earth, and my astonishment at the thought that I, a commonplace, unsophisticated young officer, should really have the power to make someone else so happy knew no bounds.

No envy is more mean than that of small-minded beings when they see a neighbor lifted, as though borne aloft by angels, out of the dull drudgery of their common existence; petty spirits are more ready to forgive a prince the most fabulous wealth than a fellow-sufferer beneath the same yoke the smallest degree of freedom.

One goes wherever one is still admitted. Someone told me that I might be able to get a visa for Haiti or San Domingo here.

Books are my kingdom. And here I seek to reign as absolute lord.

Neither she nor he was the same any more, yet they were searching for each other in a vain effort, fleeing one another, persisting in disembodied, powerless efforts like those black spectres at their feet.

I am an impatient, temperamental reader. Anything long-winded, high-flown or gushing irritates me, so does everything that is vague and indistinct, in fact anything that unnecessarily holds the reader up, whether in a novel, a biography or an intellectual argument.

Montaigne is the sworn enemy of all responsibility. He strives to dodge decisions. Solitary sage in a time of mass fanaticism, he seeks seclusion and flight.