Stefan Zweig citáty

„Šťastie tvojho života záleží na druhu tvojích myšlienok.“

„Nič neprekvapí ľudí viac ako zdravý rozum a jasné jednanie.“

„Bez spomienok na sklamanie, trpkosti a bolesti prežitého života smrť by bola ešte ťažšia.“

„Ruža sa stáva ozajstnou až vtedy, keď vpije do seba obdivný pohľad človeka.“

„Pravdy je možné šíriť, ale nie je možné ich vnucovať.“

„Vášeň je viac ako bytie, zmysel života viac ako život.“

„Jedine to nás obdarí milosťou, čo nám pomáha zabudnúť na temné stránky života a na ošklivosť pravdy.“

„Každý ozajstný umelec prežije väčšiu polovicu svojho života v osamelosti a tvorivom zápase. - Každý zápas o nedosiahnuteľné sa stáva hrdinstvom a všetko hrdinské smeruje k svojej najposvätnejšej konzekvencii, k zániku.“

„Každý život v konečnom dôsledku jestvuje vďaka zmierlivosti a zhovievavosti.“

„Kto sa v živote ustavične dotýka smrti, spozná príšernejšiu hrôzu ako normálny človek; kto cíti netelesnú bezváhovosť, spoznáva väčšie slasti ako ten, kto sa nikdy neodpútal od zeme.“

„Každá pravda, ktorá sa nedomyslí do konca, nemá žiadnu etickú hodnotu.“

„Láska už samotnou svojou povahou vyžaduje vždy viac ako všetko.“

„Sen je klamár pravdy.“

„Vyvolený človek je označený ako strom v nekonečnom lese - červeným znamením pre sekeru.“

„Dejiny sveta bohužiaľ nie sú také, ako sa väčšinou podávajú, len dejinami ľudskej odvahy, ale dejinami ľudskej zbabelosti.“

„Nezávislosť jestvuje len v jednotlivcovi, nenásobí sa masami a nerastie ani knihami a vzdelaním.“

„Prečo sú tí najhlúpejší vždy zároveň najväčší dobráci?“

„Slabosť sily sa skrýva v tom, že verí iba sile.“

„Človek nadobúda novú veľkosť iba novými meradlami.“

„Jediné, v čom má človek prevahu nad zvieraťom, je to, že môže zomrieť, aj keď chce, nielen vtedy, keď musí.“

„Kde sa talent len pohráva, tam je génius smrteľne vážny. Nikdy sa neuspokojí s epizódnou úlohou, ale žiada si sám pre seba celé javisko sveta.“

„Kto jednou našiel sám sebe, nemôže už nikdy nič v tomto svete stratiť.“

„Kto rozumie psychológii, a tá sa mu stane vášňou, vníma svoju vlastnú existenciu ako najväčšiu slasť.“

„Ľudský duch z času na čas potrebuje démonickú osobnosť, ktorá sa vzbúri proti konvenčnosti myslenia a monotónnosti morálky.“

„Najhoršie na tomto svete nezaviňuje zloba a brutálnosť, ale takmer vždy len slabosť.“

„Najpríjemnejším divadlom pre človeka nezúčastneného je vzrušenie druhých.“

„Najvznešenejšou odvahou ducha je vždy hrdinstvo bez brutálnosti.“

„Pravá viera je ohnivým prúdom medzi súhlasom a negáciou, medzi oboma pólmi sveta.“

„Protokol je vždycky dobrý. Když nepomůže, tak neuškodí, a k miliónům nesmyslným papírů přibude jen jeden arch navíc.“

„Rovnako ako človek potrebuje božstvo, aby nezanikol, aj božstvo, aby bolo skutočné, potrebuje človeka.“

„Sloboda nie je mŕtva, kým žije aspoň v jednom srdci.“

„Sme vděčni velkému muži, ukáže-li nám své slabosti, které ho činí lidským.“

„Súcit je príliš vlažný sesterský cit a len smutná náhrada skutočnej lásky.“

„Tí, ktorí všetko poznajú, všetkému rozumejú, a práve preto nesúdia, neodsudzujú ani nerozmýšľajú o veciach, ale iba im s vďakou veria.“

„Veľký človek nesmie byť pánom, ale fanatickým poddaným svojho osudu.“

„Život sa zmieruje s ideálom; síce nie zmätene a márnotratne, ale striedmo a sústredene na najvyšší cieľ.“

„Počas príprav na vojnu vládnuci najhorlivejšie hovoria o mieri, kým nedokončia mobilizáciu vojsk.“

„Spoločnosť je vždy najkrutejšia k tým, ktorí prezrádzajú jej tajomstvo a upozorňujú, že svojou falošnosťou sa dopúšťa zločinu voči ľudskej prirodzenosti."
(Stefan Zweig o dehonestácii nevydatých žien za Rakúsko-Uhorska).- Svet včerajška-“

“Besides, isn't it confoundedly easy to think you're a great man if you aren't burdened with the slightest idea that Rembrandt, Beethoven, Dante or Napoleon ever lived?”

“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.”

“The vast power of money, mighty when you have it and even mightier when you don't, with its divine gift of freedom and the demonic fury it unleashes on those forced to do without it — they felt this as never before and were filled with bitter rage when, in the dark of the early morning, they saw the brightly lit windows and knew that those glowing gold curtains gave shelter and freedom to hundreds of thousands of people, men with women they desired, while they themselves were homeless, plodding blindly through the streets, through the rain; it was cruel as only the sea could be cruel — the sea in which a person can die of thirst.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“The strength of a love is always misjudged if we evaluate it by its immediate cause and not the stress that went before it, the dark and hollow space full of disappointment and loneliness that precedes all the great events in the heart's history.”

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

“How terrible this darkness was, how bewildering, and yet mysteriously beautiful!”

“All I know is that I shall be alone again. There is nothing more terrible than to be alone among human beings.”

“In chess, as a purely intellectual game, where randomness is excluded, - for someone to play against himself is absurd…
It is as paradoxical, as attempting to jump over his own shadow.”

“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.”

“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.”

“All the pale horses of the apocalypse have stormed through my life, revolution, starvation, devaluation of currency and terror, epidemics, emigration; I have seen the great ideologies of the masses grow and spread out before my eyes. Fascism in Italy, National Socialism in Germany, Bolshevism in Russia, and, above all, that archpestilence, nationalism, which poisoned our flourishing European culture.”

“Gratitude is a rare frame of mind; and those who are grateful can seldom find a way to express what they feel. They are overwhelmed by silence; are shamefaced; and, sometimes, actually try to hide their feelings.”

“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.”

“Everything in life that deviates from the straight and, so to speak, normal line, makes people first curious and then indignant.”

“I have loved you ever since. I know full well that you are used to hearing women say that they love you. But I am sure that no one else has ever loved you so lavishly, with such doglike fidelity, with such devotion, as I did and do. Nothing can equal the unnoticed love of a child. It is hopeless and subservient; it is patient and passionate; it is something which the covetous love of a grown woman, the love that is unconsciously exacting, can never be. Non but lonely children can cherish such a passion. The others will squander their feelings in companionship, will dissipate them in confidential talks. They have heard and read much of love, and they know that it comes to all. They play with it like a toy; they flaunt it as a boy flaunts his first cigarette. But I had no confidant; I had been neither taught nor warned; I was inexperience and unsuspecting.”

“After experiencing profound emotions, one sleeps profoundly.”

“The word 'service' comes from serving, and serving means being dependent.”

“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.”

“In my youth and comparative inexperience I had always regarded the yearning and pangs of love as the worst torture that could afflict the human heart. At this moment, however, I began to realize that there was another and perhaps grimmer torture than that of longing and desiring: that of being loved against one's will and of being unable to defend oneself against the urgency of another's passion; of seeing another human being seared by the flame of her desire and of having to look impotently, lacking the power, the capacity, the strength to pluck her from the flames. He who is himself crossed in love is able from time to time to master his passion, for he is not the creature but the creator of his own misery; and if a lover is unable to control his passim, he at least knows that he is himself to blame for his sufferings.”

“Why is it that the stupidest people are always the most good-natured?”

“I don't have a trace of moral scruple, when it comes to the state I feel completely free. It's committed such terrible crimes against us all, against our generation, that we have a right to anything. I'm not worried about doing it damage, we'll just be recovering some damages for our entire battered generation. Who taught me how to steal, who made me do it, if not the state? Commandeering, that's the word they used during the war, or expropriating — Versailles called it reclamation. Who taught us how to cheat if not the state — how else would we know what money saved up by three generations could become worthless in a mere two weeks, that families could be swindled out of pastures, houses, and fields that had been theirs for a hundred years? Even if I kill someone, who trained me to do it? Six months on the drill field and then years at the front! We have an excellent case against the state, by God, we'll win in every court. It can never pay off its terrible debt, never give back what it took from us. Once there might have been a reason to have some qualms, back when the state was a good custodian, thrifty, decent, proper. Now that it's behaved like a hoodlum, we have the right to be hoodlums too.”

“Confidences are always risky: a secret entrusted to a stranger make him less of one. You've given away something of yourself, given him the advantage.”

“The only respect in which man is superior to animals is that he can die when he wants to, not just when he has to. Maybe it's the one freedom you can always count on — the freedom to throw your life away.”

“One's emotional state is always determined by the oddest and most accidental things, and it is precisely the most superficial factors that often fortify or diminish our courage.”