Quotes by Stefan Zweig

• 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.
• One must be convinced to convince, to have enthusiasm to stimulate the others.
• Fate is never too generous even to its favorites. Rarely do the gods grant a mortal more than one immortal deed.
• In history, the moments during which reason and reconciliation prevail are short and fleeting.
• It would be foolhardy to count on the conscience of the world.
• 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.
• 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.
• Only the person who has experienced light and darkness, war and peace, rise and fall, only that person has truly experienced life.
• The free, independent spirit who commits himself to no dogma and will not decide in favor of any party has no homestead on earth.
• The idea of Jewish unity, of a plan, an organization, unfortunately exists only in the brains of Hitler and Streicher.
• There is no sense to a sacrifice after you come to feel that it is a sacrifice.
• 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.
• When they are preparing for war, those who rule by force speak most copiously about peace until they have completed the mobilization process.
• Every wave, regardless of how high and forceful it crests, must eventually collapse within itself.
• Only the misfortune of exile can provide the in-depth understanding and the overview into the realities of the world.