1. Cytaty
  2. Autorzy
  3. Stefan Zweig

Stefan Zweig cytaty
strona 2

Stefan Zweig – austriacki poeta, prozaik, dramaturg i tłumacz.

Urodził się w Wiedniu, w rodzinie pochodzenia żydowskiego. Jego ojciec był fabrykantem tekstylnym, matka zaś pochodziła z bankierskiej rodziny z Włoch. Studiował filozofię i historię sztuki w swym rodzinnym mieście, gdzie też związał się z ruchem Młodego Wiednia.

W czasie I wojny światowej pracował dla Archiwów Wojskowych w Wiedniu, z misją dla których przebywał w 1915 roku w Galicji. Ostatni rok wojny spędził w Szwajcarii. Doświadczenia wielkiej wojny białych ludzi skłoniły go do napisania antywojennego dramatu pt. Jeremiasz.

Głównym przedmiotem zainteresowania Zweiga jako pisarza była psychologia człowieka. Znajdował się on pod znacznym wpływem pracy Zygmunta Freuda. Ocenia się, że był dobrym znawcą ludzkiej psychiki, co znalazło odzwierciedlenie w jego twórczości. Wyraźne ślady jego pasji życiowej noszą m.in. liczne opowiadania .

Zweig z powodzeniem pisał też zbeletryzowane biografie. Najsłynniejszą z nich jest Maria Stuart, inna traktuje o Marii Antoninie.

Zweig był bardzo popularny jako pisarz w latach 20. i 30. XX wieku. Po jego śmierci zainteresowanie jego twórczością systematycznie spadało, choć nadal jest dość znany. We Francji pozostaje jednym z najczęściej czytanych autorów obcojęzycznych. W Polsce ukazały się m.in.: zbiór jego opowiadań , powieść Niecierpliwość serca oraz wspomniane już biografie – Marii Stuart i Marii Antoniny, a także Magellana. W 2012 r. nakładem Wydawnictwa W.A.B. ukazała się kolejna powieść pisarza Dziewczyna z poczty.

Zweig był przeciwnikiem faszyzmu i pacyfistą. W obliczu wojny wyemigrował w 1934 roku z Austrii. Następnie mieszkał w Wielkiej Brytanii, USA, a od roku 1941 w Brazylii, gdzie rok później popełnił wraz z żoną samobójstwo .

✵ 28. Listopad 1881 – 23. Luty 1942
Stefan Zweig Fotografia
Stefan Zweig: 112   Cytatów 0   Polubień

Stefan Zweig słynne cytaty

„Kto raz znalazł sam siebie, nie może już nic stracić na tym świecie. A kto raz zrozumiał człowieka w sobie – zrozumie wszystkich ludzi.”

Stefan Zweig książka Phantastische Nacht

Wer einmal sich selbst gefunden hat, kann nichts auf dieser Welt mehr verlieren. Und wer einmal den Menschen in sich begriffen, der begreift alle Menschen. (niem.)
Źródło: Phantastische Nacht: Erzählungen, wyd. S. Fischer, 1982, s. 243.

„Zamierzam opowiadać nie tyle o swoich własnych losach, ile o losach całego pokolenia współczesnej mi generacji, tak obarczonej brzemieniem historycznych przeznaczeń jak mało która w dziejach świata… O jedno tylko pierwszeństwo mógłbym się ubiegać: jako Austriak, jako Żyd, jako pisarz, jako humanista i pacyfista byłem zawsze tam, gdzie wstrząsy wywoływały najgroźniejsze skutki.”

Stefan Zweig

Źródło: Europa, XX wiek http://mbc.malopolska.pl/dlibra/doccontent?id=14910, rubryka Wśród książek, „Życie Literackie” nr 12, 23 marca 1958, s. 10.

„Młodym mężczyzną jest ten, kogo kobieta może uszczęśliwić lub unieszczęśliwić. Dojrzałym, kogo już nie może uszczęśliwić. Starym, kogo już nie może ani uszczęśliwić, ani unieszczęśliwić.”

Stefan Zweig

„Nieszczęście właściwie nie zmienia charakteru i nie stwarza w nim nowych rysów, ale uwypukla jjedynie predyspozycje z dawna w nim istniejące.”

Stefan Zweig

Źródło: Myślę, więc jestem. Aforyzmy, maksymy, sentencje, Czesława i Joachim Glenskowie (oprac.), op. cit., s. 353.

„Jakże często ludzie najbardziej do siebie podobni stają się najzacieklejszymi nieprzyjaciółmi!”

Stefan Zweig

Źródło: Myślę, więc jestem. Aforyzmy, maksymy, sentencje, Czesława i Joachim Glenskowie (oprac.), op. cit., s. 353.

„Gdy chodzi o modę, kobiety gotowe są ponieść każdą ofiarę.”

Stefan Zweig

Źródło: Myślę, więc jestem. Aforyzmy, maksymy, sentencje, Czesława i Joachim Glenskowie (oprac.), Antyk, Kęty 1993, s. 353.

Stefan Zweig: Cytaty po angielsku

“A human being will accept the strictest disciplinary measures with a better grace if he knows that they will fall with equal severity on his neighbor. Justice in some mysterious way makes up for violence.”

Help us translate this quote
Stefan Zweig książka Beware of Pity

Beware of Pity (1939)

“The organic fundamental error of humanism was that it desired to educate the common people (on whom it looked down) from its lofty stance instead of trying to understand them and to learn from them.”

Help us translate this quote
Stefan Zweig książka Erasmus of Rotterdam

Erasmus of Rotterdam (1934), p. 116, as translated by Marion Sonnenfeld

“But it is the way of youth that each fresh piece of knowledge of life should go to its head, and that once uplifted by an emotion it can never have enough of it.”

Help us translate this quote
Stefan Zweig książka Beware of Pity

Beware of Pity (1939)

“Gratitude fills us with rejoicing, for it so rarely finds frank expression; delicacy of feeling warms our hearts.”

Help us translate this quote
Stefan Zweig książka Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman

Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman (1927)

“Hairdressers are professional gossips; when only the hands are busy, the tongue is seldom still.”

Help us translate this quote
Stefan Zweig książka The Post Office Girl

The Post Office Girl (published posthumously in 1982)

“In the end one needs forbearance to get by in this world.”

Help us translate this quote
Stefan Zweig książka The Post Office Girl

The Post Office Girl (published posthumously in 1982)

“And I said to myself: From now on help anyone and everyone so far as it lies within your power. Cease to be apathetic, indifferent! Exalt yourself by devoting yourself to others, enrich yourself by making everyone's destiny your own, by enduring and understanding every facet of human suffering through your pity. And my heart, astonished at its own workings, quivered with gratitude to the sick girl whom I had hurt unwittingly and who, through her suffering, had taught me the creative magic of pity.”

Help us translate this quote
Stefan Zweig książka Beware of Pity

Beware of Pity (1939)

“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 passion, he at least knows that he is himself to blame for his sufferings. But he who is loved without reciprocating that love is lost beyond redemption, for it is not in his power to set a limit to that other's passion, to keep it within bounds, and the strongest will is reduced to impotence in the face of another's desire. Perhaps only a man can realize to the full the tragedy of such an undesired relationships; for him alone the necessity to resist t is at once martyrdom and guilt. For when a woman resists an unwelcome passion, she is obeying to the full the law of her sex; the initial gesture of refusal is, so to speak, a primordial instinct in every female, and even if she rejects the most ardent passion she cannot be called inhuman. But how disastrous it is when fate upsets the balance, when a woman so far overcomes her natural modesty as to disclose her passion to a man, when, without the certainty of its being reciprocated, she offers her love, and he, the wooed, remains cold and on the defensive! An insoluble tangle this, always; for not to return a woman's love is to shatter her pride, to violate her modesty. The man who rejects a woman's advances is bound to wound her in her noblest feelings. In vain, then, all the tenderness with which he extricates himself, useless all his polite, evasive phrases, insulting all his offers of mere friendship, once she has revealed her weakness! His resistance inevitably becomes cruelty, and in rejecting a woman's love he takes a load of guild upon his conscience, guiltless though he may be. Abominable fetters that can never be cast off! Only a moment ago you felt free, you belonged to yourself and were in debt to no one, and now suddenly you find yourself pursued, hemmed in, prey and object of the unwelcome desires of another. Shaken to the depths of your soul, you know that day and night someone is waiting for you, thinking of you, longing and sighing for you - a woman, a stranger. She wants, she demands, she desires you with every fibre of her being, with her body, with her blood. She wants your hands, your hair, your lips, your manhood, your night and your day, your emotions, your senses, and all your thought and dreams. She wants to share everything with you, to take everything from you, and to draw it in with her breath. Henceforth, day and night, whether you are awake or asleep, there is somewhere in the world a being who is feverish and wakeful and who waits for you, and you are the centre of her waking and her dreaming. It is in vain that you try not to think of her, of her who thinks always of you, in vain that you seek to escape, for you no longer dwell in yourself, but in her. Of a sudden a stranger bears your image within her as though she were a moving mirror - no, not a mirror, for that merely drinks in your image when you offer yourself willingly to it, whereas she, the woman, this stranger who loves you, she has absorbed you into her very blood. She carries you always within her, carries you about with her, no mater whither you may flee. Always you are imprisoned, held prisoner, somewhere else, in some other person, no longer yourself, no longer free and lighthearted and guiltless, but always hunted, always under an obligation, always conscious of this "thinking-of-you" as if it were a steady devouring flame. Full of hate, full of fear, you have to endure this yearning on the part of another, who suffers on your account; and I now know that it is the most senseless, the most inescapable, affliction that can befall a man to be loved against his will - torment of torments, and a burden of guilt where there is no guilt.”

Help us translate this quote
Stefan Zweig książka Beware of Pity

Beware of Pity (1939)

“Whatever a woman's reason may say, her feelings tell her the truth.”

Help us translate this quote
Stefan Zweig książka Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman

Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman (1927)

“Everywhere soldiering entails the same busily empty monotony; hour after hour is mapped out in accordance with inflexible, antediluvian regulations, and even one's leisure does not seem to offer much in the way of variety. In the officers' mess the same faces, the same conversation; at the cafe the same games of cards and billiards.”

Help us translate this quote
Stefan Zweig książka Beware of Pity

Beware of Pity (1939)

“He looked at her again, now with the vague abject shyness that older men often have with young women, as though asking their indulgence for no longer being young.”

Help us translate this quote
Stefan Zweig książka The Post Office Girl

The Post Office Girl (published posthumously in 1982)

“There is nothing that so raises a young man's self-esteem, that so contributes to the formation of his character as for him to find himself unexpectedly confronted with a task which he has to accomplish entirely on his own initiative and by his own efforts.”

Help us translate this quote
Stefan Zweig książka Beware of Pity

Beware of Pity (1939)

“The union of opposites, in so far as they are really complementary, always results in the most perfect harmony; and the seemingly incongruous is often the most natural.”

Help us translate this quote
Stefan Zweig książka Beware of Pity

Beware of Pity (1939)

“Only ambition is fired by the coincidences of success and easy accomplishment but nothing is quite as splendidly uplifting to the heart as the defeat of a human being who battles against the invincible superiority of fate. This is always the most grandiose of all tragedies, one sometimes created by a dramatist but created thousands of times by life.”

Help us translate this quote
Stefan Zweig

Stellar Moments in Human History [Sternstunden der Menschheit] (1953), p. 280, as translated by Marion Sonnenfeld

“When one does another person an injustice, in some mysterious way it does one good to discover (or to persuade oneself) that the injured party has also behaved badly or unfairly in some little matter or other; it is always a relief to the conscience if one can apportion some measure of guilt to the person one has betrayed.”

Help us translate this quote
Stefan Zweig książka Beware of Pity

Beware of Pity (1939)

“Something indefinite is always worse than something definite, a strong fear that doesn't last very long is easier than one that's nebulous but doesn't go away.”

Help us translate this quote
Stefan Zweig książka The Post Office Girl

The Post Office Girl (published posthumously in 1982)

“There is no understanding of the past without personal experience, without reliving it in imagination. A word is nothing unless it has values and an atmosphere, unless you grasp its historical significance.”

Help us translate this quote
Stefan Zweig

Confusion of Feelings or Confusion: The Private Papers of Privy Councillor R. Von D (1927)

“Once shame touches your being at any point, even the most distant nerve is implicated, whether you know it or not; any fleeting encounter or random thought will rake up the anguish and add to it.”

Help us translate this quote
Stefan Zweig książka The Post Office Girl

The Post Office Girl (published posthumously in 1982)

“Our decisions are to a much greater extent dependent on our desire to conform to the standards of our class and environment than we are inclined to admit. A considerable proportion of our reasoning is merely an automatic function, so to speak, of influences and impressions which have become part of us, and anyone who has been brought up from childhood in the stern school of military discipline is particularly apt to succumb to the hypnotic and compulsive force exercised by an order of word of command; a force which is logically entirely incomprehensible and which irresistibly undermines his will. In the straitjacket of a uniform, even though fully aware of their absurdity, an officer will carry out his instructions lie a sleep-walker, unresistingly and almost unconsciously.”

Help us translate this quote
Stefan Zweig książka Beware of Pity

Beware of Pity (1939)

“The heart is able to bury deep and well what is urgently desires to forget.”

Help us translate this quote
Stefan Zweig książka Beware of Pity

Beware of Pity (1939)

“For one who is having no personal experience, the passionate disquiet of others is at any rate a titillation of the nerves, like seeing a play or listening to music.”

Help us translate this quote
Stefan Zweig książka Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman

Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman (1927)

“When a man has a passion for a woman, and when that passion is of such a nature that he regards her with reverent admiration as an image of purity, none the less, in the unconscious, his desires turn towards bodily fulfillment, none the less the goal of physical possession is prefigured in the deepest recesses of his imagination. But when the passion is confined to the realm of the spirit, and, in that realm, is a man's passion for a man, how can it seek fulfillment? Unrestingly, the fancy wanders over the honored form, flaming up again and again to fresh ecstasy, but never finding repose in a last surrender. It flows on without pause in a current that can never empty the reservoir from which it comes. This passion is insatiable, as the spirit invariably is.”

Help us translate this quote
Stefan Zweig

Confusion of Feelings or Confusion: The Private Papers of Privy Councillor R. Von D (1927)

“To grow old means to be rid of anxieties about the past.”

Help us translate this quote
Stefan Zweig książka Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman

Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman (1927)

“It is only at first that pity, like morphine, is a solace to the invalid, a remedy, a drug, but unless you know the correct dosage and when to stop, it becomes a virulent poison. The first few injections do good, they soothe, they deaden the pain. But the devil of it is that the organism, the body, just like the soul, has an uncanny capacity for adaptation. Just as the nervous system cries out for more and more morphine, so do the emotions cry out for more and more pity, in the end more than one can give. Inevitably there comes a moment when one has to say 'no', and then one must not mind the other person's hating one more for this ultimate refusal than if one had never helped him at all. Yes, my dear Lieutenant, one has got to keep one's pity properly in check, or it does far more harm than any amount of indifference — we doctors know that, and so do judges and myrmidons of the law and pawn-brokers; if they were all to give way to their pity, this world of ours would stand still - a dangerous thing pity, a dangerous thing!”

Help us translate this quote
Stefan Zweig książka Beware of Pity

Beware of Pity (1939)

“Pain is a coward. He flees when faced by the irresistible power of the will-to-live, which is more strongly rooted in the flesh than the intensest passion is rooted in the spirit.”

Help us translate this quote
Stefan Zweig książka Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman

Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman (1927)

“As we grow old, we become aware that death is drawing near; his shadow falls across our path; the realities of life seem less crude than of yore, they touch our senses less intimately, and they lose much of their poignancy.”

Help us translate this quote
Stefan Zweig książka Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman

Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman (1927)

“The subject of a rumor is always the last to hear it.”

Help us translate this quote
Stefan Zweig książka The Post Office Girl

The Post Office Girl (published posthumously in 1982)

“A man of limited vision is hard to bear with in any sphere in which he is invested with power, but intolerable in the army.”

Help us translate this quote
Stefan Zweig książka Beware of Pity

Beware of Pity (1939)

Podobni autorzy

Elias Canetti Fotografia
Elias Canetti 58
poeta i dramaturg austriacki, noblista
Gabriele d'Annunzio Fotografia
Gabriele d'Annunzio 8
włoski poeta, dramaturg i prozaik
Tennessee Williams Fotografia
Tennessee Williams 14
dramaturg amerykański
Rainer Maria Rilke Fotografia
Rainer Maria Rilke 38
poeta austriacki
Samuel Beckett Fotografia
Samuel Beckett 13
irlandzki dramaturg, prozaik i eseista, noblista
Thomas Stearns Eliot Fotografia
Thomas Stearns Eliot 18
poeta, dramaturg i eseista angielski
Borys Pasternak Fotografia
Borys Pasternak 71
rosyjski poeta i prozaik
George Bernard Shaw Fotografia
George Bernard Shaw 99
dramaturg i prozaik irlandzki, noblista
Bertolt Brecht Fotografia
Bertolt Brecht 49
niemiecki pisarz, dramaturg, teoretyk teatru, inscenizator …
William Butler Yeats Fotografia
William Butler Yeats 13
poeta i dramaturg irlandzki, noblista