Stefan Zweig's best-known quotes
The top 3 according to 29 votes from people: She was still too young to know that life gives nothing for free and that everything fate grants has a secret price on it. · Only distance wins you back to yourself! · What is the point of living if the wind behind our shoes already blows away our last trace?. (Updated Apr 6, 2026.)
From 'No one we love is ever gone' to the lost passport in The World of Yesterday: Stefan Zweig's best-known lines from his plays, stories, biographies and memoirs, with their source.
Automatically translated (original in Deutsch). See the original
Top 12
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1
She was still too young to know that life gives nothing for free and that everything fate grants has a secret price on it.
Marie Antoinette (1932).
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2
Only distance wins you back to yourself!
'Hymn to Travel', poems (1924).
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3
What is the point of living if the wind behind our shoes already blows away our last trace?
'Mendel the Bibliophile' (1929).
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4
The day I lost my passport I discovered, at fifty-eight, that losing one's homeland means more than losing a patch of land.
The World of Yesterday (1942).
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5
Whoever sets himself goals walks past chance.
Adepts in Self-Portraiture (1928), Casanova.
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6
No one we love is ever gone. Love is an eternal present.
Legend of a Life (1919).
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7
A person sworn to politics no longer belongs to himself.
Mary, Queen of Scots (1935).
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8
But fate gives more to the impudent than to the industrious, more gladly to the coarse than to the patient.
Adepts in Self-Portraiture (1928), Casanova.
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9
Elizabeth the realist wins in history; Mary Stuart the romantic, in poetry and legend.
Mary, Queen of Scots (1935).
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10
Mary Stuart is less afraid of dying than Elizabeth is of killing her.
Mary, Queen of Scots (1935).
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11
Nothing made the German people so embittered, so full of hatred, so ripe for Hitler as the inflation.
The World of Yesterday (1942).
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12
No artist is an artist without interruption for all twenty-four hours of his day.
Decisive Moments in History (1927), foreword.
How is this ranking ordered? By people's votes: each ▲ adds a point and each ▼ takes one away. Anyone can vote and add what is missing.
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Comments (6)
Die Welt von Gestern sollte Pflichtlektüre in der Schule sein. Der Satz mit dem Pass trifft einen jedes Mal.
Schachnovelle fehlt mir hier ein bisschen, aber da gibt es wohl keinen so zitierfähigen Satz.
Sternstunden der Menschheit war mein erstes Zweig-Buch, mit 15. Danach alles von ihm gelesen.
„Niemand ist fort, den man liebt“ stand auf der Traueranzeige meiner Oma. Wusste gar nicht, dass das von Zweig ist.
Maria Stuart hab ich im Urlaub gelesen und konnte nicht aufhören. Zweig konnte Biografien schreiben wie Krimis.
Der Satz über die Inflation ist erschreckend aktuell, finde ich.