Stefan Zweig

“ But what a dreadful secret it must be that drove grown-up people to such lengths, to lie to him, a child, and to steal away like criminals! In the books he had read, men deceived and murdered one another for money, power, empire, but what was the motive here? What were his mother and the baron after? Why did they hide from him? What were they, with their lies, trying to conceal? He racked his brain for answers to the riddle. Vaguely he divined that this secret was the bolt which, when unlocked, opened the door to let out childhood, and to master it meant to be grown up, to be a man at last. ”

“ We exist to bear its light, to defend its light, to rally round it all the strayed sheep of mankind. Our role, our duty, is to be a center of stability, to point out the pole star, amid the whirlwind of passions in the night. Among these passions of pride and mutual destruction, we make no choice; we reject them all. Truth only do we honor; truth that is free, frontierless, limitless; truth that knows naught of the prejudices of race or caste. Not that we lack interest in humanity. For humanity we work; but for humanity as a whole. We know nothing of peoples. ”

“ So, too, a tree becomes to him the image of the eternal renewal of strength, of resistance to the hardness of winter and of fate, of the will to new beauty in the spring. A mountain no longer appears to him as a chance raising of the landscape, but a great and mighty thing in whose keeps secrets lie, ores, and the source of springs, from whose summit, however, our eyes can sweep the world. The forest interprets itself to him as the labyrinth of a thousand paths, and as the many-voiced anthem of life: everything in nature becomes a freshening and a vivifying of this vitality. ”

“ He was a poet who in his works became one with the poetry of life, the sounds of the forest, the kiss of the wind, the rustling of the reeds and the voice of the dusk of evening. Humanly he was like us who love him. He was one of those who, no matter how great a chaos they have made of their own life, are yet inappeasable, and drink the stranger's pain and the stranger's bliss in the precious cup of glorious poetry. They manifold their being and their emotions because of a blind and uncreative yearning for the universal and infinity. ”

“ A sort of sultry presentiment touched Edgar’s alarm with a shudder that was sensual and pleasant.
The couple stayed thus a minute or so, and then the gravel crunched under their tread again, and the sound of their footsteps died away in the darkness.
A tremor went through Edgar. His blood whirled hot through his veins, and all of a sudden he felt unbearably alone in this bewildering darkness, and the need came upon him with elemental force for the sound of a friend’s voice, an embrace, a bright room, people he loved. ”

“ I say unto you, people of Jerusalem, that war is a fierce and evil beast, one that devours the flesh of the strong and sucks the marrow of the mighty, crushing towns in its jaws and trampling the land beneath its hoofs. Those who awaken it, shall not again lay it to sleep; and he who draws the sword, is like to perish by the sword. Woe, therefore, to the contentious man who quarrels when there is no need, for he shall come out upon one way, and flee upon seven. Woe to those who murder peace with the words of their mouth. ”

“ While other poets have grown ever more lifeless and languid, ever more secluded and disheartened, Verhaeren's voice has grown ever more resonant and vigorous, like an organ indeed, full of reverence and the mystical power of sublime prayer. A spirit positively religious, not of despondency, however, but of confidence and joy, breathes from this music of his, freshening and quickening the blood, till the world takes on brighter and more animated and more generous colours, and our vitality, fired by the fever of his verse, flashes with a richer and younger and more virile flame. ”

“ He sees his fame growing like a great cathedral, and feels it be to something remote from himself. He who was an aimless stormer, is now a leader; but his own goal does not become clear to him until the sonorous waves of death encompass him, and he floats away into the vast ocean of music, into eternal peace.
What makes Jean Christophe's struggle supremely heroic is that he aspires solely towards the greatest, towards life as a whole. This striving man has to upbuild everything for himself; his art, his freedom, his faith, his God, his truth. ”

“ He who has drunk his fill of blood, shall be drowned in blood; he who has battened on the flesh of the nations, shall himself soon become food for worms! Hearken! A wind is rising against Babylon, and a tempest is about to break over Nineveh! Numbered are the days of Ashur. Drawn is the sword, and it hangs over thee, thy people, and thy realm. Thou art greedy for news of that which is to come. Learn, O Nebuchadnezzar, that Ashur is ripe for destruction; the measure of thine iniquity is full. ”