Stefan Zweig Quotes

As one gets older, this question of death, becomes more vexing and urgent.

The understanding that we reach a point where we stop becoming something and start ending as something. That comes at different times in different points in different people's lives, and obviously there are lots of people who experience the presence of death much more keenly and much earlier than I did. But we all come to grips with it eventually.

It doesn't take that many years for a kid to realise that they're going to die. It's always there in the back of their mind the rest of their lives.

I never have a thematic intention at the outset. The story informs the theme for me rather than the other way around. But as it happens... this is, at least to a degree, about getting old and the rapid passage of our lives.

A 20-year-old is never going to give death a second thought, whereas someone in their late 50s is going to think about it... I don't know, 20 times a day.

Everyone knows they re going to die,' he said again, 'but nobody believes it. If we did, we would do things differently.

and realized that death was not only a permanent probability, as he had always believed, but an immediate reality.

Life, struck sharp on death, Makes awful lightning.

When death comes too near, comedy and tragedy fall silent.

Knowing you are alive is watching on every side your generation's short time falling away as fast as rivers drop through air, and feeling it hit.

The years have gone by quickly. Death sits in the seat next to me. We make a lovely couple.

As we reach the crest of life and look at the path before us, we apprehend that the path no longer ascends but slopes downward toward decline and diminishment. From that point on, concerns about death are never far from mind.

Against other things it is possible to obtain security, but when it comes to death we human beings all live in an unwalled city.

We know that death never skips or spares anybody and that no one ever returns. And yet we go on like the blind, who see as little at midday as in the pitch-dark night. We do not take these examples to heart; we do not realize that today or tomorrow our turn will come.

After 40 (old age for most of man's history), one should strive to be more or less packed and ready to go were the end call to come.

I read once, somewhere, that the way you know you've grown up is when your future death becomes a stone in your shoe: when you feel it with every step.

You do become more aware of your mortality as you get older. When you're little, you jump on any wild horse. Then you get a little bit older and realize how fragile life is, and you're more careful.

I was sitting at home and had a profound experience. I experienced, in all of my Being, that someday I was going to die, and it wouldn't be like it had been happening, almost dying but somehow staying alive, but I would just die! And two things would happen right before I died: I would regret my entire life; I would want to live it over again. This terrified me. The thought that I would live my entire life, look at it and realize I blew it forced me to do something with my life.

Man reckons with immortality, and forgets to reckon with death.

I don't mind pointing out some of the failings of old age, because we are all headed in that direction, unless of course we take our own lives before we become a burden. I'm not advocating suicide, oh wait, I guess I am.

Death itself is less painful when it comes upon us unawares than the bare contemplation of it, even when danger is far distant.

The only real change in life comes with the consciousness of old age.

I am young now and can look upon my body and soul with pride. But it will be mangled soon, and later it will begin to disintegrate, and then I shall die, and die conclusively. How can we face such a fact, and not live in fear?

You only die once, but you will be dead for a very long time.