Stefan Zweig Quotes

He thought others were small; that was his greatness.

There's a line between being egotistical and being genius or great.

I like France, where everybody thinks he's Napoleon--down here everybody thinks he's Christ.

Every author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast.

Your ego can become an obstacle to your work. If you start believing in your greatness, it is the death of your creativity.

I'm not great enough to be humble.

Just when you are most desirous of being deemed great, innumerable little things are sure to happen which not only reduce you to your true dimensions but bring you below them

Most of the characteristics which make for success in writing are precisely those which we are all taught to repress ... the firm belief that you are an important person, that you are a lot smarter than most people, and that your ideas are so damned important that everybody should listen to you.

If I started thinking too much about how influential I've been, then I'd be more of a turd than I already am.

When you're young, you kind of take yourself seriously, and you think, like, "People need to see what I can do." And it's so laughable, especially with actors.

There is no limit to the vanity of this world. Each spoke in the wheel thinks the whole strength of the wheel depends upon it.

What makes me angry is the idea that people would be going to a movie because of what I said about it. It makes me feel, I don't know, arrogant, self-important, self-aggrandizing, whatever. Like I'm being used.

I don't feel the least humble before the vastness of the heavens.

Words and ideas can change or influence the mind just like music can - yes, like a spell. Regarding the effect of my "spells" I think it varies; my music communicates with some, and I think it has had a positive influence on the minds of those who like it. I hope it helped them see the world from a different perspective.

I had fooled myself into thinking that I was something important to the rest of the world.

I have a particular dislike of human pride. And if you think that you can engineer outcomes, that's a manifestation of pride. Among other things, it's impractical. It just doesn't work. The world doesn't work that way.

It is a good rule in life to be wary of the company of people who think of themselves in the third person, no matter how well justified they might seem to be in doing so.

If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed.

Whenever you think that you are getting too big for the people around you, remember all that separates you from the guy sitting next to you is a little piece of gristle in your throat.

Thinking that your story is so interesting that other people will want to listen to it or read it or pay to hear it, that's - what kind of person thinks that? A monster of self-regard. It's not normal thinking.

Obviously, the arrogance of my own nature in regards to other people's work would suggest that I think I'm talented.

The great man who thinks greatly of himself, is not diminishing that greatness in heaping fuel on his fire.

When you begin to believe you have license because you are a special person breathing special oxygen, that's when you're in big trouble. That's the road to insanity. And a lot of people in the studios are like that. They believe that they are special. I do think actors are blessed, or cursed, with maybe a slightly heightened awareness, which you have to use.

No man is great if he thinks he is.

Too high an appreciation of our own talents is the chief cause why experience preaches to us all in vain.