Stefan Zweig's "The World of Yesterday"

I have learned so much from Stefan Zweig's book, as one invariably does from superb autobiographies. The fleetingness of memory, the penchant for downplaying ominous sings, the irrationality of violence, the self-destructive instincts at the heart of the human psyche, the self-crushing effect of exile, the fragility of civilizational guardrails, the redeeming power of art, and the disorienting character of unhinged cultural changes. All that and more is to be gleaned from this fin de siècle account ominously cast in the shadow of the two great wars.

Here are but a few quotes that give food for thought:

"It remains an irrefragable law of history that contemporaries are denied a recognition of the early beginnings of the great movements which determine their times."

"For I regard memory not as a phenomenon preserving one thing and losing another merely by chance, but as a power that deliberately places events in order or wisely omits them. Everything we forget about our own lives was really condemned to oblivion by an inner instinct long ago."

"National Socialism, with its unscrupulous methods of deception, took care not to show how radical its aims were until the world was inured to them. So it tried out its technique cautiously—one dose at a time, with a short pause after administering it."

"Only the person who has experienced light and darkness, war and peace, rise and fall, only that person has truly experienced life."