Chess Story Quotes

“Besides, isn't it confoundedly easy to think you're a great man if you aren't burdened with the slightest idea that Rembrandt, Beethoven, Dante or Napoleon ever lived?”
― Stefan Zweig, Chess Story

“In chess, as a purely intellectual game, where randomness is excluded, - for someone to play against himself is absurd ...
It is as paradoxical, as attempting to jump over his own shadow.”
― Stefan Zweig, Chess Story

“We are happy when people/things conform and unhappy when they don't. People and events don't disappoint us, our models of reality do. It is my model of reality that determines my happiness or disappointments.”
― Stefan Zweig, Chess Story

“For the more a man limits himself, the nearer he is on the other hand to what is limitless; it is precisely those who are apparently aloof from the world who build for themselves a remarkable and thoroughly individual world in miniature, using their own special equipment, termit-like.”
― Stefan Zweig, Chess Story

“I hadn't had a book in my hands for four months, and the mere idea of a book where I could see words printed one after another, lines, pages, leaves, a book in which I could pursue new, different, fresh thoughts to divert me, could take them into my brain, had something both intoxicating and stupefying about it.”
― Stefan Zweig, Chess Story

“People and events don't disappoint us, our models of reality do. It is my model of reality that determines my happiness or disappointments.”
― Stefan Zweig, Chess Story

“But is it not already an insult to call chess anything so narrow as a game? Is it not also a science, an art, hovering between these categories like Muhammad's coffin between heaven and earth, a unique yoking of opposites, ancient and yet eternally new, mechanically constituted and yet an activity of the imagination alone, limited to a fixed geometric area but unlimited in its permutations, constantly evolving and yet sterile, a cogitation producing nothing, a mathematics calculating nothing, an art without an artwork, an architecture without substance and yet demonstrably more durable in its essence and actual form than all books and works, the only game that belongs to all peoples and all eras, while no one knows what god put it on earth to deaden boredom, sharpen the mind, and fortify the spirit?”
― Stefan Zweig, Chess Story

“Yeryüzünde hiçbir şey insana hiçlik kadar baskı yapamaz”
― Stefan Zweig, Chess Story

“The more one limits oneself, the closer one is to the infinite; these people, as unworldly as they seem, burrow like termites into their own particular material to construct, in miniature, a strange and utterly individual image of the world”
― Stefan Zweig, Chess Story

“They did nothing—other than subjecting us to complete nothingness. For, as is well known, nothing on earth puts more pressure on the human mind than nothing.”
― Stefan Zweig, Chess Story

“İnsan sabahtan akşama kadar bir şey olmasını bekler ve hiçbir şey olmaz. Bekleyip durur insan. Hiçbir şey olmaz. İnsan bekler, bekler, bekler, şakakları zonklayana dek düşünür, düşünür, düşünür. Hiçbir şey olmaz. İnsan yalnız kalır. Yalnız. Yalnız.”
― Stefan Zweig, Chess Story

“For the more a man restricts himself the closer he is, conversely, to infinity.”
― Stefan Zweig, Chess Story

“Personally I take more satisfaction in understanding people than in passing judgement on them.”
― Stefan Zweig, Chess Story

“Plus un esprit se limite, plus il touche par ailleurs à l'infini. ”
― Stefan Zweig, Chess Story

“Bütün yontulmamış varlıklarda olduğu gibi onda da gülünç bir kendini beğenmişlik vardı.”
― Stefan Zweig, Chess Story

“All my life I have been passionately interested in monomaniacs of any kind, people carried away by a single idea. The more one limits oneself, the closer one is to the infinite; these people, as unworldly as they seem, burrow like termites into their own particular material to construct, in miniature, a strange and utterly individual image of the world.”
― Stefan Zweig, Chess Story

“Moi qui pour mon malheur ai toujours eu une curiosité passionnée pour les choses de l'esprit... ”
― Stefan Zweig, Chess Story

“عندما تكون فريسة لهوس ما فإن خطر الانتكاسة قائم دائماً حتى بعد الشفاء منه.”
― ستيفان زفايج, Chess Story

“Nothing on earth exerts such pressure on the human soul as a void.”
― Stefan Zweig, Chess Story

“Yapacak, duyacak, görecek hiçbir şey yoktu, her yerde ve sürekli hiçlikle çevriliydi insan, boyuttan ve zamandan tümüyle yoksun, boşlukta.”
― Stefan Zweig, Chess Story

“Bize bir şey yapmadılar, sadece mutlak hiçliğe soktular, çünkü dünyada hiçbir şeyin insan ruhu üzerinde hiçlik kadar baskı yapmayacağı bilinir....”
― Stefan Zweig, Satranç

“And are we not guilty of offensive disparagement in calling chess a game? Is it not also a science and an art, hovering between those categories as Muhammad’s coffin hovered between heaven and earth, a unique link between pairs of opposites: ancient yet eternally new; mechanical in structure, yet made effective only by the imagination; limited to a geometrically fixed space, yet with unlimited combinations; constantly developing, yet sterile; thought that leads nowhere; mathematics calculating nothing; art without works of art; architecture without substance – but nonetheless shown to be more durable in its entity and existence than all books and works of art; the only game that belongs to all nations and all eras, although no one knows what god brought it down to earth to vanquish boredom, sharpen the senses and stretch the mind. Where does it begin and where does it end? Every child can learn its basic rules, every bungler can try his luck at it, yet within that immutable little square it is able to bring forth a particular species of masters who cannot be compared to anyone else, people with a gift solely designed for chess, geniuses in their specific field who unite vision, patience and technique in just the same proportions as do mathematicians, poets, musicians, but in different stratifications and combinations. In the old days of the enthusiasm for physiognomy, a physician like Gall might perhaps have dissected a chess champion’s brain to find out whether some particular twist or turn in the grey matter, a kind of chess muscle or chess bump, is more developed in such chess geniuses than in the skulls of other mortals. And how intrigued such a physiognomist would have been by the case of Czentovic, where that specific genius appeared in a setting of absolute intellectual lethargy, like a single vein of gold in a hundredweight of dull stone. In principle, I had always realized that such a unique, brilliant game must create its own matadors, but how difficult and indeed impossible it is to imagine the life of an intellectually active human being whose world is reduced entirely to the narrow one-way traffic between black and white, who seeks the triumphs of his life in the mere movement to and fro, forward and back of thirty-two chessmen, someone to whom a new opening, moving knight rather than pawn, is a great deed, and his little corner of immortality is tucked away in a book about chess – a human being, an intellectual human being who constantly bends the entire force of his mind on the ridiculous task of forcing a wooden king into the corner of a wooden board, and does it without going mad!”
― Stefan Zweig, Chess

“[...] je mehr sich einer begrenzt, um so mehr ist er andererseits dem Unendlichen nah; gerade solche scheinbar Weltabseitigen bauen in ihrer besonderen Materie sich termitenhaft eine merkwürdige und durchaus einmalige Abbreviatur der Welt.”
― Stefan Zweig, Schachnovelle

“playing chess against oneself is thus as paradoxical as jumping over one’s own shadow.”
― Stefan Zweig, Chess Story

“Böyle olağanüstü, dahice bir oyunun ister istemez göreceli ustalar yaratacağı gerçeğini uzun zaman önce anlamıştım; ama dünyayı yalnızca siyah ile beyaz arasındaki dar yola indirgeyen, otuz iki taşı bir oraya bir buraya, bir ileri bir geri oynatarak hayatının zaferini kazanmaya çalışan kıvrak zekalı bir insanın yaşamını kafada canlandırmak ne kadar güç, ne kadar olanaksızdı; bu insanın yeni bir oyuna başlarken piyon yerine atı yeğlemesi olay yaratır ve bir satranç kitabının ufacık bir köşesinde adının geçmesiyle ölümsüzlüğe ulaşmasını sağlar; bu insan, bu akıl insanı, aklını kaçırmadan on, yirmi, otuz, kırk yıl boyunca bütün düşünme gücünü tekrar tekrar aynı gülünç amaca yöneltir: bir tahtanın üzerinde tahta bir şahı köşeye sıkıştırmak!

Sayfa :23”
― Stefan Zweig, Satranç

“Nothing was done to us - we were simply placed in a complete void, and everyone knows that nothing on earth exerts such pressure on the humans soul as a void.”
― Stefan Zweig, Chess Story

“That's it. Evasion is key.”
― Stefan Zweig, Chess Story

“»seine Unbildung war auf allen Gebieten gleich universell«.”
― Stefan Zweig, Schachnovelle

“Aber wie sollte ein so rascher Ruhm nicht einen so leeren Kopf beduseln? (...) Und dann, ist es nicht eigentlich verflucht leicht, sich für einen großen Menschen zu halten, wenn man nicht mit der leisesten Ahnung belastet ist, daß ein Rembrandt, ein Beethoven, ein Dante, ein Napoleon je gelebt haben?”
― Stefan Zweig, Chess Story

“Sabit fikirli, kafasını tek bir düşünceye takmış her türlü insan, yaşamım boyunca beni çekmiştir, çünkü bir insan kendini ne kadar sınırlarsa, öte yandan sonsuza o kadar yakın olur; işte böyle görünüşte dünyadan kopuk yaşayanlar, özel yapıları içinde karınca gibi, dünyanın tuhaf ve eşi benzeri olmayan bir maketini kurarlar.”
― Stefan Zweig, Chess Story