Lion Feuchtwanger Quotes

I have always made an effort to render every detail of my reality with the greatest accuracy; but I have never paid attention to whether my presentation of historical facts was an exact one.

Both the historian and the novelist view history as the struggle of a tiny minority, able and determined to make judgments, which is up against a vast and densely packed majority of the blind, who are led by their instincts and unable to think for themselves.

The word and the image mutually excluded each other. Joseph was a literary man to his very marrow; he put faith in the invisible Word; it was the most miraculous thing in all the world; though without form it had more power than anything endowed with form

I have sincerely tried not to deride the action of men, not to lament nor to abhor them. I have done all in my might to understand them.- Spinoza

An action doesn't have to be wrong just because it is not logical. It doesn't have to be right just because it has its logic.

Ever since my youth it has disturbed me that of the literary works that survived their own epoch, so many dealt with historical rather than contemporary subjects.

Asking the author of historical novels to teach you about history is like expecting the composer of a melody to provide answers about radio transmission.

It is only the strong who are strengthened by suffering; the weak are made weaker.

From depicting the past, so goes the suspicion, it is a short step to glorifying the past.

There's only a step from the sublime to the ridiculous, but there's no road leading from the ridiculous to the sublime.

Can you remember, Acte ... how much easier our belief in Nero made life for us in the old days? And can you remember the paralysis, the numbness that seized the whole world when Nero died? Didn't you feel as if the world had grown bare and colorless all of a sudden? Those people on the Palatine have tried to steal our Nero from us, from you and me. Isn't splendid to think that we can show them they haven't succeeded? They have smashed his statues into splinters, erased his name from all the inscriptions, they even replaced his head on that huge statue in Rome with the peasant head of old Vespasian. Isn't it fine to teach them that all that hasn't been of the slightest use? Granted that they have been successful for a few years. For a few years they have actually managed to banish all imagination from the world, all enthusiasm, extravagance, everything that makes life worth living. But now, with our Nero, all these things are back again.

Talented person is talented everywhere.

I should add that it is open to debate whether what we call the writing of history these days is truly scientific.

In itself it is nothing. Nothing but a book: parchment, colouring, ink. Yet the most perishable material is at the same time the most durable substance in the world ...