August Strindberg Quotes

I always disliked dogs, those protectors of cowards who lack the courage to fight an assailant themselves.

Any programming language is at its best before it is implemented and used. Anything is possible, anything can happen. On a flimsy ground of reality, imagination spins marvelous patterns.

It's wonderful how, the moment you talk about God and love, your voice becomes hard, and your eyes fill with hatred. No, Margret, you certainly haven't the true faith.

- He really is the most arrogant person I've ever come across. 'I am, therefore God exists'. ALICE

I see the playwright as a lay preacher peddling the ideas of his time in popular form.

I do not care about my own appearance, but I would hope that people could see into my soul, and that is presented better in these photographs than in others. (On his self-portraits)

PASTOR. Violence aside now, admit that he suffers from fixed ideas. DOCTOR. I think your ideas are even more fixed, pastor! PASTOR

Sometimes not seeing things can be a blessing.

Speaking at last becomes a vice, like
drinking. And why speak, if words do not cloak thoughts ?

Meeting each other and leaving each other. Leaving and meeting. That's what life is!

If you are afraid of loneliness, don't get married

Why is it so painful to watch a person sink? Because there is something unnatural in it, for nature demands personal progress, evolution, and every backward step means wasted energy.

Oh, I have loved him too much to feel no hate for him.

And why does man weep when he is sad? I asked at last - Because the glass in the eyes must be washed now and then, so that we can see clearly, said the child.

At last everything was satisfactorily arranged, and I could not help admiring the setting: these mingled touches betrayed on a small scale the inspiration of a poet, the research of a scientist, the good taste of an artist, the gourmet's fondness for good food, and the love of flowers, which concealed in their delicate shadows a hint of the love of women

There are poisons that blind you, and poisons that open your eyes.

Not everyone is capable of madness; and of those lucky enough to be capable, not many have the courage for it.

Life is not so idiotically mathematical that only the big eat the small; it is just as common for a bee to kill a lion or at least to drive it mad.

When people drink, they talk, and talk is dangerous!

The ball was held in a middle-class home. The girls were anemic - some of them; the others were red as raspberries. John liked the pale ones best, the ones with black or blue rings round their eyes. They looked so sad and suffering and pitiable, and they cast tender yearning glances at him, such yearning glances.

I prefer silence. Then you can hear thoughts and see into the past.
In silence you can't hide anything ... as you can in words.

What is economics? A science invented by the upper class in order to acquire the fruits of the labor of the underclass

Growing old-it's not nice, but it's interesting.

You do much worse things- you who can see to other planets."- Bertha, "The Father

LAWYER. Justice that destroys itself in seeking to be just! - - - Right, that so often fosters wrong!!! DAUGHTER

Yes, I am crying although I am a man. But has not a man eyes! Has not a man hands, limbs,
senses, thoughts, passions? Is he not fed with the wine food, hurt by the same weapons, warmed and cooled by the same summer and winter as a woman? If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? And if you poison us, do we not die? Why shouldn't a man complain, a soldier weep? Because it is unmanly? Why is it unmanly?

Religion must be a punishment, because nobody gets religion who does not have a bad conscience.

When people refuse to speak out for too long, it's like water that's stagnant and starts to rot!

If a flower you covet, straightway you are told it is another's.

I am a socialist, a nihilist, a republican, anything that is anti-reactionary!... I want to turn everything upside down to see what lies beneath; I believe we are so webbed, so horribly regimented, that no spring-cleaning is possible, everything must be burned, blown to bits, and then we can start afresh...

A man with a so-called character is often a simple piece of mechanism; he has often only one point of view for the extremely complicated relationships of life.

He liked the girls, liked to hold them around the waist, felt like a man when he did. But as for talking with them, no, no! Then he felt as though he were dealing with another species of human being, in some cases a higher one, in others a lower. He secretly admired the weak, pale, little girl and had picked her to be his wife. That was still the only way he could think of a woman - as a wife. He danced in a very chaste and proper manner, but he heard awful stories about his pals, stories he didn't understand until later. They could dance the waltz backwards around the room in a very indecent way, and they told naughty stories about the girls.

By attempting the impossible one can attain the highest level of the possible.

When aristocrats pretend they're common people
they get common!

Those who won't accept evil never get anything good.

[My characters are] conglomerations of past and present stages of civilization, bits from books and newspapers, scraps of humanity, rags and tatters of fine clothing, patched together as is the human soul

I once asked a little boy why the sea was salt, and the boy, whose father was away on a long journey, said right away, "The sea is salt because the sailors cry so much." "But why do the sailors cry so much?" I asked. "Because," he said, "they always have to go away from home- and that's why they're always drying their handkerchiefs up on the masthead!" And then I asked him, "But why do people cry when they're sad?" And he said, "That's because they have to wash the glasses of their eyes so they can see better.

I dream, therefore I exist.

I find my joy of living in the fierce and ruthless battles of life, and my pleasure comes from learning something.

Love between a man and woman is war.

Family ... the home of all social evil, a charitable institution for comfortable women, an anchorage for house-fathers, and a hell for children.

When women grow old and cease being women, they get beards on their chins; I wonder what men get when they grow old and cease to be men?

It's risky to take anything on good faith where a woman is concerned.