August Strindberg > Quotes

“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.”
― August Strindberg, Miss Julie

“There are poisons that blind you, and poisons that open your eyes.”
― August Strindberg, The ghost sonata

“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.”
― August Strindberg, The Father

“I dream, therefore I exist.”
― August Strindberg

“Autumn is my spring!”
― August Strindberg, A Dream Play

“We are already in Hell. It is the earth itself that is Hell, the prison constructed for us by an intelligence superior to our own, in which I could not take a step without injuring the happiness of others, and in which my fellow creatures could not enjoy their own happiness without causing me pain.”
― August Strindberg

“I, too, am beginning to feel an immense need to become a savage and create a new world.”
― August Strindberg

“Everything can happen, everything is possible and probable. Time and place do not exist; on an insignificant basis of reality the imagination spins, weaving new patterns; a mixture of memories, experiences, free fancies, incongruities and improvisations.”
― August Strindberg, A Dream Play

“Love between a man and woman is war.”
― August Strindberg

“if you are afraid of loneliness, don't get married”
― August Strindberg

“The further from one another, the nearer one can be.”
― August Strindberg, The Road to Damascus: A Trilogy

“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.”
― August Strindberg, A Dream Play

“I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven't got the guts to bite people themselves.”
― August Strindberg

“Those who won't accept evil never get anything good.”
― August Strindberg, The Road to Damascus: A Trilogy

“You are impossible. You are only a realist, and therefore nothing happens to you.”
― August Strindberg

“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?”
― August Strindberg, The Father

“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.”
― August Strindberg

“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”
― August Strindberg, Madman's Defence

“One gets more and more humble the longer one lives, and in the shadow of death many things look different.”
― August Strindberg, The Father

“He saw the cause of his unhappiness in the family--the family as a social institution, which does not permit the child to become an independent individual at the proper time.”
― August Strindberg, Getting Married: Parts I and II.

“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.”
― August Strindberg, The Son of a Servant

“as soon as a work of art is of practical use, betrays a purpose or a tendency its beauty vanishes.”
― August Strindberg, The Red Room

“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...”
― August Strindberg

“This feeling of power, it's happiness to sit in a cottage by the Danube among six women who think I'm semi-idiot, and to know that in Paris, the headquarters of intelligence, 500 people are sitting dead-quiet in the auditorium and are foolish enough to expose their brains to my powers of suggestion. Some revolt! But many will go away with my spores in their gray matter. They will go home pregnant with the seed of my soul, and they will breed my brood.”
― Strindberg August 1849-1912

“Every moment of enjoyment
Brings to some one else a sorrow,
But your sorrow gladdens no one,
For from sorrow naught but sorrow springs.”
― August Strindberg, A Dream Play

“For the whole of life consists of nothing but contradictions. The rich are the poor in spirit; the many little men hold the power, and the great only serve the little men. I've never met such proud people as the humble; I've never met an uneducated man who didn't believe himself in a position to criticise learning and to do without it.”
― August Strindberg, The Road to Damascus

“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.”
― August Strindberg, The Son of a Servant

“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.”
― August Strindberg, A Dream Play

“How sweet is life after all, when the mist of a mild intoxication casts its veil over the miseries of existence.”
― August Strindberg, The Inferno

“MOTHER. Is he mad, or a rascal?

LADY. He's neither. He's no ordinary man; and it's a pity I can tell him nothing he doesn't know already. That's why we don't speak much; but he's glad to have me near him; and so am I to be near him.”
― August Strindberg, The Road to Damascus: A Trilogy