Doctor Glas Quotes

“We know so little about one another. We embrace a shadow and love a dream.”
― Hjalmar Söderberg, Doctor Glas

“People want to be loved; failing that admired; failing that feared; failing that hated and despised. They want to evoke some sort of sentiment. The soul shudders before oblivion and seeks connection at any price.”
― Hjalmar Soderberg, Doctor Glas

“We want to be loved; failing that, admired; failing that, feared; failing that, hated and despised. At all costs we want to stir up some sort of feeling in others. Our soul abhors a vacuum. At all costs it longs for contact.”
― Hjalmar Söderberg, Doctor Glas

“A pregnant woman is a frightful object. A new-born child is loathsome. A deathbed rarely makes so horrible an impression as childbirth, that terrible symphony of screams and filth and blood.”
― Hjalmar Söderberg, Doctor Glas

“Nothing so reduces and drags down a human being as the consciousness of not being loved.”
― Hjalmar Söderberg, Doctor Glas

“Liv, jag förstår dig inte. Men jag säger inte att det är ditt fel. Jag håller det mera troligt jag är en vanartig son än att du är en ovärdig mor.”
― Hjalmar Söderberg, Doctor Glas

“Thought is an acid, eating us away. At first we imagine it will only eat into that which is rotten and sick and must be removed. But thought thinks otherwise. It eats blindly. It begins with the prey you most gladly throw to it - but don't imagine it will be content with that! It doesn't stop until it has gnawed away the last thing you hold dear.”
― Hjalmar Söderberg, Doctor Glas

“There are people who have no talent for happiness and who know this with painful, implacable clarity. Such people don’t seek happiness, merely to bring some sort of form and style to their unhappiness.”
― Hjalmar Söderberg, Doctor Glas

“We want everything, we want to be everything. We want to experience all the joys of good fortune and the full depths of suffering. We want the excitement of action and the calm of observation. We want the silence of the desert as well as the noise of the forum. Simultaneously we want to be the hermit´s thought and the voice of the people; we want to be both melody and harmony. Simultaneously! How could this be possible?”
― Hjalmar Söderberg, Doctor Glas

“I’ve borne my isolation with me through the crowd as the snail bears its house. For some people isolation isn’t a circumstance in which they find themselves, it’s an innate characteristic.”
― Hjalmar Söderberg, Doctor Glas

“Nothing diminishes and degrades a human being more than the knowledge of being unloved.”
― Hjalmar Söderberg, Doctor Glas

“In the days when I was ambitious I worked out a very pretty little plan for conquering the whole earth and rearranging things as they ought to be; and when, in the end, everything became so good it almost began to be boring, then I was going to stuff my pockets with as much money as I could lay hands on and creep away, vanish in some cosmopolis and sit at a corner cafe and drink absinthe and enjoy seeing how everything went to the devil as soon as I wasn't on the scene any more.”
― Hjalmar Söderberg, Doctor Glas

“Am fost întotdeauna un singuratic. Mi-am purtat singurătatea prin mulțimea de oameni, așa cum își poartă melcul casa în spinare. La unii, singurătatea nu e o stare în care au ajuns printr-o întâmplare a vieții, ci o trăsătură fundamentală.”
― Hjalmar Söderberg, Doctor Glas

“Och vad är månskenet?
Solsken i andra hand. Försvagat, förfalskat.”
― Hjalmar Söderberg, Doctor Glas

“For youth, the moon is a promise of all those tremendous things which await it, for older people a memento that the promise was never kept, a reminder of all that broke and went to pieces...
And what is moonshine? Secondhand sunshine. Diluted, counterfeit.”
― Hjalmar Söderberg, Doctor Glas

“Varför skall kärleken vara trollguldet, som andra dagen blir vissna löv, eller smuts, eller ölsupa? Ur människornas längtan efter kärlek har ju hela den sidan av kulturen spirat upp, som icke direkt syftar till hungerns stillande eller försvar mot fiender. Vårt skönhetssinne har ingen annan källa. All konst, all dikt, all musik har druckit ur den. Den tarvligaste moderna historiemålning likaväl som Rafaels madonnor och Steinlens små parisiska arbeterskor, "Dödens ängel" likaväl som Höga visan och Buch der Lieder, koralen och Wienervalsen, ja varje gipsornament på det tarvliga hus där jag bor, varje figur i tapeten, formen på porslinsvasen där och mönstret i min halsduk, allt som vill pryda och försköna, det må nu lyckas eller misslyckas, stammar därifrån, fast på mycket långa omvägar ibland. Och det är intet nattligt hugskott av mig, utan bevisat hundra gånger.
Men den källan heter icke kärleken, utan den heter: drömmen om kärlek.
Och å andra sidan är allt, som står i samband med drömmens fullbordan, med driftens tillfredsställelse, och som följer av den, inför vår djupaste instinkt något oskönt och oanständigt. Detta kan icke bevisas, det är bara en känsla: min känsla, och jag tror egentligen allas. Människorna behandla alltid varandras kärlekshistorier som något lågt eller komiskt och göra ofta icke ens undantag för sina egna.”
― Hjalmar Söderberg, Doctor Glas

“La moral no es más que ese famoso círculo de tiza alrededor de la gallina: sólo encierra a los que creen en ella”
― Hjalmar Söderberg, Doctor Glas

“De la nostalgia humana por el amor ha brotado al fin y al cabo toda la parte de la cultura que no se orienta directamente a calmar el hambre o a luchar contra los enemigos. El sentimiento de la belleza no mana de otra fuente. Todo el arte, toda la poesía, toda la música han bebido de ella. El más soso cuadro de historia moderno, las madonas de Rafael, y las obreritas parisinas de Steinlen, el 'Ángel de la Muerte' como el Cantar de los Cantares y el Buch der Lieder, oratorios y valses vieneses, incluso toda moldura de yeso en esta casa horrenda donde vivo, todo dibujo de la alfombra, la forma de aquel jarrón de porcelana y el diseño de mi bufanda, todo lo que pretende gustar y embellecer, tanto si lo logra como sino, viene de allí, aunque sea por caminos largos y tortuosos.”
― Hjalmar Söderberg, Doctor Glas

“Besynnerligt, att det alltid går en rysning genom luften före soluppgången.”
― Hjalmar Söderberg, Doctor Glas

“Never will she be mine; never. I never brought a flush to her cheek, and it is not I who now have made it so chalk-white. And never will she slip across the street in the night, with anxiety in her heart and a letter to me.
Life has passed me by.

[..] I have got new curtains for my study; pure white. When I awoke this morning, I first thought it had been snowing. In my room the light was exactly as it is after the first fall of snow. I even fancied I caught the scent of snow freshly fallen. And soon it will come, the snow. One feels it in the air.
It will be welcome. Let it come. Let it fall.”
― Hjalmar Söderberg, Doctor Glas

“My loneliness I have borne about with me through the crowd as a snail his house. For some individuals solitude isn’t a circumstance they’ve tumbled into by chance, but a trait, of character.”
― Hjalmar Söderberg, Doctor Glas

“La moralidad es un servicio doméstico, no una divinidad. Conviene usarla, pero no debe mandar”
― Hjalmar Söderberg, Doctor Glas

“Look at your world from your own point of view, not from some point in space. Modestly measure with your own yardstick, after your own status, your own predicament, the status and the predicament of man the earthdweller. Then life is large enough and a thing of consequence; and night endless, deep.”
― Hjalmar Söderberg, Doctor Glas

“The world isn´t kind to those who love.”
― Hjalmar Söderberg, Doctor Glas

“I’ve always been somewhat isolated. I’ve borne my isolation with me
through the crowd as the snail bears its house. For some people isolation isn’t a
circumstance in which they find themselves, it’s an innate characteristic. And
through this act my isolation is likely to increase; no matter how it ends, whether
badly or well, for me the “punishment” will be solitary confinement for life.”
― Hjalmar Söderberg, Doctor Glas

“det finns tre slags människor - tänkare, murvlar och boskap.”
― Hjalmar Söderberg, Doctor Glas

“Tanken är en syra som fräter. Du tänker i början, att den blott skall fräta på det som är murket och sjukt och som skall bort. Men tanken tänker inte så: den fräter blint. Den börjar med det rov som du helst och gladast kastar åt honom, men du skall inte tro att det mättar honom. Han slutar inte förrän han gnagt sönder det sista du har kärt.”
― Hjalmar Söderberg, Doctor Glas

“Och det har till sist börjat gå upp för mig som en aning -: det är kanske icke meningen att man skall förstå livet. Allt detta raseri att förklara och förstå, all denna sanningsjakt är kanske en avväg.”
― Hjalmar Söderberg, Doctor Glas

“Respectul față de viața omenească - ce poate să însemne asta în gura mea, decât o josnică ipocrizie, și ce altceva ar putea însemna pentru oricine care, uneori, zăbovește puțin asupra acestui gând? Lumea e ticsită de vieți omenești. Și nimeni, niciodată, n-a dat cu adevărat nici cea mai mică importanță vieților omenești străine, necunoscute, nevăzute, poate cu excepția câtorva filantropi, izbitor de prefăcuți.”
― Hjalmar Söderberg, Doctor Glas

“Sunt oameni cărora le lipsește orice aptitudine pentru fericire și își dau seama de asta cu o luciditate dureroasă și necruțătoare. Asemenea oameni nu urmăresc fericirea, ei urmăresc sa dea o oarecare formă și puțin stil nenorocirii lor.”
― Hjalmar Söderberg, Doctor Glas