August Strindberg Quotes:

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

Topics: Beautiful, Lucky, Madness, Crazy People

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

Topics: Levels, Impossible, Attempting

I dream, therefore I exist.

source: - August Strindberg (2014). “The Confession of a Fool”, p.99, The Floating Press

Topics: Dream, Survival

Some people seem to be born to suffer.

Topics: People, Suffering, Born

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

source: - August Strindberg (1983). “Strindberg, Five Plays”, p.296, Univ of California Press

Topics: Eye, Vision, Poison

That is the thankless position of the father in the family-the provider for all, and the enemy of all.

Topics: Fathers Day, Enemy, Position, Great Father, Love My Dad

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

Topics: Evil, Accepting

People who keep dogs are cowards who haven't got the guts to bite people themselves.

Topics: Dog, People, Pet, Barking Dogs, Dog Bite

No matter how far we travel, the memories will follow in the baggage car.

source: - August Strindberg (1983). “Strindberg, Five Plays”, p.104, Univ of California Press

Topics: Memories, Car, Matter

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

Topics: Loneliness, Married

The will ... is the driving force of the mind. If it's injured, the mind falls to pieces.

Topics: Fall, Mind, Pieces

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

source: - 1886 The Son of a Servant.

Topics: Wisdom, Children, Father, Social Evils

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

Topics: Love, Hate, Too Much, No Hate

I love her and she loves me, and we hate each other with a wild hatred born of love.

Topics: Love, Hate, Hatred

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

Topics: Order, Class, Fruit, Upper Class

People are constantly clamoring for the joy of life. As for me, I find the joy of life in the hard and cruel battle of life - to learn something is a joy to me.

Topics: People, Joy, Battle, Joy Of Life, Battle Of Life

On the much revered family of North American mythology - and a metaphor for the Ruling Alliance: Sacred family! .... The supposed home of all the virtues, where innocent children are tortured into their first falsehoods, where wills are broken by parental tyranny, and self-respect smothered by crowded, jostling egos.

Topics: Children, Home, Self, Innocent Children

It's terribly hard to be married ... harder than anything else. I think you have to be an angel.

Topics: Marriage, Angel, Thinking

Love between a man and woman is war.

Topics: War, Men, Men And Women

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.

Topics: Children, Independent, Doe, Proper Time

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.

Topics: Mad, Lions, Bees

I, too, am beginning to feel an immense need to become a savage and create a new world.

Topics: Savages, Needs, World

The further from one another, the nearer one can be.

source: - August Strindberg (2010). “The Road to Damascus: A Trilogy”, p.362, The Floating Press

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.

Topics: Eye, Voice, Hatred, God And Love

Happiness consumes itself like a flame. It cannot burn for ever, it must go out, and the presentiment of its end destroys it at its very peak.

Topics: Happiness, Flames, Ends

I hated her now with a hatred more fatal than indifference because it was the other side of love.

Topics: Heartbreak, Hatred, Sides

Sometimes not seeing things can be a blessing.

source: - August Strindberg (1983). “Strindberg, Five Plays”, p.147, Univ of California Press

Topics: Blessing, Vision, Sometimes

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

source: - August Strindberg (1962). “Plays”

Topics: Nice, Interesting, Growing

Society is a madhouse whose wardens are the officials and the police.

Topics: Police, Society, Wardens, Madhouses

Necessity knows no rules.

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

source: - August Strindberg (1983). “Strindberg, Five Plays”, p.242, Univ of California Press

Topics: Life, Leaving, Life Is

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

Topics: Punishment, Religion, Doe

What people call success is only preparation for the next failure.

source: - August Strindberg (1983). “Strindberg, Five Plays”, p.243, Univ of California Press

Topics: People, Preparation, Next

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

Topics: People, Drink, Dangerous

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

Topics: People, Common

Some people have accused my tragedy of being too sad, as though one desired a merry tragedy. People clamor for Enjoyment as though Enjoyment consisted in being foolish. I find enjoyment in the powerful and terrible struggles of life; and the capability of experiencing something, of learning something, gives me pleasure.

Topics: Powerful, Struggle, People, Experiencing Something

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

Topics: Long, People, Water

God preserve us from writers who regurgitate what they have learnt from books! It is people's secrets we want to know - it is the natural history of the human heart that we have been trying to put down for a thousand years and everyone must and can leave their contribution.

Topics: Book, Writing, Heart, Natural History

What an occupation! To sit and flay your fellow men and then offer their skins for sale and expect them to buy them.

Topics: Men, Skins, Fellow Man

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

Topics: Happiness, Joy, Battle, Battle Of Life

When I free my body from its clothes, from all their buttons, belts, and laces, it seems to me that my soul takes a deeper, freer breath.

Topics: Clothes, Soul, Buttons

Everything can happen, everything is possible and probable. Time and place do not exist; on a significant bases of reality, the imagination spins, weaving new patterns; a mixture of memories, experiences, free fancies, incongruities and improvisations.

source: - August Strindberg (2014). “Strindberg Plays: 2: Dream Play; Dance of Death; The Stronger”, p.175, A&C Black

Topics: Memories, Reality, Imagination, Incongruity, Weaving

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.

source: - August Strindberg (2014). “The Son of a Servant”, p.181, The Floating Press

Topics: Character, Men, Simple, Complicated Relationship

When is revolution legal? When it succeeds!

Topics: Succeed, Revolution

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.

Topics: Mean, Progress, Steps

Sorrow has the fortunate peculiarity that it preys upon itself. It dies of starvation. Since it is essentially an interruption of habits, it can be replaced by new habits. Constituting, as it does, a void, it is soon filled up by a real horror vacuum.

Topics: Real, Sorrow, Void, Starvation, Filled Up

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

Topics: Ideas, Theatre, Form, Peddling

Now I know the full power of evil. It makes ugliness seem beautiful and goodness seem ugly and weak.

source: - August Strindberg (1983). “Strindberg, Five Plays”, p.158, Univ of California Press

Topics: Beautiful, Evil, Ugly

In the old days, one married a wife; now one forms a company with a female partner, or moves in to live with a friend. And then one seduces the partner, or defiles the friend.

Topics: Moving, Wife, Female

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

Topics: Dog, Courage, Fighting

Friendship can only exist between persons with similar interests and points of view. Man and woman by the conventions of society are born with different interests and different points of view.

Topics: Friendship, Men, Views, Different Points Of View

The world, life and human beings are only an illusion, a phantom, a dream image.

source: - August Strindberg (1983). “Strindberg, Five Plays”, p.11, Univ of California Press

Topics: Dream, World, Phantoms

The hood-winked husband shows his anger, and the word jealous is flung in his face. Jealous husband equals betrayed husband. And there are women who look upon jealousy as synonymous with impotence, so that the betrayed husband can only shut his eyes, powerless in the face of such accusations.

Topics: Husband, Eye, Jealous, Jealous Husband

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.

source: - August Strindberg (1983). “Strindberg, Five Plays”, p.286, Univ of California Press

Topics: Past, Silence

Silence hides nothing. Words conceal.

source: - August Strindberg (2014). “Strindberg Plays: 1: The Father; Miss Julie; The Ghost Sonata”, p.179, A&C Black

Topics: Silence

There comes a moment... When imagination gives out and Reality leaps forth. It is frightful!

Topics: Reality, Giving, Imagination

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

source: - August Strindberg (2003). “The Father”, p.22, Courier Corporation

Topics: Good Faith, Concerned

Because in the midst of happiness there is always a seed of unhappiness; it consumes itself like fire--it can't burn forever, sooner or later it must die; and this presentiment of the end destroys my happiness when it is at is height.

Topics: Happiness, Fire, Forever

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.

Topics: Reality, Imagination, Patterns

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)

Topics: Self, People, Soul, Self Portrait

I've thought of becoming a photographer! To save my talent as a writer.

source: - August Strindberg (1968). “Inferno, Alone, and Other Writings: In New Translations”

Topics: Becoming, Photographer, Talent

It is terribly hard to be married, harder than anything. I think one has to be an angel.

source: - "Plays".

Topics: Marriage, Angel, Thinking

[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

source: - August Strindberg “Twelve Major Plays”, AldineTransaction

Topics: Book, Character, Past