August Strindberg Quotes

28 Sourced Quotes

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

August Strindberg
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
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.

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

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

August Strindberg
Two times two — is two!, Yes! I shall prove it by means of analogy, the highest form of proof. Follow carefully. One times one is one, therefore two times two is two. What applies to one applies to the other.

August Strindberg
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.

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

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

August Strindberg
Then, is it reasonable to think that one can see, by looking in a microscope, what is going on in another planet?

August Strindberg
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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

August Strindberg
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.

August Strindberg
I'd love to see the whole of your sex swimming in a sea of blood. The way I feel I could drink out of your skull. I could eat your heart roasted whole! You think I'm weak! My father will come home - find his money stolen! He'll send for the sheriff - and I'll tell him everything. Then there'll be peace and quiet... forever.

August Strindberg
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.

August Strindberg
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.

August Strindberg
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.

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

August Strindberg
The Family! Home of all social evils, a charitable institution for indolent women, a prison workshop for the slaving breadwinner, and a hell for children.

August Strindberg