August Strindberg famous quotes

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

#Beautiful #Lucky #Madness

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

#Levels #Impossible #Attempting

I dream, therefore I exist.
-- August Strindberg

#Dream #Survival

Some people seem to be born to suffer.
-- August Strindberg

#People #Suffering #Born

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

#Eye #Vision #Poison

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

#Fathers Day #Enemy #Position

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

#Evil #Accepting

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

#Dog #People #Pet

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

#Memories #Car #Matter

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

#Loneliness #Married

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

#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.
-- August Strindberg

#Wisdom #Children #Father

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

#Love #Hate #Too Much

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

#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
-- August Strindberg

#Order #Class #Fruit

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.
-- August Strindberg

#People #Joy #Battle

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.
-- August Strindberg

#Children #Home #Self

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

#Marriage #Angel #Thinking

Love between a man and woman is war.
-- August Strindberg

#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.
-- August Strindberg

#Children #Independent #Doe

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

#Mad #Lions #Bees

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

#Savages #Needs #World

The further from one another, the nearer one can be.
-- August Strindberg

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

#Eye #Voice #Hatred

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

#Happiness #Flames #Ends

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

#Heartbreak #Hatred #Sides

Sometimes not seeing things can be a blessing.
-- August Strindberg

#Blessing #Vision #Sometimes

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

#Nice #Interesting #Growing

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

#Police #Society #Wardens

Necessity knows no rules.
-- August Strindberg

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

#Life #Leaving #Life Is

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

#Punishment #Religion #Doe

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

#People #Preparation #Next

When people drink, they talk, and talk is dangerous!
-- August Strindberg

#People #Drink #Dangerous

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

#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.
-- August Strindberg

#Powerful #Struggle #People

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

#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.
-- August Strindberg

#Book #Writing #Heart

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

#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.
-- August Strindberg

#Happiness #Joy #Battle

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.
-- August Strindberg

#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.
-- August Strindberg

#Memories #Reality #Imagination

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

#Character #Men #Simple

When is revolution legal? When it succeeds!
-- August Strindberg

#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.
-- August Strindberg

#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.
-- August Strindberg

#Real #Sorrow #Void

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

#Ideas #Theatre #Form

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

#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.
-- August Strindberg

#Moving #Wife #Female

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

#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.
-- August Strindberg

#Friendship #Men #Views

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

#Dream #World #Phantoms

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

#Past #Silence

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.
-- August Strindberg

#Husband #Eye #Jealous