Top 70 August Strindberg Quotes (2024 Update)

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

— August Strindberg

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

— August Strindberg

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

— August Strindberg

4. “I dream, therefore I exist.”

— August Strindberg

5. “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

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

— August Strindberg

7. “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

8. “Meeting each other and leaving each other. Leaving and meeting. That’s what life is!”

— August Strindberg

9. “Some people seem to be born to suffer.”

— August Strindberg

10. “Sometimes not seeing things can be a blessing.”

— August Strindberg

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

— August Strindberg

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

— August Strindberg

13. “Love between a man and woman is war.”

— August Strindberg

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

— August Strindberg

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

— August Strindberg

16. “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

17. “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

18. “My child? A man has no children, it is only woman who has children, and therefore the future is hers when we die childless.”

— August Strindberg

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

— August Strindberg

20. “Silence hides nothing. Words conceal.”

— August Strindberg

21. “People who keep dogs are cowards who haven’t got the guts to bite people themselves.”

— August Strindberg

22. “Necessity knows no rules.”

— August Strindberg

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

— August Strindberg

24. “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

25. “When people drink, they talk, and talk is dangerous!”

— August Strindberg

26. “When is revolution legal? When it succeeds!”

— August Strindberg

27. “He neither acquits nor condemns, but merely relates, and, just as a dream is more often painful than happy, so a tone of melancholy and pity for all mortal beings runs through this uncertain tale.”

— August Strindberg

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

— August Strindberg

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

— August Strindberg

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

— August Strindberg

31. “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

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

— August Strindberg

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

— August Strindberg

34. “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

35. “I’ve thought of becoming a photographer! To save my talent as a writer.”

— August Strindberg

36. “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

37. “When people refuse to speak out for too long, it’s like water that’s stagnant and starts to rot!”

— August Strindberg

38. “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

39. “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

40. “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

41. “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

42. “Growing old-it’s not nice, but it’s interesting.”

— August Strindberg

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

— August Strindberg

44. “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

45. “The further from one another, the nearer one can be.”

— August Strindberg

46. “I so despise people who keep dogs, they are cowards that havent got the curridge to bite themselfs.”

— August Strindberg

47. “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

48. “Now you have fulfilled your function as an unfortunately necessary father and breadwinner, you are not needed any longer and you must go.”

— August Strindberg

49. “It’s risky to take anything on good faith where a woman is concerned.”

— August Strindberg

50. “Because the child bound us together; but the link became a chain.”

— August Strindberg