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Doctor Glas QUOTES

Doctor Glas QUOTES

1 " We know so little about one another. We embrace a shadow and love a dream. "

― Hjalmar Söderberg , Doctor Glas

2 " 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

3 " 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

4 " 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

5 " 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

6 " 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

7 " 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 Söderberg , Doctor Glas

8 " 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

9 " Nothing so reduces and drags down a human being as the consciousness of not being loved. "

― Hjalmar Söderberg , Doctor Glas

10 " 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

11 " 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

12 " 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

13 " 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

14 " 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

15 " Nothing diminishes and degrades a human being more than the knowledge of being unloved. "

― Hjalmar Söderberg , Doctor Glas

16 " 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

17 " Och vad är månskenet?
Solsken i andra hand. Försvagat, förfalskat. "

― Hjalmar Söderberg , Doctor Glas

18 " Besynnerligt, att det alltid går en rysning genom luften före soluppgången. "

― Hjalmar Söderberg , Doctor Glas

19 " 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

20 " 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