Quotes from Par Lagerkvist

One for whom the pebble has value must be surrounded by treasures wherever he goes.

Bitter, too, to be forced to acknowledge in one's heart how little love has to do with kindness.

Nothing is more foreign than the world of one's childhood when one has truly left it.

No, the man said, looking past him with his empty gaze, the realm of the dead isn't anything. But to those who have been there, nothing else is anything either.

Human beings like to see themselves reflected in clouded mirrors.

What would life be like if it were not futile? Futility is the foundation upon which it rests. On what other foundation could it have been based which would have held and never given way? A great idea can be undermined by another great idea and, in due course, be demolished by it. But futility is inaccessible, indestructible, immovable. It is a true foundation and that is why it has been chosen as such.

All human culture is but an attempt at something unattainable, something which far transcends our powers of realization. There it stands, mutilated, tragic as a torso. Is not the human spirit itself a torso?

Nothing is so sure as the final oblivion.

Malevolence, like love, needs few words.

Love is something which dies and when dead it rots and becomes soil for a new love. The the dead love continues its secret life in the living one, and thus in reality there is no death in love.

Kärleken är någonting som dör. Och när den dör går den över i förruttnelse och kan bli jordmån för en ny kärlek. Den döda kärleken lever då sitt hemliga liv i den levande och det finns i själva verket i kärleken ingen död.

It is difficult to understand those whom one does not hate, for then one is unarmed, one has nothing with which to penetrate into their being.

El amor es algo que muere. Y cuando muere se pudre, pero puede servir de humus para un nuevo amor. De modo que aquel amor ya muerto continúa viviendo una vida secreta en el nuevo amor, y así nos hallamos con que el amor es inmortal.

Eternity… It has nothing to do with life, I thought; it is the contrary to all life. It is something limitless, endless, a realm of death which the living must look into with horror. Was it here that I was to dwell?

An enviable lunatic! One for whom a pebble has value must be surrounded by treasures wherever he goes.

Only the gods have many destinies and need never die. They are filled with everything and experience everything. Everything - except human happiness. That they can never know and therefore they grudge it to men. Nothing makes them so evil and cruel as that men should presume to be happy and forget them for the sake of their earthly happiness.

he was alone in the endless night that rested over the whole earth, alone in heaven and on earth and among the living and the dead. This he had always been . . . .

In appearance he was well-bred amiability personified, but one cannot judge by people's faces. It is their bodies which show them as the kind of animals they are.

He thought about the highest and holiest in life and of what nature it might be: that perhaps it exists only as a dream and cannot survive reality, the awakening. But that it does nevertheless exist. That perfect love exists and the Holy Land exists; it is just that we cannot reach it.

En gång ska du vara en av dem som levat för längesen. Jorden skall minnas dig så som den minns gräset och skogarna, det multnade lövet. Så som myllan minns och så som bergen minns vindarna. Din frid skall vara oändlig så som havet.

I have noticed that sometimes I frighten people; what they really fear is themselves. They think it is I who scare them, but it is the dwarf within them, the ape-faced manlike being who sticks up his head from the depths of their souls.

Their eyelashes were moist, and small drops of sweat beaded their upper lips. I regarded their slumber, almost innocent in its foolish thoughtlessness and its oblivion of all danger and the outside world. Is this what human beings call happiness?

Folk och härar han utplånar med sin vredes svärd. Domens tunga klockor dånar över mänskans värld.

Was there any meaning to the life he had led? Not even that did he believe in. But this was something he knew nothing about. It was not for him to judge.