13 Quotes by Pär Lagerkvist

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?

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

Human beings like to see themselves reflected in clouded mirrors.