Halldór Laxness quotes - page 7

Although grace comes from above, that is not to say that everyone has the ability to accept to it. (Halldór Laxness)
The glimmer continued to play about the vault of heaven. To the west one could see the roofs of nearby mansions and the tower of Our Lady's Church silhouetted against the dull red glow of embers in the darkness of the night. View quote
Halldór Laxness
All that you ask for, you shall have. View quote
Halldór Laxness
In actual fact, no man is honest when sober; in actual fact, you cannot believe a single word that a sober man says. I wish I were drunk myself. View quote
Halldór Laxness
A tiny light had been lit in a cottage on Álftanes; probably someone was going out fishing. Often there was frost and frozen snow, and the ice creaked in the night. Somewhere out in the infinite distance lay the spring, at least in God's mind, like the babies that are not yet conceived in the mother's womb. View quote
Halldór Laxness
"b>A man is not independent unless he has the courage to stand alone. View quote
Halldór Laxness
Everyone always believes everything nasty of everyone else, and especially if it's a lie. View quote
Halldór Laxness
When has human fortune ever been regarded as something better than a crime, or been enjoyed in any other way than in secret, directly contrary to the laws of God and man? View quote
Halldór Laxness
Icelanders! You are the descendants of Nordic vikings! Down with Irish slaves! View quote
Halldór Laxness
Learn never to look forward to anything. It is the beginning of knowing how to endure everything. View quote
Halldór Laxness
The words themselves say least of all, if in fact they say anything; what really informs us is the inflection of the voice (and no less so if it is restrained), the breathing, the heartbeat, the muscles round the mouth and eyes, the dilation and conctraction of the pupils, the strength or the weakness in the knees, as well as the chain of mysterious reactions in the nerves and the secretions from hidden glands whose names one never knows even though one has read about them in books; all that is the essence of a conversation-the words are more or less incidental. (Halldór Laxness)
Flowers are immortal. You cut them in autumn and they grow again in spring-somewhere. View quote
Halldór Laxness
Dear darling Americans, Jesus let them come with the atom bomb quick. View quote
Halldór Laxness
[T]ime passed and there was really no romance in life anymore, only the tedious tranquility of marriage without excitement or curiosity, the dull routine of making a comfortable living with nothing to nourish the imagination. View quote
Halldór Laxness
It is anything but easy trying to speak of a person one knows so little about but who is nevertheless so close to me. View quote
Halldór Laxness
It was odd that I should discover eternity in this way, long before I knew what eternity was, and even before I had learned the proposition that all man are mortal - yes, while I was actually living in eternity myself. It was as if a fish were suddenly to discover the water it swam in. I mentioned this to my grandfather one day when we happened to be alone in the living-room. View quote
Halldór Laxness
When we talked about Danish novels, it was as if we had in mind a vague impression of Dostoyevsky and those other story-tellers who appear to have spilled a great mass of tar which then, obeying only the laws of gravity, somehow oozes along formlessly into every crack and crevice. View quote
Halldór Laxness
If you're fond of someone, you don't care even if he doesn't live in a palace and even if all the banks where he has deposits and all the worldcities where he is famous don't exist. View quote
Halldór Laxness
I felt that I was dying, and perhaps I did die a little, or rather began to die in the way that the cocoon of the chrysalis cracks at the end of winter; but unfortunately I did not die so thoroughly that I achieved new life like a butterfly. View quote
Halldór Laxness
October passed, and there was no change inside the cubicle; except that the woman only became paler and more lifeless. Until finally the time came when she became transparent; she underwent that transformation, that transguration of countenance that sometimes comes to sufferers when the last of their strength ebbs away. View quote
Halldór Laxness
I'm afraid I'm not very good at Latin, said the superintendent. On the other hand I sometimes think about arithmetic; and in particular about one number – the number One. But I will admit that it is also the most incomprehensible number in the world. Beyond this particular dimension I know only one thing which is supernatural, even though it may well be the reality that affects mortal men most deeply; and that is Time. And when one comes to think about this strange place I was telling you about, the world that is only One, and its connection with the only supernatural thing we know, Time, then everything ceases to be higher or lower than anything else, larger or smaller. (Halldór Laxness)
...life has taught me to make no distinction between a hero and a little man, between great events and small trifles. From my point of view, men and events are all more or less the same size. View quote
Halldór Laxness
Curiosity can be called a virtue or a vice, depending on what kind of elementary ethics one reads; in our house at Brekkukot, curiosity was considered on a par with thievishness. View quote
Halldór Laxness
I feel a physical happiness when spring is coming. View quote
Halldór Laxness
In early times, say the Icelandic chronicles, men from the Western Islands came to live in this country, and when they departed, left behind them crosses, bells, and other objects used in the practice of sorcery . . . In those days there was great fertility of the soil in Iceland. But when the Norsemen came to settle here, the Western sorcerers were forced to flee the land, and old writings say that Kolumkilli, determined on revenge, laid a curse on the invaders, swearing that they would never prosper here, and more in the same spirit, much of what has since, to all appearances, been fulfilled. View quote
Halldór Laxness