Halldór Laxness Quotes

“Never did these thanes of hell escape their just deserts.”

Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book One: The Revelation of the Deity
Context: He was not quite nine years old, in fact, when he began to have spiritual experiences... he felt he saw God's image open before him. He felt the deity reveal itself in Nature in an inexpressible music, the sonic revelation of the deity; and before he knew it, he himself had become a trembling voice in a celestial chorus of glory. His soul seemed to be rising out of his body like frothing milk brimming over the edge of a basin; it was as if his soul were flowing into an unfathomable ocean of higher life, beyond words, beyond all perception, his body suffused by some surging light that was beyond all light. Sighing, he became aware of his own insignificance in the midst of this infinite chorus glory and radiance; his whole consciousness dissolved into one sacred, tearful yearning to be allowed to be one with the Highest and be no longer any part of himself. He lay for a long time on the sand or on the grass, and wept tears of deep and fervent happiness, face to face with the inexpressible. "God, God, God!" he cried, trembling with love and reverence, and kissed the ground and dug his fingers into the turf.

Halldór Laxness Quotes

“Whoever doesn't live in poetry cannot survive here on earth.”

Sjálfstætt fólk (Independent People) (1935), Book One, Part I: Icelandic Pioneers
Context: Never did these thanes of hell escape their just deserts. No one ever heard of Harekur or Gongu-Hrolfur or Bernotus being worsted in the final struggle. In the same way no one will be able to say that Bjartur of Summerhouses ever got the worst of it in his world war with the country's specters, no matter how often he might tumble over a precipice or roll head over heels down a gully - "while there's a breath left in my nostrils, it will never keep me down, no matter how hard it blows."

“Often the boy was overwhelmed by an uncontrollable yearning to write down in books everything he saw, despite what anyone said—two hundred books as thick as the Book of Sermons, whole Bibles, whole chests full of books.”

Source: Under the Glacier

“I've never had a grandmother, a great-grandmother, nor a great-great-grandmother. I never even had a mother. I have certainly missed a great deal of love thereby, but fortune has compensated me by not giving me the capacity to hate anyone, neither nations nor individuals. If candlesticks and church bells have been plundered from my ancestors, then I'm only grateful that I'm so ignorant about genealogy.”

Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book One: The Revelation of the Deity

“Thank the Lord, we subsidize our own debauchery first of all before we subsidize the debauchery of others.”

Ólafur
Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Four: The Beauty of the Heavens

“The faithful say that with such a mouth did God speak to the Church Fathers. The acoustics are so remarkable that if the name of the Lord is whispered at the altar it can be heard as a shout at the door.”

Bui Arland
Atómstöðin (The Atom Station) (1948)

“b>Oh, it's so good to be dead!
- little Anna”

Paradísarheimt (Paradise Reclaimed) (1960)

“Philosophy and theology have no effect on him, much less plain common sense. Impossible to convince this man by arguments. But humor he always listens to, even though it be ill humor. A typical Icelander, perhaps.”

Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Two: The Palace of the Summerland

“I was hoping the bishop would be coming himself. He's a terribly agreeable old chap. I always find it so enjoyable to blether with the old fellow. We don't agree about anything. But everything depends on agreeing to disagree.”

EmBi describing Pastor Jón
Kristnihald undir Jökli (Under the Glacier/Christianity at Glacier) (1968)

“b>Night. Two Icelandic Jóns stagger waywardly through a burning city. The learned Grindavíkian is bawling like a child. The farmer from Rein plods silently behind. The fire of Copenhagen is at their heels, driving them on in the direction of Nørreport. The sea of flames turns terrified folk into frantic silhouettes, fleshly phantoms.”

Pastor Jón Prímus
Kristnihald undir Jökli (Under the Glacier/Christianity at Glacier) (1968)

“The reason a man talks is to hide his thoughts.”

Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part III: Fire in Copenhagen

“Hope springs eternal in the human breast. (Original to Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man”

the self-conscious policeman
Atómstöðin (The Atom Station) (1948)

“Human beings are constantly inventing new ways of maltreating one other. C'est la vie.
- Úa”

1734)
Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Four: The Beauty of the Heavens

“Jesus! My brother! Heave-up!”

Kristnihald undir Jökli (Under the Glacier/Christianity at Glacier) (1968)

“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.”

Eilífðar-Daði
Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Two: The Palace of the Summerland

“It goes without saying that if there were anything happening in the room you never heard the clock at all, no more than if it did not exist; but when all was quiet and the visitors had gone and the table had been cleared and the door shut, then it would start up again, as steady as ever; and if you listened hard enough you could sometimes make out a singing note in its workings, or something very like an echo.</b”

Sjálfstætt fólk (Independent People) (1935), Book One, Part I: Icelandic Pioneers

“A good pony can occur on a farm once in a generation, with luck; but on some farms, never in a thousand years. From the sea, beyond the sands and marshes, for a thousand years, the murmur was always the same.”

Brekkukotsannáll (The Fish Can Sing) (1957)

“I came to you a crossbearer on a stretcher and an outcast from humanity, and I went from you a conqueror of life.”

Paradísarheimt (Paradise Reclaimed) (1960)

“Postscript: It's a dangerous mission for Lapps, said Ingimundur the Old's Finns in Vatnsdœla Saga, when he sent them on a magic journey to explore Iceland. One poor little part-time tutor from the south has no motorway to guide him when he finds himself in the footsteps of the extraordinary Otto Lidenbrock, who years ago went looking for the Icelander Árni Saknússemm. Professor Lidenbrock followed the trail of this philosopher and alchemist down the crater on Snæfellsjökull all the way to the center of the earth... Perhaps the poor part-time tutor who writes this has yet to go through the center of the earth before Christianity at Glacier is fully explored. But where shall I come up?</b”

Ólafur talking to Þórunn
Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Two: The Palace of the Summerland

“They were allowed a little touch at each of the books, but only with their fingertips tonight, literature cannot bear dirty hands; first we'll have to back each volume with paper, the covers must not get dirty, nor the spines slit, books are the nation's most precious possession, books have preserved the nation's life through monopoly, pestilence, and volcanic eruption, not to mention the tons of snow that have lain over the country's widely scattered homesteads for the major part of every one of its thousand years.”

Kristnihald undir Jökli (Under the Glacier/Christianity at Glacier) (1968)

“A married man has only one duty towards his wife in order to make her happy, and that is to ensure that she is constantly pregnant, and with a child in her arms.”

Sjálfstætt fólk (Independent People) (1935), Book Two, Part I: Hard Times

“My name is Steinar Steinsson, from Hlíðar in Steinahlíðar. I bid the king welcome to Iceland. We are of the same kin, according to the genealogy which Bjarni Guðmundsson of Fuglavík prepared for my grandfather. I am of Jutland origin, descended from King Harald Hilditönn, who fought the battle of Brávellir.”

Reimar Vagnsson
Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Four: The Beauty of the Heavens

“Misdeeds that are repented no longer exist.”

Steinar addressing King Kristian
Paradísarheimt (Paradise Reclaimed) (1960)

“When I was in Bessastaðir I had a jug of water—and an ax. A well-sharpened ax is a fine tool. On the other hand I've never been fond of the gallows, and never less than when I wrestled a hanged man.”

Reverend Sigurður
Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part III: Fire in Copenhagen

“These people, who have since antiqui possessed the most distinguished litteras in the northern part of the world, choose now to walk upon calfskin or to eat calfskin rather than to read the old words written upon calfskin.”

Jón Hreggviðsson
Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part II: The Fair Maiden

“b>One of the loveliest and most magnificent events that can happen in the country is when ponies take fright, particularly in a herd. A meadow-pippit has flown past. The ponies' fear is at first blended with play, even with mockery, amusement touched with a shudder, not unlike the behavior of the mentally ill. They trot as if they were retreating from a slow-moving stream of fire, but with lightning in every action, storm in every nerve; swinging their heads everywhere as if the front of their necks were made of elastic, gracefully flirting their tails. They can even pause for a moment, and start biting and boxing, with those romantic mating cries of theirs. Then all at once it is as if the fire has started flowing right under these strange creatures, they charge away like a storm incarnate over scree and bogs and landslides, dipping the tips of their toes for a fractional moment into the furnace that blazes beneath their hooves, cutting across waterfalls, gullys, and boulders, galloping steeply for a while until they stand trapped at last on some ledge high in the mountaintops, there to die and be eaten by birds.”

Arnas Arnæus
Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part I: Iceland's Bell

“Ólafur Kárason had always kept to himself and did not interfere in other people's affairs; it sometimes also happened that he was not very familiar with his own affairs.”

Atómstöðin (The Atom Station) (1948)

“The Voice began to echo at once. It was the same Voice of old. The difference was that when he was a child he thought he knew what it was, and that he understood it, and he gave it a name; but the older and wiser he became, the more difficult he found it to say what it was, or to understand it, except that he felt it called him away from other people and the responsibilities of life to the place where it alone reigned... Ah, sweet Voice, he said, and filled his lungs with the cool evening breeze of the north, but he did not dare open his arms to it for fear that people might think he was mad.”

Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Four: The Beauty of the Heavens

“Thereafter, when he himself was dead, he imagined that his poems would be published in some mysterious way, and the nation would read them for comfort in adversity, as it had read the poems of other poets before him; it was his highest wish that his poems could help those as unfortunate as himself to have patience to endure.</b”

Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Three: The House of the Poet

“How wonderful it can be, and what nobility it proves in young men, when they pledge one another a friendship that can never be shadowed by selfishness, envy, or jealousy.”

Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book One: The Revelation of the Deity

“The people with whom I grew up in the Vestmannaeyjar carried heaven within themselves; even if it was sixty fathoms at the end of a rope down a cliff, fowling, they were at home in God's City of Zion.”

little Steina
Paradísarheimt (Paradise Reclaimed) (1960)

“I hope that famous critics will not class me with certain devotees of death and doom if I say here that I think that funerals in our churchyard gave me more entertainment than most other things when I was a little boy.”

old María
Paradísarheimt (Paradise Reclaimed) (1960)

“Jón Hreggviðsson said that he himself never read except when he was forced to do so, though he had learned from his mother all the necessary sagas, ballads, and old genealogies, and he claimed to be descended from Haraldur Hilditönn, the Danish king, on his father's side. He said that he would never forget such excellent ancients as Gunnar of Hlíðarendi, King Pontus, and Örvar-Oddur, who were twelve ells high and could have lived to be three hundred years old if they hadn't run into any trouble, and that if he had such a book he would send it immediately for free to the king and his counts, to prove to them that there had indeed once been real men in Iceland.</b”

Brekkukotsannáll (The Fish Can Sing) (1957)

“Once upon a time these two men had been in the same situation; now the difference between them was like the difference between a wish and its fulfillment. The one was what the other had dreamed of, and therefore they did not know one another anymore. He who has wishes yearns for a friend; but when the wishes have been fulfilled, the friends are the first thing we forget.”

Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part I: Iceland's Bell

“It's an honor to be beheaded. Even a little churl becomes a man by being beheaded.”

Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Four: The Beauty of the Heavens

“Mine is a bad doctrine. And, what's more, I cannot substantiate my doctrine. The man who has the best doctrine is the one who can prove that he has the most to eat; and good shoes. I have neither, and live in a dugout.”

Hólmfastur Guðmundsson
Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part I: Iceland's Bell

“A man's conscience is an unsteady judge of right and wrong.”

the Lutheran
Paradísarheimt (Paradise Reclaimed) (1960)

“Slowly, slowly winter day opens his arctic eye.”

Arnas Arnæus
Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part II: The Fair Maiden

“Dear Snæfríður, is it not clear to you how disastrous your words were, when you said just now that you do not fear the eye of God watching over you?”

Sjálfstætt fólk (Independent People) (1935), Book One, Part II: Free of Debt

“Hauling fish from the sea—what endless toil. One could almost say, what an eternal problem.”

Reverend Sigurður
Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part II: The Fair Maiden

“Because there are indeed women in Iceland, it will now be proven to you, you ugly wench, that there are also men in Iceland!”

Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Three: The House of the Poet

“I could best believe that love was some sort of rubbish thought up by the romantic geniuses who were now going to start bellowing like cows, or even dying; at least, there is no mention of love in Njal's Saga, which is nevertheless better than any romantic literature. I had lived for twenty years with the best people in the country, my father and mother, and never heard love mentioned. This couple begat us children, certainly; but not from love; rather, as an element of the simple life of poor people who have no pastimes. On the other hand I had never heard a cross word pass between them all my life—but is that love? I hardly think so. I think love is a pastime amongst sterile folk in towns, and takes the place of the simple life.</b”

Jón Hreggviðsson
Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part I: Iceland's Bell

“If I have a face that rejoices in God's grace, my brother, it is because I have learned more from those who have lived within these [prison] walls than from those who live outside them. I have learned more from those who have fallen down than those who have remained upright.”

Atómstöðin (The Atom Station) (1948)

“My job was to keep the house clean, get the children off to school, help the cook-housekeeper, and serve at table. The house was much more perfect than the sort of gilt-bordered Christmas-card-Heaven that a crooked-nosed woman would sacrifice everything to attain in the next world: it was an all-electric house, with machines being plugged in and started up all day long; there was no such thing as a fire; heat came from hot-springs underground, and the glowing embers in the fireplace were made of glass.”

the cathedral pastor visiting Ólafur
Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Four: The Beauty of the Heavens

“He wrote down everything he saw and heard, and most of his thoghts, sometimes in verse, sometimes in prose. It could take him many hours to write in his diary a survey of one full day: everything was an experience, any noteworthy observation which some nameless person might make was a new vista, any insignificant piece of information was a new sunrise, any ordinary poem he read for the first time was the beginning of a new epoch like a flight around the globe; the world was multiform, magnificent and opulent, and he loved it.”

Atómstöðin (The Atom Station) (1948)

“Really," said the poet, without enthusiasm.
"Mm—you say 'Really,' young man?" said the secretary. "That is undeniably a rather peculiar reply. Might I ask what you mean by that word?"
"I mean that I'm such an insignificant poet that it isn't worthwhile getting me to compose a poem," said Ólafur Kárason modestly.
The secretary gave the poet a stern and searching look and finally said, "I no longer understand young people nowadays. It's as if nothing serious or important makes any impression on young people any longer. The modern craze seems to be to squander money needlessly if possible. But luckily it isn't possible. Even you, young man, who are said to have a poetic bent, yes, and some say you even possess a modicum of intelligence, you just say 'Really' when you're invited to take part in a ceremony which is destined to revolutionize the religious, scientific, and moral life of the nation.”

Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Two: The Palace of the Summerland

“Oh, well, I'm leaving here now," he told her. "They're forcing me to sell up."
"And I'm not surprised," she replied. "It's that dirty old devil again, he who haunts Summerhouses and always has. And always will. Kolumkilli has rarely allowed anyone who lived in this croft to escape scot-free. I say for my part that I have never made this place my home. I have been nothing more than a lodger for the night.”

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Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Two: The Palace of the Summerland

“It may well be that fighting is normal, like having something to eat. Peace, on the other hand, is a luxury.”

:- conversation between Bjartur and Hallbera
Sjálfstætt fólk (Independent People) (1935), Book Two, Part II: Years of Prosperity

“b>Over us human beings there hangs an awful sword of justice.

Ólafur
Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Three: The House of the Poet

“One asks and asks and always the answers become more incomprehensible than the question. In the end one becomes an idiot.
- EmBi”

Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Four: The Beauty of the Heavens