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Halldór Laxness: 432 quotes5 likes

“The most remarkable thing about man's dreams is that they all come true; this has always been the case, though no one would care to admit it.”

Halldór Laxness

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

“b>A man is not independent unless he has the courage to stand alone.

Halldór Laxness

Sjálfstætt fólk (Independent People) (1935), Book Two, Part III: Conclusion

“Listen, don't look so depressed, old fellow. This is what all of Heine's poems are like, it's only peasants who don't laugh at them; or rather, perhaps, Calvinists. Abroad, it's the normal practice that if someone is looking really sad in the street, a horde of fat men comes running over waving checkbooks and hire him for a circus; they teach people like that to ride a bicycle that disintegrates when they try to mount it, or else make them play a stringless fiddle with a broomstick.”

Halldór Laxness

Garðar Hólm
Brekkukotsannáll (The Fish Can Sing) (1957)

“Everyone always believes everything nasty of everyone else, and especially if it's a lie.”

Halldór Laxness

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

“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?”

Halldór Laxness

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

“What made Ingolfur Arnarson a great man was first and foremost his ideals, his unquenchable love of mankind, his conviction that the people needed improved conditions of life and better facilities for cultural advancement, his determination to mitigate his fellow men's sufferings by establishing a better form of government in the country... Middlemen and other parasites would no longer be allowed to batten on the farming classes. Ingolfur wanted to elevate the farmer's life to a position of honor and dignity, not in word alone, but in deed.”

Halldór Laxness

Sjálfstætt fólk (Independent People) (1935), Book Two, Part II: Years of Prosperity

“When my daughter wakes up on her first morning in God's City of Zion, the sun will rise over Sierra Benida and shine upon the saints: the sun of the All-Wisdom; the sun of the Beehive, the Sego-lily, and Seagull... My son will understand that Egill Skallagrímsson and the Norse kings live here in Spanish Fork, but that they now have the gleam of righteousness in their eyes and have become leaders in the Stake, Seventies, and High Priests.”

Halldór Laxness

Steinar
Paradísarheimt (Paradise Reclaimed) (1960)

“It makes no difference where one sleeps in God's City of Zion, the air is everywhere just as all-embracingly pleasing.”

Halldór Laxness

Steinar
Paradísarheimt (Paradise Reclaimed) (1960)

“b>The love which demands nothing but beauty itself and lives in selfless worship... is the love that no disappointment can ever conquer, perhaps not even death itself”

Halldór Laxness

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

“The fire's hottest for the one who burns himself.”

Halldór Laxness

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

“It's you who are strange. Talking to you is like talking to someone who has no shadow.”

Halldór Laxness

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

“My opinion has always been this, that you ought to never give up as long as you live, even though they have stolen everything from you. If nothing else, you can always call the air you breath your own, or at any rate you can claim that you have it on loan. Yes, lass, last night I ate stolen bread and left my son among men who are going to use pick-handles on the authorities, so I thought I might just as well look you up this morning.”

Halldór Laxness

Bjartur talking with Asta Sollilja
Sjálfstætt fólk (Independent People) (1935), Book Two, Part III: Conclusion

“Yes, it is a painful lot to be a poet and to love both God and man by the farthest northern seas!”

Halldór Laxness

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

“Icelanders! You are the descendants of Nordic vikings! Down with Irish slaves!”

Halldór Laxness

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

“And so it went on, day after day. This was not the first time that those who had at first smiled at him turned their backs on him and began to think of themselves isntead of thinking of him. Sometimes it was as if you understood people's souls; a few days later, you understood nothing. One day you were kissed, and it meant everything; next day, you were not kissed.... He consoled himself by looking at his exercise books with the poems approaching the thousand total soon, and more. Perhaps the world would some day understand that the heart existed. Some day.</b”

Halldór Laxness

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

“I didn't expect you to have learnt to smile yet. When one is born, one only knows how to cry. It's only very gradually that one learns to smile.”

Halldór Laxness

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

“Learn never to look forward to anything. It is the beginning of knowing how to endure everything.”

Halldór Laxness

Thórarna, the woman from Landbrot
Brekkukotsannáll (The Fish Can Sing) (1957)

“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 book The Atom Station

Atómstöðin (The Atom Station) (1948)

“I swear—swear—swear: by everything which is and has been sacred to this nation from the beginning: Iceland shall not be sold.”

Halldór Laxness book The Atom Station

the Prime Minister
Atómstöðin (The Atom Station) (1948)

“Flowers are immortal. You cut them in autumn and they grow again in spring—somewhere.”

Halldór Laxness book The Atom Station

the organist
Atómstöðin (The Atom Station) (1948)