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Halldór Laxness: 432 quotes5 likes

“He called out for the others, but they were nowhere near. He tried to run, without knowing which way to go, but his legs were sluggish and the earth stood on end; in the next instant he found himself lying horizontal, his cheek in the dirt, without having felt himself fall. Then the earth tilted away from him again. He tried to walk steadily, but the earth continued to surge. Finally he sat down beneath a house-gable, leaned his back against the wall, and waited until the earth settled back in its place. He drooped his head and mumbled about his forefathers... In the end all he could do was start to sing the sad passion-hymns and death-prayers his mother had taught him in his youth.”

Halldór Laxness

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

“Oh no, better to be silent. That is what the glacier does. That is what the lilies of the field do.”

Halldór Laxness book Kristnihald undir Jökli (bók)

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

“When I discovered that history is a fable, and a poor one at that, I started looking for a better fable, and found theology.”

Halldór Laxness book Kristnihald undir Jökli (bók)

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

“They thought I was an Icelander! But I'm no Icelander, s'help me!”

Halldór Laxness

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

“You asked me whether you could learn to sing. I don't know. It could well be that you have the makings of a singer. It could well be that the world will give you the best that it has: glory, power, honor, what else is there? Palaces and parks, perhaps? Or merry meadows? And then what?”

Halldór Laxness

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

“A wise man once said that next to losing its mother, there is nothing more healthy for a child than to lose its father. And though I would never subscribe to such a statement wholeheartedly, I would be the last person to reject it out of hand. For my own part, I would express such a doctrine without any suggestion of bitterness against the world, or rather without the hurt which the mere sound of the words implies.”

Halldór Laxness

Brekkukotsannáll (The Fish Can Sing) (1957)

“There was a time, it says in books, that the Icelandic people had only one national treasure: a bell... When the king decreed that the people of Iceland were to relinquish all of their brass and copper so that Copenhagen could be rebuilt following the war, men were sent to fetch the ancient bell at Þingvellir by Öxará.”

Halldór Laxness

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

“It's both ludicrous and embarrassing to recall one's youth.”

Halldór Laxness

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

“As a child he stood by the seashore at Ljósavík and watched the waves soughing in and out, but now he was heading away from the sea. "Think of me when you are in glorious sunshine." Soon the sun of the day of resurrection will shine on the bright paths where she awaits her poet. And beauty shall reign alone.”

Halldór Laxness

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

“He swore repeatedly, ever the more violently the unsteadier his legs became, but to steel his senses he kept his mind fixed persistently on the world-famous battles of the rhymes. He recited the most powerful passages one after another over and over again, dwelling especially on the devilish heroes, Grimur Ægir and Andri. It was Grimur he was fighting now, he thought... but now an end would be put to the deadly feud, for now the stage was set for the final struggle.”

Halldór Laxness

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

“You can take everything from me except the freedom to look up at the sky occasionally.”

Halldór Laxness

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

“Over verdant lowlands cut by the deep streamwaters of the south hangs a peculiar gloom. Every eye is stifled by the clouds that block the sight of the sun, every voice is muffled like the chirps of fleeing birds, every quasi-movement sluggish. Children must not laugh, no attention must be drawn to the fact that a man exists, one must not provoke the powers with frivolity—do nothing but prowl along, furtively, lowly. Maybe the Godhead had not yet struck its final blow, an unexpiated sin might still fester somewhere, perhaps there still lurked worms that needed to be crushed.”

Halldór Laxness

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

“In the end one is no longer sure which is the greatest evildoer, the man who gets up early or the man who goes to bed late.”

Halldór Laxness

Steinar
Paradísarheimt (Paradise Reclaimed) (1960)

“As a rule, the only way that anyone could escape from the castle of Bremerholm was through a dead-end opening: namely, the grave.</b”

Halldór Laxness

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

“So hopelessly incapable was I of understanding better folk that I did not even know how to keep a servile tongue in my head. In a flash there appeared before my mind the difference between the two worlds in which we lived, this woman and I; although I was staying under her roof we were such poles apart from one another that it was only with half justification possible to classify us together as human beings; we were both vertebrates, certainly, even mammals, but there all resemblance ended; any human society of which both of us were members was merely an empty phrase.</b”

Halldór Laxness book The Atom Station

Atómstöðin (The Atom Station) (1948)

“Many a man may have his doubts for the moment, but when all comes to all and a long view is taken, one discovers usually that things have been making some sort of forward progress, some headway or other. And a man's dreams have a habit of coming true, more especially if he has made no particular effort to fulfill them ... It is particularly supposed that when a man has made himself worthy of living in a real house, he will be given a real house to live in; it sprouts out of the earth for him of its own accord, they say; life bestows on the individual all that he is worthy of, and the same is said to be true of the nation as a whole.”

Halldór Laxness

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

“It is justice, not love, that will one day give life to the children of the future. The battle for justice is the one thing which gives human life rational meaning.”

Halldór Laxness

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

“Icelanders are grateful to meet foreigners who have heard of their country. And even more grateful to hear someone say it deserves better.”

Halldór Laxness

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

“The truth displayed in a good life is the fairest of images.”

Halldór Laxness

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

“Every transgression is a game, every grief easy to bear compared with having discovered beauty; it was at once the crime that could never be atoned and the hurt that could never be assuaged, the tear that could never be dried.”

Halldór Laxness

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