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Halldór Laxness: 432 quotes5 likes

“For every day that God gives us, we thank the Lord of Hosts and His friend the Prophet, the latter of whom instituted here on earth a life of loveliness without envy or jealousy... We shall not give up this our life of loveliness, as long as we live, however much we are oppressed by the Government and its troops and policemen, its Congress and Senate, orators, newspaper scribes and authors, professors and paltry bishops, and even the antichrist himself, the Pope. No power on earth will succeed in preventing us from accomplishing God's sacred ordinances, as regards polygamy no less than all the other aspects that God has revealed to us. Polygamy as long as we live, say we women of Latter-Day Saints; polygamy or death!”

Halldór Laxness

the women of Spanish Fork
Paradísarheimt (Paradise Reclaimed) (1960)

“Was all human endeavor then, even the beautiful of the world, of so little consequence compared with murder?”

Halldór Laxness

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

“Some voices never manage to break properly. But in all good men there lurks a true note, I won't say like a mouse in a trap, but rather like a mouse between wall and wainscoting.”

Halldór Laxness

Pastor Jóhann
Brekkukotsannáll (The Fish Can Sing) (1957)

“The boy felt now that no injustice could ever be victorious in his life in the future. He would never forget this presence, and even though he might never live to see another happy day, he was now more than ever determined to make his life an unbroken echo of what he had perceived when he was young, and to teach other men in poetry what he had learned in sorrow.... It was certainly true—this boy had perhaps become a little disappointed in people, he had instinctively believed that people were more perfect than they actually are; in childhood, one cannot help believing this.”

Halldór Laxness

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

“I don't know how to lie. But I don't know what truth is, either. I always try to speak the way I think will cause least trouble to God and men.”

Halldór Laxness

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

“There's no creature on earth so despicable and loathsome as a rich man with a conscience.”

Halldór Laxness

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

“He would have died of loneliness and other things if the divine Omnipotence had not called him whenever It had the chance and invited him to become one with the radiant glory of heaven and earth. He tried whenever the opportunity occurred to obey this call and allow his soul to become one with a higher world beyond this world. He did not compose poetry openly now—his first experience at that had taught him a lesson; he resolved not to compose poetry openly until he was grown up and living among good and high-minded men, whom he imagined must exist elsewhere. But that did not stop him composing poetry; he composed just for himself now. Sometimes he scratched out a whole verse on the ice. He committed to memory every scrap of poetry he heard, and absorbed everything to do with knowledge, and was determined to write it all down in books later on—you see, he had the idea that there were too few books in the world, and that somewhere in the world there were people waiting impatiently, hungry for more books to be written.</b”

Halldór Laxness

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

“If there's one thing I despise, it's brennivín... [T]here no longer exists within me a single spark of longing for brennivín.”

Halldór Laxness

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

“All creation complains and moans, my dear lord Commissarius. Complaint is its distinctive sound.”

Halldór Laxness

the bishop of Skálholt
Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part II: The Fair Maiden

“I've never known justice to be used for anything other than the taking of poor men's lives. That's why I'm begging you, since you know how to speak to great men, to protect Jón Hreggviðson from justice.”

Halldór Laxness

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

“The worth of any deed depends on how it is assessed by the onlookers... once you have made yourself look ridiculous, you go on being ridiculous whatever you do, perhaps for the rest of your life.”

Halldór Laxness

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

“The Icelanders never got anything in exchange from the Danes except hunger.”

Halldór Laxness

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

“When the peace of autumn has become poetic instead of being taken for granted, the last day of the plover become a matter of personal regret, the pony become associated with the history of art and mythology, the evening ice-film on the farm stream become reminiscent of crystal, and the smoke from the chimney become a message to us from those who discovered fire—then the time has come to say goodbye... I had long begun to count the days until I could once again leave home, where I felt an alien, and go out into the alien world, where I was at home. But still I paused for a while over my thoughts of departure, and listened to the silence that had robbed the gods of sleep; and dusk sank slowly over the ponies.”

Halldór Laxness book The Atom Station

Atómstöðin (The Atom Station) (1948)

“Don't forget that few people are likely to tell more than a small part of the truth: no one tells much of the truth, let alone the whole truth. Spoken words are facts in themselves, whether true or false. When people talk they reveal themselves, whether they're lying or telling the truth.”

Halldór Laxness book Kristnihald undir Jökli (bók)

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

“Suicide—masturbation multiplied by itself!”

Halldór Laxness book The Atom Station

the organist
Atómstöðin (The Atom Station) (1948)

“A long time ago they brought me here eastward over the heath, along with one Jón Þeófílusson from the Westfjörds, who was burned after the devil testified against him. And I've got one thing to say about that: a ladies' man like him, who could sit up in the gables an entire night holding on to a Blusterer while his girl was in bed with another man, didn't deserve any better, and that's why I told him so many times in the black pit, 'You'll definitely be burned.'”

Halldór Laxness

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

“It was a rather beggarly set of authorities that reinstated the charges against Christ's tenant two days later at that dreary place, Þingvellir by Öxará. Even the Danish proxy's booth was a shambles, as if the royal power no longer gave any thought to protecting its image of authoritarian splendor against Iceland's storms of wind and rain, which were so inseparable from its folk, crooked and frostbitten pieces of timberwood in the shape of humans. Iceland's weather was a mill that left nothing unpulverized but for the country's basalt peaks. It uprooted and demolished all human works, wiping away not only their color but also their form... The high court was convened in the dilapidated cottage that had once been called a courthouse. Its roof had been torn off, giving wind and rain free range throughout the hall. Mire that had run from the turf walls onto the rotten floorplanks hadn't been mucked out. Inward along the floorboards hobbled Jón Hreggviðsson from Rein, gray-haired, groaning, and puffing.”

Halldór Laxness

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

“Other children had fathers and mothers and honored them, and they prospered and lived to a ripe old age; but he was often bitter towards his father and mother and dishonored them in his heart. His mother had cuckolded his father, and his father had betrayed his mother, and both of them had betrayed the boy. The only consolation was that he had a Father in heaven. And yet—it would have been better to have a father on earth.”

Halldór Laxness

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

“You should deny facts if they're inconvenient.”

Halldór Laxness

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

“My mother once sent me out to buy pepper, and I have not returned home yet.”

Halldór Laxness

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