“He wandered for a long time along the canals and over the bridges... Steam rose from one boat where men were heating their tea water. He shouted to them and asked them to give him some tea. They asked who he was and he said that he was from Iceland, where Hell is. They invited him out to the boat and gave him something to drink and questioned him about Mount Hekla. He said that he was born and raised at the foot of the mountain and for that reason was called van Hekkenfeld. They asked whether a man could see down into Hell from the summit of Hekla, through the swarm of noxious birds that hovers eternally, shrieking and quarreling, over the crater. He said no, but added that he'd once caught one of these birds with a hooked pole that he'd brought with him up onto the mountain; they were similar to ravens, he said, except for their claws and beaks, which were iron. They asked whether such birds could be eaten and he laughed at their foolishness, but said on the other hand that one could use the claws for hooks and the beak for a pick.”

— Halldór Laxness

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

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "He wandered for a long time along the canals and over the bridges... Steam rose from one boat where men were heating th…" by Halldór Laxness?

Halldór Laxness 216

Icelandic author 1902–1998

Related quotes

“Some of my father's fellow West Pointers once asked him why I turned out so well, his secret in raising me. And he said, "I never gave him any advice, and he never asked for any." We agreed on nothing, but we never quarreled once.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

2000s, What I've Learned (2008)

“'A'isha reported that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "When one of you dozes off while he is praying, he should go and lie down until he is no longer sleepy. If someone prays when he is drowsy, he may not know whether he is asking for forgiveness or asking for something bad for himself."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 1, hadith number 147
Sunni Hadith

“If a man, having lashed two hulls together, is crossing a river, and an empty boat happens along and bumps into him, no matter how hot-tempered the man may be, he will not get angry. But if there should be someone in the other boat, then he will shout out to haul this way or veer that. If his first shout is unheeded, he will shout again, and if that is not heard, he will shout a third time, this time with a torrent of curses following. In the first instance, he wasn't angry; now in the second he is. Earlier he faced emptiness, now he faces occupancy. If a man could succeed in making himself empty, and in that way wander through the world, then who could do him harm?”

Zhuangzi (-369–-286 BC) classic Chinese philosopher

“I asked Rob Roy where he had gone to college.
"Yale," he said.
I told him what Helen Dole said about Yale, that it ought to be called "Plantation Owners' Tech."
"I don't get it," he said.
"I had to ask her to explain it myself," I said. "She said Yale was where plantation owners learned how to get the natives to kill each other instead of them."”

Kurt Vonnegut book Hocus Pocus

Hocus Pocus (1990)

“He was one of the few judges who could occasionally poke fun at himself. He told me that once he was sitting at a dinner at the Cambridge University where a number of distinguished persons had been invited. Next to him was an elderly gentleman whose identity he did not know. There was some discussion about the theory of relativity and he aired his own views with a certain measure of authority. His neighbour told him that his views were interesting and invited him for a cup of tea in the next two or three days. Later on he found out that he had been talking to the world renowned physicist Sir Arthur Eddington who was reputed as one of the few persons apart from Einstein who understood the theory of relativity. He never picked up the courage to go for that cup of tea and face Sir Arthur Eddington.”

Mohammad Hidayatullah (1905–1992) 11th Chief Justice of India

M.H. Kania
Full Court Reference in Memory of The Late Justice M. Hidayatullah

“When asked what he would take to let a man give him a blow on the head, he said, "A helmet."”

Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers

Diogenes, 6.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 6: The Cynics

“You should have left him to wander,” Svengal said coldly. Erak looked at him, eyebrows raised.
“Would you?” he asked, and Svengal hesitated. At the end, Toshak had fought well and that counted for a lot of Skandians.
“No,” he admitted.”

John Flanagan (1873–1938) Irish-American hammer thrower

Source: Erak's Ransom

“As soon as he was born, he cried not as other babes use to do, Miez, miez, miez, miez, but with a high, sturdy, and big voice shouted about, Some drink, some drink, some drink, as inviting all the world to drink with him.”

Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel

Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Gargantua (1534), Chapter 6 : How Gargantua was born in a strange manner.
Context: As soon as he was born, he cried not as other babes use to do, Miez, miez, miez, miez, but with a high, sturdy, and big voice shouted about, Some drink, some drink, some drink, as inviting all the world to drink with him. The noise hereof was so extremely great, that it was heard in both the countries at once of Beauce and Bibarois. I doubt me, that you do not thoroughly believe the truth of this strange nativity. Though you believe it not, I care not much: but an honest man, and of good judgment, believeth still what is told him, and that which he finds written.

“I asked him what, if anything, got him down about teaching. He said he didn't think that anything about it got him exactly down, but there was one thing, he thought, that frightened him: reading the pencilled notations in the margins of books in the college library.”

Jerome David Salinger book Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963), Seymour: An Introduction (1959)

“When one asked him what boys should learn, "That," said he, "which they shall use when men."”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Of Agesilaus the Great
Laconic Apophthegms

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Halldór Laxness 216

Related quotes

Related topics