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Halldór Laxness Quotes
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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
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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."
Halldór Laxness
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The glimmer continued to play about the vault of heaven. To the west one could see the roofs of nearby mansions and the tower of Our Lady's Church silhouetted against the dull red glow of embers in the darkness of the night.
Halldór Laxness
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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
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How is one to have any respect for the world where nothing else matters except who can lie the most plausibly and steal the most?
Halldór Laxness
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Human beings are constantly inventing new ways of maltreating one other. C'est la vie.
Halldór Laxness
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It's both ludicrous and embarrassing to recall one's youth.
Halldór Laxness
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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.
Halldór Laxness
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It's a common saying that the children of children are fortune's favorites.
Halldór Laxness
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It's an honor to be beheaded. Even a little churl becomes a man by being beheaded.
Halldór Laxness
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In the afterlife, people never forget to feed the dog.
Halldór Laxness
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My image will soon be obliterated; it was only an illusion. But even though I may fall, even though my image may be obliterated, there is one thing that will never fall and can never be obliterated, and that is the yearning of those in chains for liberty.
Halldór Laxness
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No one is so busy that he hasn't the time to dismantle a work of art.
Halldór Laxness
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One asks and asks and always the answers become more incomprehensible than the question. In the end one becomes an idiot.
Halldór Laxness
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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.
Halldór Laxness
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You can take everything from me except the freedom to look up at the sky occasionally.
Halldór Laxness
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People who like to display complicated technique in their verse are more given to pride themselves on their work than are those who write for their own solace.
Halldór Laxness
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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.
Halldór Laxness
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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
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It's a useful habit to never believe more than half of what people tell you, and not to concern yourself with the rest. Rather keep your mind free and your path your own.
Halldór Laxness
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My mother once sent me out to buy pepper, and I have not returned home yet.
Halldór Laxness
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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
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The mountain reminds one of an upturned earthenware bowl, the glazing a little bluish at times, but sometimes like gold-rimmed transparent Chinese porcelain, especially if the sun is low in the west over the sea, because then the rays play on the glacier in two directions.
Halldór Laxness
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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.
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I have always felt that I was different from others. I felt it when I was small. I felt that there was a soul in me. I saw the world from a height of many thousand meters. Even when I was thrashed it was of no concern to me; I could tuck Reykjavik under my arm and go away with it.
Halldór Laxness
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Quote of the day
Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.
William James
Halldór Laxness
Creative Commons
Born:
April 23, 1902
Died:
February 8, 1998
(aged 95)
Bio:
Halldór Kiljan Laxness was a twentieth-century Icelandic writer. Laxness wrote poetry, newspaper articles, plays, travelogues, short stories, and novels.
Known for:
Independent People (1934)
The Fish Can Sing (1957)
Iceland's Bell (1943)
World Light (1969)
The Atom Station (1948)
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