Halldór Laxness - Human Quotes

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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
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.

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

Halldór Laxness
Human beings are constantly inventing new ways of maltreating one other. C'est la vie.

Halldór Laxness
Of all the creatures that man kills for his amusement there is only one that he kills out of hatred—other men. Man hates nothing as much as himself. That is why war is called the leprosy of the human soul.

Halldór Laxness
Hope springs eternal in the human breast.

Halldór Laxness
Over us human beings there hangs an awful sword of justice.

Halldór Laxness