Halldór Laxness - Man Quotes

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When Icelanders were worthy of the name, it was considered an accepted duty to avenge with the sword the sort of crime you have committed against my family. It's a bitter thing to be living at a time when one many not challenge to single combat the man who has disgraced one's family, and carve a blood-eagle on his back!

Halldór Laxness
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
You have fettered yourself of your own free will, man—break the fetters!

Halldór Laxness
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
Pray God for guidance, man. It's thirty-odd years since I sold the last copy of Orvar-Odds saga. The country stands on an entirely different cultural footing nowadays. I can recommend the story of King Solomon's Mines there, all about the hero of Umslopogaas, in his own way a great man, and in my opinion no whit inferior to Orvar-Oddur.

Halldór Laxness
Yes, it is a painful lot to be a poet and to love both God and man by the farthest northern seas!

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
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
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
It's an honor to be beheaded. Even a little churl becomes a man by being beheaded.

Halldór Laxness
A man is not independent unless he has the courage to stand alone.

Halldór Laxness
To walk home alone at night is a disaster, in novels. Some girls confuse the state of being in love and being lonely, and think they are the former when in fact they are the latter; in love with everyone and no one, just because they are without a man.

Halldór Laxness
In actual fact, no man is honest when sober; in actual fact, you cannot believe a single word that a sober man says. I wish I were drunk myself.

Halldór Laxness
When I was in Bessastaðir I had a jug of water—and an ax. A well-sharpened ax is a fine tool. On the other hand I've never been fond of the gallows, and never less than when I wrestled a hanged man.

Halldór Laxness
What made Ingolfur Arnarson a great man was first and foremost his ideals, his unquenchable love of mankind, his conviction that the people needed improved conditions of life and better facilities for cultural advancement, his determination to mitigate his fellow men's sufferings by establishing a better form of government in the country... Middlemen and other parasites would no longer be allowed to batten on the farming classes. Ingolfur wanted to elevate the farmer's life to a position of honor and dignity, not in word alone, but in deed.

Halldór Laxness
After Bjartur had become a person of great worth, even he was prone to admit on occasion that life had sometimes been pretty hard in Summerhouses in the old days, but one has to take a few knocks if one wants to get on, surely, and anyway we never ate other folk's bread. Other folk's bread is the most virulent form of poison that a free and independent man can take; other folk's bread is the only thing that can rob him of independence and the one true freedom.

Halldór Laxness
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
Philosophy and theology have no effect on him, much less plain common sense. Impossible to convince this man by arguments. But humor he always listens to, even though it be ill humor. A typical Icelander, perhaps.

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

Halldór Laxness
Mine is a bad doctrine. And, what's more, I cannot substantiate my doctrine. The man who has the best doctrine is the one who can prove that he has the most to eat; and good shoes. I have neither, and live in a dugout.

Halldór Laxness
A married man has only one duty towards his wife in order to make her happy, and that is to ensure that she is constantly pregnant, and with a child in her arms.

Halldór Laxness
A man's conscience is an unsteady judge of right and wrong.

Halldór Laxness