Knut Hamsun Quotes

23 Sourced Quotes

I have had much to learn from Sweden's poetry and, more especially, from her lyrics of the last generation.

Knut Hamsun
Were I more conversant with literature and its great names, I could go on quoting them ad infinitum and acknowledge my debt for the merit you have been generous enough to find in my work

Knut Hamsun
No, what I should really like to do right now, in the full blaze of lights, before this illustrious assembly, is to shower every one of you with gifts, with flowers, with offerings of poetry - to be young once more, to ride on the crest of the wave.

Knut Hamsun
The intelligent poor individual was a much finer observer than the intelligent rich one. The poor individual looks around him at every step, listens suspiciously to every word he hears from the people he meets; thus, every step he takes presents a problem, a task, for his thoughts and feelings. He is alert and sensitive, he is experienced, his soul has been burned...

Knut Hamsun
No worse fate can befall a young man or woman than becoming prematurely entrenched in prudence and negation.

Knut Hamsun
I can't even make up a rhyme about an umbrella, let alone death and life and eternal peace.

Knut Hamsun
I am not worthy to speak loudly of Adolf Hitler, nor do his life and deeds call for sentimental arousal. He was a warrior, a warrior for mankind, and a preacher of the gospel of justice for all nations. He was a reformer of the highest order, and his historical fate was that he lived in a time of unequalled cruelty, which felled him in the end. Thus the ordinary Western European may look upon Adolf Hitler. And we, his close followers, bow our heads at his death.

Knut Hamsun
Nothing helped; I was fading helplessly away with open eyes, staring straight at the ceiling. Finally I stuck my forefinger in my mouth and took to sucking on it. Something began stirring in my brain, some thought in there scrambling to get out, a stark-staring mad idea: what if I gave a bite? And without a moment's hesitation I squeezed my eyes shut and clenched my teeth together. I jumped up. I was finally awake.

Knut Hamsun
A few days back someone sent me two feathers. Two bird's feathers in a sheet of note-paper with a coronet, and fastened with a seal. Sent from a place a long way off; from one who need not have sent them back at all. That amused me too, those devilish green feathers.

Knut Hamsun
Do you know what constitutes a great poet? He is a person without shame, incapable of blushing. Ordinary fools have moments when they go off by themselves and blush with shame; not so the great poet.... If you really have to quote someone, quote a geographer; that way you won't give yourself away.

Knut Hamsun
The long, long road over the moors and up into the forest - who trod it into being first of all? Man, a human being, the first that came here. There was no path before he came.

Knut Hamsun
Keep it, keep it!" I answered. "You are very welcome to it! It is only a couple of small things, doesn't amount to anything—about everything I own in the world.

Knut Hamsun
And love became the world's origin and the world's ruler, yet littered its path is with flowers and blood, flowers and blood.

Knut Hamsun
I will exile my thoughts if they think of you again, and I will rip my lips out if they say your name once more. Now if you do exist, I will tell you my final word in life or in death, I tell you goodbye.

Knut Hamsun
And the great spirit of darkness spread a shroud over me...everything was silent-everything. But upon the heights soughed the everlasting song, the voice of the air, the distant, toneless humming which is never silent.

Knut Hamsun
I was conscious all the time that I was following mad whims without being able to do anything about it …. Despite my alienation from myself at that moment, and even though I was nothing but a battleground for invisible forces, I was aware of every detail of what was going on around me.

Knut Hamsun
But what really matters is not what you believe but the faith and conviction with which you believe…

Knut Hamsun
But now it was spring again, and spring was almost unbearable for sensitive hearts. It drove creation to its utmost limits, it wafted its spice-laden breath even into the nostrils of the innocent.

Knut Hamsun
In old age... we are like a batch of letters that someone has sent. We are no longer in the past, we have arrived.

Knut Hamsun
Small jerks began to appear in my legs, my walk became unsteady precisely because I wanted it to be smooth.

Knut Hamsun
The heavy red roses smoldering in the foggy morning, blood-colored and uninhibited, made me greedy, and tempted me powerfully to steal one—I asked the prices merely so I could come as near them as possible.

Knut Hamsun
Heaven knows that there are plenty of opportunities in later life, too, for being carried away. What of it? We remain what we are and, no doubt, it is all very good for us!

Knut Hamsun
But things worked out. Everything works out. Though sometimes they work out sideways.

Knut Hamsun