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Halldór Laxness

214 quotes

“If you’re fond of someone, you don’t care even if he doesn’t live in a palace and even if all the banks where he has deposits and all the worldcities where he is famous don’t exist.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“People have kept on asking me: did he sing well? I reply, the world is a song, but we do not know whether it is a good song because we have nothing to compare it with.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Slow good luck is best.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“At this time, Icelanders were said to be the poorest people in Europe, just as their fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers had been, all the way back to the earliest settlers; but they believed that many long centuries ago there had been a Golden Age in Iceland, when Icelanders had not been mere farmers and fisherman as they were now, but royal-born heroes and poets who owned weapons, gold, and ships.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A good pony can occur on a farm once in a generation, with luck; but on some farms, never in a thousand years. From the sea, beyond the sands and marshes, for a thousand years, the murmur was always the same.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Since when has America with all its hordes of gangsters and beggars become God's Kingdom?”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My name is Steinar Steinsson, from Hlíðar in Steinahlíðar. I bid the king welcome to Iceland. We are of the same kin, according to the genealogy which Bjarni Guðmundsson of Fuglavík prepared for my grandfather. I am of Jutland origin, descended from King Harald Hilditönn, who fought the battle of Brávellir.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Three things, according to poets, are considered bliss in Iceland: hot rye-cakes, plump girls, and cold buttermilk.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Good news travels slowly but arrives in the end, thank goodness. Bad news always arrives a day too soon.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The faithful say that with such a mouth did God speak to the Church Fathers. The acoustics are so remarkable that if the name of the Lord is whispered at the altar it can be heard as a shout at the door.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Anyone who doesn't know others doesn't know himself.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It makes no difference where one sleeps in God's City of Zion, the air is everywhere just as all-embracingly pleasing.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A topic that sometimes succeeds in being fully resolved with the help of long explanations in speech or writing, with arguments and letter, but more often fails the harder it is pursued, can be resolved by dumbness in a single hour.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How wonderful it can be, and what nobility it proves in young men, when they pledge one another a friendship that can never be shadowed by selfishness, envy, or jealousy.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The people with whom I grew up in the Vestmannaeyjar carried heaven within themselves; even if it was sixty fathoms at the end of a rope down a cliff, fowling, they were at home in God's City of Zion.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The first thing is to have the will; the rest is technique.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Don't forget that few people are likely to tell more than a small part of the truth: no one tells much of the truth, let alone the whole truth. Spoken words are facts in themselves, whether true or false. When people talk they reveal themselves, whether they're lying or telling the truth.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's strange that all birds don't fly in the same way . . . I've heard that the wings of aeroplanes all conform to the same formula, whereas birds each conform to a formula of their own . . . All birds are perhaps a little wrong, because an absolute once-and-for-all formula for a bird has never been found, just as all novels are bad because the correct formula for a novel has never been found.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I was hoping the bishop would be coming himself. He's a terribly agreeable old chap. I always find it so enjoyable to blether with the old fellow. We don't agree about anything. But everything depends on agreeing to disagree.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Oh no, better to be silent. That is what the glacier does. That is what the lilies of the field do.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No one is so busy that he hasn't the time to dismantle a work of art.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As a matter of fact, others are ready to help. There is for instance the Weather; and there is the Law of Gravity; and last but not least, Time. These are tough fellows. Night and day, always at it. And at it still. No one is a match for them.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When I discovered that history is a fable, and a poor one at that, I started looking for a better fable, and found theology.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's a pity we don't whistle at one another, like birds. Words are misleading.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I do not see how the Creation can be turned into words, let alone letters, hardly even a fiction. History is always entirely different to what has happened. The facts are all fled from you before you start the story. History is simply a fact on its own. And the closer you try to approach the facts through history, the deeper you sink into fiction.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The difference between a novelist and a historian is this: that the former tells lies deliberately and for the fun of it; the historian tells lies in his simplicity and imagines he is telling the truth.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's an old saying that one still has to know something, despite everything.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Often I think the Almighty is like a snow bunting abandoned in all weathers. Such a bird is about the weight of a postage stamp. Yet he does not blow away when he stands in the open in a tempest . . . He wields this fragile head against the gale, with his beak to the ground, wings folded close to his sides and his tail pointing upwards; and the wind can get no hold on him, and cleaves.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is a waste of words to try to impute to the Creator democratic ideas or social virtues; or to think that one can move Him with weeping and wailing, and persuade Him with logic and legal quibbles. Nothing is so pointless as words.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One asks and asks and always the answers become more incomprehensible than the question. In the end one becomes an idiot.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Human beings are constantly inventing new ways of maltreating one other. C'est la vie.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is no other Úa than the one who has always lived with me and never gone from me for a single moment. She is closer to me than the flower of the field and the light of the glacier, because she is fused with my own breath. The one thing that remains is what lives deepest within yourself, even though you glide from one galaxy to another. Nothing can change that. And now let us have more shark meat.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In early times, say the Icelandic chronicles, men from the Western Islands came to live in this country, and when they departed, left behind them crosses, bells, and other objects used in the practice of sorcery . . . In those days there was great fertility of the soil in Iceland. But when the Norsemen came to settle here, the Western sorcerers were forced to flee the land, and old writings say that Kolumkilli, determined on revenge, laid a curse on the invaders, swearing that they would never prosper here, and more in the same spirit, much of what has since, to all appearances, been fulfilled.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nothing was said. And on crawled the little procession in the direction of Summerhouses, men and animals, men-animals, five souls. The pale red sun grazed the surface of the moorland bluffs on this northern winter's morning which was really only an evening. And yet it was midday. The light gilded the clouds of snow flying over the moors so that they seemed one unbroken ocean of fire, one radiant fire of gold with streaming flames and glimmering smoke from east to west over the whole frozen expanse. Through this golden fire of frost, comparable in its magic to nothing but the most powerful and elaborate witchcraft of the Ballads, lay their homeward way.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He was not quite nine years old, in fact, when he began to have spiritual experiences . . . he felt he saw God's image open before him. He felt the deity reveal itself in Nature in an inexpressible music, the sonic revelation of the deity; and before he knew it, he himself had become a trembling voice in a celestial chorus of glory. His soul seemed to be rising out of his body like frothing milk brimming over the edge of a basin; it was as if his soul were flowing into an unfathomable ocean of higher life, beyond words, beyond all perception, his body suffused by some surging light that was beyond all light. Sighing, he became aware of his own insignificance in the midst of this infinite chorus glory and radiance; his whole consciousness dissolved into one sacred, tearful yearning to be allowed to be one with the Highest and be no longer any part of himself. He lay for a long time on the sand or on the grass, and wept tears of deep and fervent happiness, face to face with the inexpressible. "God, God, God!" he cried, trembling with love and reverence, and kissed the ground and dug his fingers into the turf.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He would have died of loneliness and other things if the divine Omnipotence had not called him whenever It had the chance and invited him to become one with the radiant glory of heaven and earth. He tried whenever the opportunity occurred to obey this call and allow his soul to become one with a higher world beyond this world. He did not compose poetry openly now—his first experience at that had taught him a lesson; he resolved not to compose poetry openly until he was grown up and living among good and high-minded men, whom he imagined must exist elsewhere. But that did not stop him composing poetry; he composed just for himself now. Sometimes he scratched out a whole verse on the ice. He committed to memory every scrap of poetry he heard, and absorbed everything to do with knowledge, and was determined to write it all down in books later on—you see, he had the idea that there were too few books in the world, and that somewhere in the world there were people waiting impatiently, hungry for more books to be written.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He came to a halt in a hollow and got his breath back. He felt himself freed of a great burden by getting out of sight of other people. The previous days and nights had been eventful, and he had lost himself. But now he was sure he would find himself again, like a dead man who finds himself, little by little, in the next world. In spite of everything, and although he was in reality a newborn babe in this new world, it was delightful to be born anew and to own a share of the sun like others instead of having to wait half the year perhaps for one little ray of sunshine . . . . No, there's probably no way of making something cease to exist once it has come into existence. He was no longer afraid of the immortality of the soul, that doctrine which for a time had seemed to him the height of human cruelty. Today it was the many and various abodes of the Creator which enchanted the mind . . . . and death did not exist.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They walked together like that all night, and there was no night, just a slight unreality, a momentary trance, with mist here and there as if the landscape were about to dissolve, and then nothing dissolved and the mist had vanished again. There was a crimson glow on the highest mountain ridges, and shining birds swarming in their thousands over the flame-gilded, mirror-smooth sea. And they went on talking together. Ólafur Kárason had no perception of the passing of time; only that voice with its dark, silk-edged, golden tones reverberated through his consciousness. When a man has lost what he loves most, there is no need to write poetry; the timber of a man's voice expresses all the poetry of life.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Voice began to echo at once. It was the same Voice of old. The difference was that when he was a child he thought he knew what it was, and that he understood it, and he gave it a name; but the older and wiser he became, the more difficult he found it to say what it was, or to understand it, except that he felt it called him away from other people and the responsibilities of life to the place where it alone reigned . . . Ah, sweet Voice, he said, and filled his lungs with the cool evening breeze of the north, but he did not dare open his arms to it for fear that people might think he was mad.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To be a poet is to be a visitor on a distant shore until one dies. In the land where I belong, but which I shall never reach, individuals have no cares, and that is because industry runs by itself without anyone trying to steal from others. My land is a land of plenty; it is the world that Nature has given to mankind, where society is not a thieves' society, where the children aren't sickly but healthy and contented, and young men and women can fulfill their aspirations because it is natural to do so. In my world it is possible to fulfill all aspirations, and therefore all aspirations are in themselves good, quite unlike here, where people's aspirations are called wicked because it isn't possible to fulfill them.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Jón Hreggviðsson said that he himself never read except when he was forced to do so, though he had learned from his mother all the necessary sagas, ballads, and old genealogies, and he claimed to be descended from Haraldur Hilditönn, the Danish king, on his father's side. He said that he would never forget such excellent ancients as Gunnar of Hlíðarendi, King Pontus, and Örvar-Oddur, who were twelve ells high and could have lived to be three hundred years old if they hadn't run into any trouble, and that if he had such a book he would send it immediately for free to the king and his counts, to prove to them that there had indeed once been real men in Iceland.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He called out for the others, but they were nowhere near. He tried to run, without knowing which way to go, but his legs were sluggish and the earth stood on end; in the next instant he found himself lying horizontal, his cheek in the dirt, without having felt himself fall. Then the earth tilted away from him again. He tried to walk steadily, but the earth continued to surge. Finally he sat down beneath a house-gable, leaned his back against the wall, and waited until the earth settled back in its place. He drooped his head and mumbled about his forefathers . . . In the end all he could do was start to sing the sad passion-hymns and death-prayers his mother had taught him in his youth.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source