Halldor Laxness Quotes & Sayings

The poems which touched her heart most, suffusing her with exalted emotion, so that she felt she could gather everything to her, were those which tell of the sorrow that wakes in the heart whose dreams have not been fulfilled, and of the beauty of that sorrow. The ship which in Autumn lies deserted on the shore, rudderless, mastless, used no more; the bird that cowers low in shelter, likewise in the Autumn, featherless and forlorn, driven before the storm;the harp that hangs trembling on the wall, silently mourning its owner's fall-all this was her poetry. — Halldor Laxness

Icelanders are grateful to meet foreigners who have heard of their country. And even more grateful to hear someone say it deserves better. — Halldor Laxness

This was the first time that he has ever looked into the labyrinth of the human soul. He was very far from understanding what he saw. But what was of more value, he felt and suffered with her. In years that were yet to come, he relived this memory in song, in the most beautiful song this world has known. For the understanding of the soul's defencelessness, of the conflict between the two poles, is not the source of the greatest song. The source of the greatest song is sympathy. — Halldor Laxness

The fact is that it is utterly pointless to make anyone a generous offer unless he is a rich man; rich men are the only people who can accept a generous offer. To be poor is simply the peculiar human condition of not being able to take advantage of a generous offer. The essence of being a poor peasant is the inability to avail oneself of the gifts that politicians offer to promise and to be left at the mercy of ideals that only make rich richer and the poor poorer. — Halldor Laxness

No one is so busy that he hasn't the time to dismantle a work of art. — Halldor Laxness

My opinion has always been this. That you ought never to give up as long as you live, even though they have stolen everything from you. If nothing else, you can always call the air you breath your own, or at any rate you can claim that you have it on loan. Yes, lass, last night I ate stolen bread and left my son among men who are going to use pick-handles on the authorities, so I thought I might as well look you up this morning. — Halldor Laxness

A new generation forgets the specters that may have tormented the old ... And yet, always, to all eternity, it is the same specter assailing the same man century after century. — Halldor Laxness

When I was a child I was told that whoever swallowed a hock-bone would one day own land," she said. "Have you tried that? I was told a sheep's hock-bone bought a croft, a cow's an estate. — Halldor Laxness

If he believed it all, he was just like those theologians who store their theology somewhere in a locked compartment of the brain, or rather, perhaps, like those travellers who carry a bottle of iodine in their luggage and take care to keep it tightly corked in case it leaks and ruins their belongings. — Halldor Laxness

A free man can live on fish.Independence is better than meat — Halldor Laxness

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. — Halldor Laxness

The farm brook ran down from the mountain in a straight line for the fold then swerved to the west to go its way down into the marshes. There were two knee-high falls in it and two pools, knee-deep. At the bottom there was shingle, pebbles and sand. It ran in many curves. Each curve had its own tone, but not one of them was dull; the brook was merry and music-loving, like youth, but yet with various strings, and it played its music without thought of any audience and did not care though no one heard for a hundred years, like the true poet. — Halldor Laxness

In Brekkukot, words were too precious to use
because they meant something; our conversation was like pristine money before inflation; experience was too profound to be capable of expression; only the bluebottle was free. — Halldor Laxness

Often I felt that these men were play-acting: the unreality of their role was their security, even their own destinies were to them saga and folk-tale rather than a private matter; these were men under a spell, men who had been turned into birds or even more likely into some strange beast, and who bore their magic shapes with the same unflurried equanimity, magnanimity, and dignity that we children had marvelled at the beasts of fairy tale. Did they not suspect, moreover, with the wordless apprehension of animals, that if their magic shapes were to be stripped from them the fairy tale would be at an end and their security gone, too, while real life would begin with all it's problems, perhaps in some town where there was neither nature or mirage, no link with the folk-tale and the past, no ancient path to the far side of the mountains and down to the river gullies and out beyond the grass plains, no landmarks from the Sagas? - Only a restless search for sterile, deadening enjoyment. — Halldor Laxness

But I was also very pleased when I heard the Prince of Montenegro got married the other day. I know perfectly well that I am nothing to anyone. But the middle finger is no longer than the pinkie if one measures both against infinity ... — Halldor Laxness

I'm an extremely wealthy man. I own the sky. I have invested all my capital in the sun. I'm not bad-tempered, as you seem to imagine, nor do I bear grudges. But like all wealthy men, I'm a little frightened of losing my fortune. — Halldor Laxness

That blasted family could never look at a living thing without wanting to make a profit out of it, preferably by killing it. — Halldor Laxness

Asta Sollilja slept on, her head in the corner, mouth open, chin up, and head back, with one hand under her ear and the other half-open on the coverlet as if she thought in her sleep that someone would come and lay happiness in her palm. — Halldor Laxness

People don't have the imagination to understand politicians. People are too innocent — Halldor Laxness

One boy's footprints are not long in being lost in the snow, in the steadily falling snow of the shortest day, the longest night; they are lost as soon as they are made. And once again the heath is clothed in drifting white. And there is no ghost, save the one ghost that lives in the heart of a motherless boy, till his footprints disappear. — Halldor Laxness

There is a holy story that tells of a man who was fulfilled by sowing his enemy's field one night. Bjartur's story is the story of a man who sowed his enemy's field all his life, day and night. Such is the story of the most independent man in the country. Moors; more moors. From the ravine there came an eerie echoing rumble as the headstone crashed its way down, and the bitch sprang to the brink, barking wildly. — Halldor Laxness

The most remarkable thing about a man's dreams is that they will all come true; this has always been the case, though no one would care to admit it. And a peculiarity of man's behaviour is that he is not in the least surprised when his dreams come true; it is as if he expected nothing else. The goal to be reached and the determination to reach it are brother and sister, and slumber in the same heart. — Halldor Laxness

On the other hand I won't conceal the fact from anyone that once upon a time a little something happened to me. I saw a little something. But never except just that once. — Halldor Laxness

I feel a physical happiness when spring is coming. — Halldor Laxness

Some things in literature are inexplicable. — Halldor Laxness

It's an old saying that one still has to know something, despite everything. — Halldor Laxness

Quite apart from how debased Nature becomes in a picture, nothing seems to me to express so much contempt for Nature as a painting of Nature. — Halldor Laxness

It is often said of people with second sight that their soul leaves the body. That doesn't happen to the glacier. But the next time one looks at it, the body has left the glacier, and nothing remains except the soul clad in air ... the glacier is illuminated at certain times of the day by a special radiance and stands in a golden glow with a powerful aureole of rays, and everything becomes insignificant except it. Then it's as if the mountain is no longer taking part in the history of geology but has become iconic ... A remarkable mountain. At night when the sun is off the mountains the glacier becomes a tranquil silhouette that rests in itself and breathes upon man and beast the word never, which perhaps means always. Come, waft of death. — Halldor Laxness

The distinctive features of the world's civilisations are not simply and solely the giraffe and the city of Rome, as the children may perhaps have been led to imagine on the first evening, but also the elephant and the country of Denmark, beside many other things. Yes, everyday brought its new animal and its new country, its new kings and its new gods, its quota of those tough little figures which seem to have no significance, but are nevertheless endowed with a life and a value of their own, and may be added together or subtracted from one another at will. And finally poetry, which is grater than any country ; poetry with its bright palaces. — Halldor Laxness

Love of, and respect for, the humble routine of everyday life and its creatures was the only moral commandment which carried conviction when I was a child. — Halldor Laxness

Remember, any lie you are told, even deliberately, is often a more significant fact than a truth told in all sincerity. — Halldor Laxness

They were allowed a little touch at each of the books, but only with their fingertips tonight, literature cannot bear dirty hands; first we'll have to back each volume with paper, the covers must not get dirty, nor the spines slit, books are the nation's most precious possession, books have preserved the nation's life through monopoly, pestilence, and volcanic eruption, not to mention the tons of snow that have lain over the country's widely scattered homesteads for the major part of every one of its thousand years. — Halldor Laxness

If you get into danger, either you perish or you escape. — Halldor Laxness

All great wealth was inconsistent with common sense.
(from 'The Fish can Sing — Halldor Laxness

There is no more terrifying experience for a Christian than to discover he has suddenly become a rationalist. — Halldor Laxness

She herself had given up washing long ago, and besides, people no longer believed in stale urine, either for one purpose or another. — Halldor Laxness

Somewhere, out in the infinite distance, lay the spring, at least in God's mind, like babies that are not yet conceived in the mother's womb.
(from "The Fish can Sing") — Halldor Laxness

Item, I've read that there's not a single virgin to be found in your country," said the statesman.
"Where might you have read this?" asked the Professor Antiquitatum.
"The good auctor Blefken says this."
"I wonder if the good auctor might not have misread his sources," said Arnaeus. "The best auctores tell us that Icelandic girls remain chaste virgins up until they've had their seventh child, Your Benevolence. — Halldor Laxness

But he could not help it. No one can help it. One is a realist. One has put up with it all ever since childhood; one has had the courage to look it full in the eye, possibly courage enough to look it in the eye all one's life long. Then one day the distances beckon with their floating possibilities, and in one's hands are the admission tickets, two slips of blue paper. One is a realist no longer. One has finished putting up with it all, one no longer has the courage to look it in the eye, one is in the power of beckoning hospitable distances, floating possibilities, perhaps forever afterwards. Perhaps one's life is over. — Halldor Laxness

It's a useful habit never to 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. — Halldor Laxness

It was pretty miserable wretches that minded at all whether they were wet or dry. He could not understand why such people had been born. "It's nothing but damned eccentricity to want to be dry" he would say. "I've been wet more than half my life and never been a whit the worse for it. — Halldor Laxness

Is it not amazing that around a man as cold as I am, there should always be fire? Sometimes it tries to burn me, but I usually collect my things and leave. — Halldor Laxness

And when the spring breezes blow up the valley; when the spring sun shines on last year's withered grass on the river banks; and on the lake; and on the lake's two white swans; and coaxes the new grass out of the spongy soil in the marshes - who could believe on such a day that this peaceful, grassy valley brooded over the story of our past; and over its spectres? — Halldor Laxness

Don't you find it exceedingly difficult to be a poet, Reimar?'
'Difficult? Me? To be a poet? Just ask the womenfolk about that, my friend, whether our Reimar finds it difficult to be a poet! It was only yesterday that I rode into the yard of one of the better farms hereabouts, and the daughter of the house was standing outside, smiling, and without more ado I addressed her with a double-rhymed, quatro-syllabic verse that just came to me as I bent down from the saddle to greet her. No, it's not difficult to be a poet, my friend, it's a pleasure to be a poet. — Halldor Laxness

Presently the small of coffee began to fill the room. This was morning's hallowed moment. In such a fragrance the perversity of the world is forgotten, and the soul is inspired with faith in the future ... — Halldor Laxness

Immoral women do not exist", said the organist. "That this only a superstition. On the other hand there exist women who sleep thirty times with one man, and women who sleep once with thirty men. — Halldor Laxness

My thoughts fly to the old Icelandic storytellers who created our classics, whose personalities were so bound up with the masses that their names, unlike their lives' work, have not been preserved for posterity. — Halldor Laxness

Among other things, the catechism said: "Ill treatment of animals bears witness to a cruel and godless heart." The boy recited, "A hundred and eleven treatment of animals bears witness to a cruel and godless heart. — Halldor Laxness

Man is more perfect than god. Although this woman's doctrine, in which she was brought up from childhood, told her than all men were lost sinners, I have never heard her censure a man with so much as half a word. All her life is symbolized in the only words which she knows in her dotage. Please do; and, God bless you. — Halldor Laxness

Strange though it may seem, people rarely show such enthusiasm as when they are seeking the proof of a ghost story - the soul gathers all this sort of thing to its hungry bosom. — Halldor Laxness

History is always entirely different to what has happened. — Halldor Laxness

The story of how He created the world aroused their interests immediately, even though they received no answer to the question of why He had to do it; but they found it difficult to understand sin, or the manner of its entry into the world, for it was a complete mystery to them why the woman should have had such a passionate desire for an apple when they had no idea of the seductive properties of apples and thought they were some sort of potatoes. But less intelligible still was the flood that was caused by forty days' rain, and forty nights'. For here on the moors there were some years when it rained for two hundred days and two hundred nights, almost without fairing; but there was never any Flood. — Halldor Laxness

I spent my entire childhood in an environment in which the mighty of the earth had no place outside story books and dreams. — Halldor Laxness

What does hanging on a cross for twenty-four hours mean to a man who has no children,' I said, 'especially when he knows he's dying for a good cause -- indeed, that he's saving the whole world and then going straight into the best place in Heaven? What's that compared to the suffering I've had to put up with for months and years with the house full of children, when for many whole nights I've shrieked with pain unceasingly and without relief, and I'll soon be dead, and that without having anything to die for; and there'll be no heavenly Kingdom for me, for I know the children will go on crying when I'm dead, and swearing and quarrelling, and begging for milk they can't get. — Halldor Laxness

Can't you hear how everyone tells lies; if not deliberately, then involuntarily; if not out loud, then silently? — Halldor Laxness

Like all great rationalists you believed in things that were twice as incredible as theology. — Halldor 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. And a peculiarity of man's behaviour is that he is not in the least surprised when his dreams do come true; it is as if he had always expected nothing else. The goal to be reached and the determination to reach it are brother and sister, and slumber both in the same heart. — Halldor Laxness

Grandma took her wheel and spun.
And the wheel-whir of the long days filled the croft; and this one wheel spinning was like the wheel of time, which carries our souls away to its own land. — Halldor Laxness

Nonsense,' said Bjartur, 'there's nothing lucky about it at all. I will have no truck with superstition. She can lie where she is, the old bitch.' 'Let me down to give her a stone, Bjartur.' 'What the devil does she want with a stone? No stone from me or mine. We pay our dues to the living, which is more to the point than pandering to people that have been fried in hell for centuries. — Halldor Laxness

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. — Halldor 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. — Halldor Laxness

I have written about everything at Brekkukot, both indoors and out, which can be given a name; but I have scarcely said a word yet about my grandmother, who was certainly not some useless ornament about the place. On the other hand, if she were likened to the heart of the house, one could say exactly the same about her as one does about healthy hearts in general, that whoever is lucky enough to have such a heart is quite unaware of having a heart at all. — Halldor Laxness

When the boat had gone a few oar-strokes away from land they were still standing on the beach, gazing after the boy whom an unknown woman had left naked in their arms. They were holding hands, and other people gave way before them, and I could see no one except them. Or were they perhaps so extraordinary that other people melted away and vanished into thin air around them?
When I had clambered up with my bag onto the deck of the mail-boat North Star, I saw them walking back together on their way home: on the way to our turnstile-gate; home to Brekkukot, our house which was to be razed to the ground tomorrow. They were walking hand in hand, like children. — Halldor Laxness

Oh yes", said the old woman, "but I've heard these so-called stoves are by no means all they are supposed to be. I never saw a stove in my day, and yet never ailed a thing, at least as long as I could really be called alive, except for nettle rash one night when I was in my fifteenth year.. It was caused by some fresh fish that the boys used to catch in the lakes thereabouts."
The man did not answer for a while, but lay pondering the medical history of this incredible old creature who, without ever setting eyes on a stove, had suffered almost no ailments in the past sixty-five years. — Halldor Laxness

For man is essentially alone, and one should pity him and love him and grieve with him. — Halldor Laxness

When life is a weariness and escape impossible, it is wonderful to have a friend who can bring us peace with the touch of a hand. After this Finna decided to tend the cow herself ... Those were the good days. They were serene days and quite undemonstrative, like the best days in one's like; the boy never forgot them. Nothing happens; one simply lives and breathes and wishes for nothing more, and nothing more. — Halldor Laxness

The life of man is so short that ordinary people simply cannot afford to be born — Halldor Laxness

And yet he did not find the happiness he had dreamed of, nor the peace he had so much desired, and she understood him, and loved him for that very reason, that he had found neither happiness nor peace; deep, deep inside her she loved him because he had fled. — Halldor Laxness

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

Children should live a wholesome and natural life and go about with a mussel in one corner of their mouths and a shrimp in the other instead of sweets. — Halldor Laxness

She was like defenceless Nature, that withers in the blast because it has shelter neither of God nor of men; human beings do not give one another shelter; and God? We shall see, when in the end we are dead of consumption. Perhaps the Almighty had made a note of all that she had had to suffer. All the same she felt that evening that she was not too old once more to view the future in a dream; in a new dream. To be able to look forward is to live. — Halldor Laxness

In his contradictions he was as much an enigma as the country itself: a religious devotee out of spite at the soullessness of men who thought of nothing but dogs and sheep, a scientific breeder of sheep because of his contempt for sheep, the Icelandic pastor of a thousand years' folk-stories, his presence alone was a comfortable reassurance that all was as it should be. — Halldor Laxness

Bjartur declared that he had never denied that there was much that was strange in nature. "I consider that there's nothing wrong in believing in elves even though their names aren't on the parish register," he said. "It hurts no one, yes and even does you good rather than harm; but to believe in ghosts and ghouls
that I contend is nothing but the remains of popery and hardly fit for a Christian to give even a moment's consideration." He did his utmost to persuade the women to accept his views on these matters. — Halldor Laxness

The leak that comes from the outside harms no one,' he stated once more. 'It is the leak that one finds indoors that is the worst.' When one is unmarried, one must tell people to shut up in a roundabout fashion. — Halldor 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. — Halldor Laxness

The world is a song, but we do not know whether it is a good song because we have nothing to compare it with. — Halldor Laxness

Human beings, in point of fact, are lonely by nature, and one should feel sorry for them and love them and mourn with them. It is certain that people would understand one another better and love one another more if they would admit to one another how lonely they were, how sad they were in their tormented, anxious longings and feeble hopes. — Halldor Laxness

Where the glacier meets the sky, the land ceases to be earthly, and the earth becomes one with the heavens; no sorrows live there anymore, and therefore joy is not necessary; beauty alone reigns there, beyond all demands. — Halldor Laxness

Well, well, it's enough to make the lice drop dead from my head! Condescend to enter the house. — Halldor Laxness

When a man has a flower in his life he builds a house. — Halldor Laxness

But perhaps no distance is greater than that which separates a poor family in the same country — Halldor Laxness

A land even more remote, America, which is farther than death. — Halldor Laxness

Remember that every day you quicken into motion waves that undulate on to the very confines of existence; you stir up waves that break upon the shores of eternity itself. And it is of much importance whether they are waves of brightness that are radiated, bearing light and fragrance far and wide, or whether they are waves of gloom, carrying misery and misfortune to loosen pent-up glaciers that will create an Ice Age of the national heart. — Halldor Laxness

Freedom is of more account than the height of a roof beam. I ought to know; mine cost me eighteen years' slavery. The man who lives on his own land is an independent man. He is his own master. If I can keep my sheep alive through winter and can pay what has been stipulated from year to year - then I pay what has been stipulated; and I have kept my sheep alive. No, it is freedom that we are all after, Titla. He who pays his way is a king. He who keeps his sheep alive through the winter lives in a palace. — Halldor Laxness

The aforesaid disagreement between these men sprang from a misunderstanding. And the cause of it is that each thinks he is better than the other, when as a matter of fact there is no real difference between them except perhaps some trifling variation in the manner of wearing their hair. Each maintains that his country is in some way more holy than the other's, though in strict reality France and Germany are exactly the same country, and no one in full possession of his faculties can possibly see any difference between them. — Halldor Laxness

For once the crofter was at a a rather loss for words, for to him nothing has ever been more completely unintelligible than the reasoning that is bred of tears. — Halldor Laxness

I am not at all impressed ... at how far man's wisdom has managed to lead him; besides, it is not very great. What does surprise me, on the other hand, is how high their folly, their downright stupidity even, not to say their complete and utter blindness, has managed to raise them. Other things being equal, I prefer to follow the folly of man, for that has brought him farther than his wisdom. — Halldor Laxness

Two human beings have such difficulty in understanding each other - there is nothing so sad as two human beings. — Halldor Laxness

A fat servant is not much of a man. A beaten servant is a great man, because in his breast freedom has its home. — Halldor Laxness

What you have stolen can never be yours. — Halldor Laxness

The tyranny of mankind; it was like the obstinate drip of water falling on a stone and hollowing it little by little; and this drip continued, falling obstinately, falling without pause on the souls of the children. — Halldor Laxness

It is both more difficult and more complicated to die than people think. — Halldor Laxness

He wept only as children weep when they suffer injustice at the hands of those stronger than themselves. It is the most bitter weeping in the world. That was what happened to his [only] book; it was taken from him and burned. And he was left standing naked and without a book on the first day of summer. — Halldor Laxness

So I see no reason why, just because a couple of womenfolk have kicked the bucket, people should start writing religion about them. — Halldor Laxness

Those who deck themselves out in stolen gods are not viable. — Halldor Laxness

Whoever doesn't live in poetry cannot survive here on earth. — Halldor Laxness

Nothing is true that cannot be proven
and therefore, it's not true. — Halldor Laxness

Like most people who actually live by a landlocked sound, bereft of hope of happiness, he had a particular aversion to any doctrines which left people without hope of happiness and told them that they lived by a landlocked sound. — Halldor Laxness

Was this perhaps life, then? - to have loved one summer in youth and not to have been aware of it until it was over, some sea-wet footprints on the floor and sand in the prints, the fragrance of a woman, soft loving lips in the dusk of a summer night, sea birds; and then nothing more; gone. — Halldor Laxness

One can be one's own ghost and roam about in various places, sometimes many places simultaneously. Perhaps I didn't approach it quite correctly. A ghost is always the result of botched work; a ghost means unsuccessful resurrection, a shadow of an image that has perhaps once been alive, a kind of abortion in the universe. — Halldor Laxness