Quotes & Sayings About Finnish

If you like fantasy and you want to be the next Tolkien, don't read big Tolkienesque fantasies - Tolkien didn't read big Tolkienesque fantasies, he read books on Finnish philology. Go and read outside of your comfort zone, go and learn stuff. — Neil Gaiman

people coming out of church
conversing about the sermon
sniffing at the autumn air
something in the papers about forces of popular opinion
and values which are unto our nation

what is
holding you back, Catullus?
why don't you go and die?
the stalks of the potato-plants
are rotting fast this year
only October now

this evening away
A boy comes out of the wood,
crossbow on his shoulder — Pentti Saarikoski

It's also interesting to notice that most of the best Finnish speculative writers are women. — Toni Jerrman

Indeed, there is pain when spring buds burst..."
Wasn't there a Swedish poet who had said something like that? Or was she Finnish? — Jostein Gaarder

They have a word in Finnish called sisu, which basically means guts. It's the strongest word in the Finnish language. You tell a Finn he doesn't have sisu, that's like spitting in his face. — Arthur Lydiard

Never before has information been so important, to governments and businesses alike. And please don't imagine that some of you gathered here today may be less concerned than others. Globalization means that the "butterfly effect" is everywhere at work. The mistakes of a stockbroker in Singapore or the collapse of the Baht in Bangkok, the decisions of a Finnish industrial concern, or what the Governor of Minas Gerais in Brazil decides to do about his State's debt, have had consequences for the world as a whole. — Jacques Chirac

To experience the northern forest in the raw, I went to northern Finland and Lapland, travelling on horseback, and sleeping on reindeer skins in the traditional open-fronted Finnish laavu. I ate elk heart, reindeer and lingonberries, and tried out spruce resin: the chewing gum of the Stone Age. — Michelle Paver

Virtually, Finnish woods are stripped so bare, so sold out and first and foremost, so long way off from genuine diverse natural forest, that the resources of language will not permit excessive words. Finnish forest economy has been compared to the ravaging of rain forests. Nevertheless, the noteworthy difference is that there is a half or two thirds left from rain forests, but from Finnish forests there is left - excluding arctic Lapland - 0,6 per cent. — Pentti Linkola

Smartphone makers sought deeper ties with retail buyers by adding ring tones, games, Web browsers, and other applications to their phones. Carriers, however, wanted this business to themselves. If they couldn't sell applications within their "walled gardens," carriers worried they would be reduced to mere utilities or "dumb pipes" carrying data and voice traffic. Nokia learned the hard way just how ferociously carriers could defend their turf. In the late 1990s the Finnish phone maker launched Club Nokia, a Web-based portal that allowed customers to buy and download — Jacquie McNish

Lentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilas (technical warrant officer trainee specialised in aircraft jet engines) — Tarja Moles

My mother birthed three children and she adopted myself and another African-American son. My adoptive parents were Finnish. I grew up in a white picket neighborhood. — Michael Franti

There was the biography of a Norwegian resistance fighter who swam through chilly oceans and got gangrene and wandered through I think it might have been Finland or Lapland in a sweet short summer and everyone took him in and the dark Finnish women made him tea with honey in it on late afternoons and it was beautiful but also horribly sad because the book was only half over and you knew that bad things were going to happen. — William T. Vollmann

You have to remember that Finnish people hate art. — Kati Outinen

In Finland, we learned quite a lot from our own civil war. The wounds were visible when I was a boy, but my generation went into the Second World War and it united the Finnish nation, so I do not see any more wounds. — Harri Holkeri

Finnish is not a language, it is a way of setting at the end of the bench with your fur cap pulled over your ears. — Paavo Haavikko

Another contender was Nokia's 9000 Communicator, a book-sized tool that looked like a cellphone strapped onto a mini keyboard. A precursor to the smartphone, the 9000 combined computing, cellular, and Internet applications such as browsing and e-mail. The Finnish phone was so glamorous it was used by Val Kilmer's Simon Templar character in the 1997 remake of The Saint. Few consumers, however, could afford the $800 price tag, and wireless cellular network carriers more accustomed to handling voice traffic charged a fortune to relay — Jacquie McNish

Among Violet's many useful skills was a vast knowledge of different types of knots. The particular knot she was using was called the Devil's Tongue. A group of female Finnish pirates invented it back in the fifteenth century, and named it the Devil's Tongue because it twisted this way and that, in the most complicated and eerie way. — Lemony Snicket

Even if you buy a Finnish, Korean or American phone - it will be Ericsson on the inside. — Hans Vestberg

(Finland is a famously introverted nation. Finnish joke: How can you tell if a Finn likes you? He's staring at your shoes instead of his own.) — Susan Cain

To the Finnish, being outdoors in nature isn't about paying homage to nature or to ourselves, the way it tends to be for Americans. We fetishize are life lists, catalog peaks bagged and capture pristine scenes of grand wilderness It is largely an individual experience. For the Finnish, though, nature is about expressing a close-knit identity. Nature is where they can exult in their nationalistic obsessions of berry-picking, mushrooming, fishing, lake swimming and Nordic skiing. — Florence Williams

Beer for breakfast, ale for lunch, stout with dinner and a few mugs in between. The average Northern European, including women and children drank three liters of beer a day. That's almost two six-packs, but often the beer had a much higher alcoholic content. People in positions of power, like the police, drank much more. Finnish soldiers were given a ration of five liters of strong ale a day (about as much as seven six-packs). Monks in Sussex made do with 12 cans worth. — Stewart Lee Allen

When you travel from your own country to another country for a long period, you do become aware of the differences. For example, verbal expression is much more important in France - in Finland people don't speak so much. Also, Finnish people say things directly; that kind of direct honesty would be very impolite in France. — Kaija Saariaho

Years ago, when I was working on my master's thesis, I went to New York for a semester as an exchange student. What struck me most was the sky. On that side of the world, so far away from the North Pole, the sky is flat and gray, a one-dimensional universe. Here, the sky is arched, and there's almost no pollution. In spring and fall the sky is dark blue or violet, and sunsets last for hours. The sun turns into a dim orange ball that transforms clouds into silver-rimmed red and violet towers. In winter, twenty-four hours a day, uncountable stars outline the vaulted ceiling of the great cathedral we live in. Finnish skies are the reason I believe in God. — James Thompson

It's only the sea,' said Moomintroll. 'Every wave that dies on the beach sings a little song to a shell. But you mustn't go inside because it's a labyrinth and you may never come out again. — Tove Jansson

You're an unemployed bum. Should you live in that Finnish city by the lake with the S-market and K-market? Or how about that other Finnish city by the lake with the S-market and K-market? Finnish cities are all so very different! — Phil Schwarzmann

This trial is a farce. The real prosecutor is not the state of Finland, but the government of one great power. The real defendants are not the persons who were picked on political grounds and now stand accused here. The real defendant is the Finnish people. The purpose of this trial is not to mete out maximum sentences on those accused, but for a Finnish court to declare that Finland was the aggressor in the war and that the Soviet Union was a peace-loving, wronged victim of an unjustified aggression. [Final statement during Soviet dictated "War-responsibility" mock trial, 1945] — Risto Ryti

The Swedes have coined the term 'management by perkele' to portray the Finnish managerial approach. Instead of collectively pondering all the possible alternatives and letting every member of the staff from the cleaner to the MD voice their views, as the Swedes do, the Finns act swiftly and don't waste time on the decision-making process. If something isn't happening quickly enough, it is necessary for the top managers to slam their fists on the table and yell, 'Perkele!' Repeatedly, if necessary. — Tarja Moles

India's linguistic diversity surprises many Westerners, but there are nearly thirty languages in India with at least a million native speakers. There are more native speakers of Tamil on our planet than of Italian. Likewise, more people speak Punjabi than German, Marathi than French, and Bengali than Russian. There are more Telugu speakers than Czech, Dutch, Danish, Finnish, Greek, Slovak, and Swedish speakers combined. — Bob Harris

Finnish forests: Let us remind the satellite pictures of the 1970's winter in which the old forest appeared black and young forest and cut downs white. Already then the Finnish borders were like drawn on the map: White Finland between black Karelian and black Sweden. Finnish Forest Research Institute hicced up some time and then decided that the pictures are fake ... — Pentti Linkola

You may discover that a certain sequence of letters in your autosomal DNA is typically found in someone with Finnish heritage or Korean ancestry. Only a few years ago the world of science was turned upside down when it was discovered that in ancient times two nonhuman species contributed to the human genome. — Christine Kenneally

A conversation in English in Finnish and in French can not be held at the same time nor with indifference ever or after a time. — Gertrude Stein

And a Finnish woman, who made my bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to herself over the electric stove — F Scott Fitzgerald

It is said, once a wise man from the far North told me; it is said that there are in certain parts of Scandinavia cities within cities like there are circles within circles; existent yet invisible. And those cities are inhabited by creatures more terrible than imagination can create : man-shaped but man-devouring, as black and as silent as the night they prowl in. — Johanna Sinisalo

One of the interesting characteristics of the Ego Tunnel is that it creates (as Finnish philosopher Antti Revonsuo called it) a robust "out-of-the brain experience", a highly realistic experience of not operating on internal models, but of effortlessly being in direct and immediate contact with the external world - and oneself. — Thomas Metzinger

Swedes, we are not - Russians, we do not want to become ... so let us be Finnish. — Adolf Ivar Arwidsson

It [discovering Finnish] was like discovering a wine-cellar filled with bottles of amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before. It quite intoxicated me. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Love leaped out in front of us like a murderer in an alley leaping out of nowhere, and struck us both at once. As lightning strikes, as a Finnish knife strikes! She, by the way, insisted afterwards that it wasn't so, that we had, of course, loved each other for a long, long time, without knowing each other, never having seen each other ... — Mikhail Bulgakov

We ceased to deal seriously with mobile combat. We relegated to oblivion the fundamentals of combat-in-depth tactics and of combined arms maneuvers which had been widespread before the Finnish campaign. — Sergey Biryuzov

If you can't do it, just laugh about it instead of blushing or being embarrassed. — Auliq Ice

Nobody respects a country with a poor army, but everybody respects a country with a good army. I raise my toast to the Finnish army — Joseph Stalin

I think we have grave problems. I am very much concerned about environmental questions, even though in Finnish society, we are not facing the most urgent problems. — Harri Holkeri

Sometimes, the lascars would gather between the bows to listen to the stories of the greybeards. There was the steward, Cornelius Pinto: a grey-haired Catholic, from Goa, he claimed to have been around the world twice, sailing in every kind of ship, with every kind of sailor - including Finns, who were known to be the warlocks and wizards of the sea, capable of conjuring up winds with a whistle. — Amitav Ghosh

The third aspect of change is a systematic development of respectful and inspiring working conditions for teachers and principals in Finnish schools. — Pasi Sahlberg

The subject of Finnish poetry ought to have a special interest for the Japanese student, if only for the reason that Finnish poetry comes more closely in many respects to Japanese poetry than any other form of Western poetry. — Lafcadio Hearn

Pearls' burst out the Snork Maiden excitedly. 'Could ankle rings be made out of pearls?'
'I should think they could,' said Moomintoll. 'Ankle-rings, and nose-rings and ear-rings and engagement rings ... — Tove Jansson

Tommy Wirkola is Norwegian but has a Finnish surname - he comes from the one of the northernmost countries in the whole of Europe. It was easy working with him. The people in the north are all fairly similar. — Pihla Viitala

A government institution called the Finnish Film Foundation funds filmmaking there, and I wrote several screenplays but never got any money. They were sent back to me, and they said that they were too commercial for them. — Renny Harlin

You wanna be the next Tolkien? Don't read big, tolkien-esque fantasies. TOLKIEN didn't read big, tolkien-esque fantasies. He read books on finnish philology. You go and read outside your comfort zone, go and learn stuff. And then the most important thing, once you get any level of quality
get to the point where you wanna write, and you can write
is tell YOUR story. Don't tell a story anyone else can tell. Because you always start out with other people's voices ... There will always be people who are better or smarter than you. There are people who are better writers than me, who plot better than I do, but there is no one who can tell a Neil Gaiman story like I can. — Neil Gaiman

For her a day of pampering meant comic books, black liquorice, serious exercise, veggie curry and, above all, solitude. — Salla Simukka

The Finnish way of dealing with Russia, whatever the situation, is that we will be very decisive to show what we don't like, where the red line is. — Sauli Niinisto

Finnish companies tend to be very traditional, not taking many risks. Silicon Valley is completely different: people here really live on the edge. — Linus Torvalds

I was going into shock. The pain wasn't getting any better, and I thought that I would probably black out before I found out how this was going to end. Just as well - I was never particularly good at finishing things. — Joe Schreiber

I'm writing to hold on to you. — Henriikka Tavi

The people who are best at telling jokes tend to have more health problems than the people laughing at them. A study of Finnish police officers found that those who were seen as funniest smoked more, weighed more, and were at greater risk of cardiovascular disease than their peers [10]. Entertainers typically die earlier than other famous people [11], and comedians exhibit more "psychotic traits" than others [12]. So just as there's research to back up the conventional wisdom on laughter's curative powers, there also seems to be truth to the stereotype that funny people aren't always having much fun. It might feel good to crack others up now and then, but apparently the audience gets the last laugh. — Anonymous

I thought of a great way to celebrate my Finnish heritage at home. I'm going to look into opening a chain of strip clubs, and I'll call them Lapland!!! — Pamela Anderson