Rolvaag Quotes & Sayings

How infinitely good that Providence is which has provided, in its government of mankind, such narrow bounds to his sight and knowledge of things; and though he walks in the midst of so many thousand dangers, the sight of which, if discovered to him, would distract his mind and sink his spirits, he is kept serene and calm by having the events of things hid from his eyes, and knowing nothing of the dangers which surround him! — Daniel Defoe

We're always one breath away from something, living or dying, sometimes it just can't be helped. — Heather Gudenkauf

Literature is not only a mirror; it is a map, a geography of the mind. — Margaret Atwood

The explanation was plain; this desolation out here called forth all that was evil in human nature. — O.E. Rolvaag

You were asking about the happy people: Well, they don't live on our planet, you see; we'll just have to wait, my boy! On this one human beings are not human beings. They are seamen and farmers and miners and lumberjacks; they are tramps and preachers and professors; they are this and that and the other. And happiness departed from them when they left off being human beings and became this other; for then strife began. — O.E. Rolvaag, Boat Of Longing

A feeling of unfathomable loneliness settled upon her. — O.E. Rolvaag

Many and incredible are the tales the grandfathers tell from those days when the wilderness was yet untamed, and when they, unwittingly, founded the Kingdom. — O.E. Rolvaag

Since 1980, we've used reconciliation 22 times, and out of those times, Republicans used it 16 times. So, earth to my Republican friends, you can have your option but you cannot change these facts. They're in the Congressional Record. — Barbara Boxer

Even at my lowest I was sittin on my high stool. — Joe Budden

Here was the endless prairie, so rich in its blessings of fertility, but also full of great loneliness--a form of freedom which curiously affected the minds of strangers, especially those to whom the Lord had given a sad heart. — O.E. Rolvaag

People had never dwelt here, people would never come; never could they find home in this vast, wind-swept void. — O.E. Rolvaag

If you spend any amount of time doing media analysis, it's clear that the most frenzied moral panic surrounding young women's sexuality comes from the mainstream media, which loves to report about how promiscuous girls are, whether they're acting up on spring break, getting caught topless on camera, or catching all kinds of STIs. Unsurprisingly, these types of articles and stories generally fail to mention that women are attending college at the highest rates in history, and that we're the majority of undergraduate and master's students. Well-educated and socially engaged women just don't make for good headlines, it seems. — Jessica Valenti

Every failure is a step to success. Every detection of what is false directs us towards what is true: every trial exhausts some tempting form of error. — William Whewell

No, your worst sin does not consist in what you did to your husband that day; rather it lies in your discontent with God's special creatures, with your fellow men. For this reason you can experience no real happiness....That is a grievous sin, Beret Holm! — O.E. Rolvaag

When the quarrel had finally worn itself out they had found themselves at opposite ends of the earth, though lying side by side in the same bed. — O.E. Rolvaag

But more to be dreaded than this tribulation was the strange spell of sadness which the unbroken solitude cast upon the minds of stone. — O.E. Rolvaag

Someone's taught me to expect more out of people and never to settle. — Katie Kacvinsky