Halldór Laxness > Quotes

“For man is essentially alone, and one should pity him and love him and grieve with him.”
― Halldór Laxness

“Remember, any lie you are told, even deliberately, is often a more significant fact than a truth told in all sincerity.”
― Halldór Laxness, Under the Glacier

“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.”
― Halldór Laxness

“Shortly afterwards it started raining, very innocently at first, but the sky was packed tight with cloud and gradually the drops grew bigger and heavier, until it was autumn’s dismal rain that was falling—rain that seemed to fill the entire world with its leaden beat, rain suggestive in its dreariness of everlasting waterfalls between the planets, rain that thatched the heavens with drabness and brooded oppressively over the whole countryside, like a disease, strong in the power of its flat, unvarying monotony, its smothering heaviness, its cold, unrelenting cruelty. Smoothly, smoothly it fell, over the whole shire, over the fallen marsh grass, over the troubled lake, the iron-grey gravel flats, the sombre mountain above the croft, smudging out every prospect. And the heavy, hopeless, interminable beat wormed its way into every crevice in the house, lay like a pad of cotton wool over the ears, and embraced everything, both near and far, in its compass, like an unromantic story from life itself that has no rhythm and no crescendo, no climax, but which is nevertheless overwhelming in its scope, terrifying in its significance. And at the bottom of this unfathomed ocean of teeming rain sat the little house and its one neurotic woman.”
― Halldór Laxness, Independent People

“Whoever doesn't live in poetry cannot survive here on earth.”
― Halldór Laxness, Under the Glacier

“Þegar öllu er á botninn hvolft, þá fer allt einhvernveginn, þótt margur efist um það á tímabili.”
― Halldór Laxness, Independent People

“The life of man is so short that ordinary people simply cannot afford to be born”
― Halldór Laxness, Independent People

“What you have stolen can never be yours. ”
― Halldór Kiljan Laxness, Under the Glacier

“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, Independent People

“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.”
― Halldór Laxness, Independent People

“He continued on, on to the glacier, towards the dawn, from ridge to ridge, in deep, new-fallen snow, paying no heed to the storms that might pursue him. As a child he had stood by the seashore at Ljósavík and watched the waves soughing in and out, but now he was heading away from the sea. "Think of me when you are in glorious sunshine." Soon the sun of the day of resurrection will shine on the bright paths where she awaits her poet.
And beauty shall reign alone.”
― Halldór Laxness, World Light

“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…”
― Halldór Laxness, Independent People

“Like all great rationalists you believed in things that were twice as incredible as theology.”
― Halldór Kiljan Laxness, Under the Glacier

“Maðurinn finnur það sem hann leitar að, og sá sem trúir á draug finnur draug.”
― Halldór Kiljan Laxness, Independent People

“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.”
― Halldór Kiljan Laxness, Independent People

“A free man can live on fish.Independence is better than meat”
― Halldór Laxness, Independent People

“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, Independent People

“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.”
― Halldór Laxness, Independent People

“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, Independent People

“Vont er þeirra ránglæti, verra þeirra réttlæti.”
― Halldór Laxness, Iceland's Bell

“When a man has a flower in his life he builds a house.”
― Halldór Laxness, Independent People

“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 Fish Can Sing

“Townsfolk have no conception of the peace that mother nature bestows, and as long as that peace is unfound the spirit must seek to quench its thirst with ephemeral novelties. And what is more natural that that of the townsman's feverish search for pleasure should mould people of unstable, hare-brained character, who think only of their personal appearance and their clothes and find momentary comfort in foolish fashions and other such worthless innovations? The countryman, on the other hand walks out into the verdant meadows, into an atmosphere clear and pure, and as he breaths it into his lungs some unknown power streams through his limbs, invigorating body and soul. The peace in nature fills his mind with calm and cheer, the bright green grass under his feet awakens a sense of beauty, almost of reverence. In the fragrance that is borne so sweetly to his nostrils, in the quietude that broods so blissfully around him, there is comfort and rest. The hillsides, the dingles, the waterfalls, and the mountains are all friends of his childhood, and never to be forgotten.”
― Halldór Laxness, Independent People

“...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.”
― Halldór 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.”
― Halldór Laxness, Under the Glacier

“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.”
― Halldór Laxness, The Fish Can Sing

“There is no more terrifying experience for a Christian than to discover he has suddenly become a rationalist.”
― Halldór Kiljan Laxness, Under the Glacier

“Þar sem jökulinn ber við loft hættir landið að vera jarðneskt, en jörðin fær hlutdeild í himninum, þar búa ekki framar neinar sorgir og þessvegna er gleðin ekki nauðsynleg, þar ríkir fegurðin ein, ofar hverri kröfu.”
― Halldór Laxness, Heimsljós

“He did not know what to say in the face of such sorrow. He sat in silence by his sister's side in the spring verdure, which was too young; and the hidden strings in his breast began to quiver; and to sound.
This was the first time that he had ever looked into the labyrinth of the human soul.”
― Halldor Laxness, Independent People

“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, Independent People