Status Updates From A Treasury of Hans Christia...

“There is no point in talking about your shortcomings; others willingly do that for you.”

“It isn’t very pleasant to have a hole drilled through you, but you can bear an awful lot when you know that the intentions are good.”

“Should I tell the story from the beginning again? I could but it would be no different.”

“Rudy in a burst of passion exclaimed, ‘The world has no more to give me. An evening like this is a whole life. And this is not the first time that I have felt like this; and then, too, I have thought: ‘Were my life to end now, how good a life it would have been!’ The world is good. This day is over. But a new one will come, and it will be even more beautiful.’”

“If you don’t take anybody’s word for anything, then you never make a mistake.”

“Babette was very angry, which was fortunate, for if she hadn’t been, she would have been very sad and could not have fallen asleep.”

“Happiness is the mother of courage, and Rudy was always courageous.”

“The world was silent, not with the silence of sleep or death, but rather as if Nature were holding her breath because she was about to be photographed.”

“But Annette should never have told such a thing to her dearest friend, for a secret like that is as hard to keep as it is to stop sand from running out of a bag with a hole in it.”

“Rudy did not remain a stranger long; he soon grew roots in house and heart.”

“Grownups are always talking, but they are not always worth listening to.”

“‘Come up here on the roof,’ the cat had said to him when he was yet so young that he could not talk himself. Rudy had understood the cat, as all small children understand the languages of hens, ducks, dogs, and cats.”

“Its eyes were sad, and when you looked into them you felt certain that if the horse could speak it would be able to answer more questions than you could ask.”

“They were vain and proud, both of them. But which one had the greater right to be? Tell us your opinion —it won’t make any difference, we will stick to our own anyway.”

“And that is the way she went to hell. Most people go straight down there, but if you are as talented as Inger, then you can get there via a detour.”

“She did not improve as she grew up; in fact, she became worse. She was pretty, and that was probably her misfortune; otherwise, the world would have treated her rougher.”

“Better a full stomach while one is alive than a lot of glory after one is dead. That is my opinion and I am always right!”

“We could listen a little to what was said; one has to hear an awful lot of that kind of talk before one dies. But since this is a story and we are free to travel in time as well as space, let's hear about the first assembly of the wise and learn what happened when the king became ill, a year before. We ought to know at least as much as the stork could understand.”

“Fair winds for one are foul for another.”

“it was a beautiful sight for those who look at beauty.”

“He had great difficulty saying what anyone could have read in his eyes.”

“Once there lay on the counter of my booth two gingerbread figures. One of them was a man with a hat on his head, the other a girl, who had no hat but did have a dab of gold for hair. Their faces were on the front of their heads just as human beings' faces are; and they, too, shouldn't be judged by how they look from behind.” The back of my head is none of my business, I’m just a cookie

“The city is surrounded by flat fields and it is far to the nearest forest. And yet, if it is the place that you call home, you will find something beautiful about it: something that you will long for when, later on in life, you see places that are truly beautiful.”