Halldór Laxness
From Wikiquote
Halldór Kiljan Laxness (born Halldór Guðjónsson) (23 April 1902 – 8 February 1998) was a 20th century Icelandic author who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1955.
Contents |
[edit] Sourced
[edit] Under the Glacier (2004)
- Quote from Kristnihald undir Jökli or Christianity under the Glacier (published in English as Under the Glacier) by Halldor Laxness as translated by Magnus Magnusson, Vintage (2004)
- History is a fable, and a poor one at that.
- History is always different to what has happened.
- The difference between a novelist and a historian is this: that the former tells lies deliberately and for the fun of it; the historian tells lies in his simplicity and imagines he is telling the truth.<ref name="Laxness"
- Perhaps one gets closest to the creation of the world in mathematical formula...
- To create is to destroy. To induce life is to destroy life.
- All gods are equally good except the god that answers prayers, because he is nowhere.
- In the depths of our souls we are naked peasants...
- Luke recorded the acts of the apostles, but it doesn't say what he had to eat the while.
- Those who deck themselves out in stolen gods are not viable.
- If you look at the war with one eye on the ideals behind it, and the other on all those thousands of men and women whom it robs of life and limb, then you can't help wondering whether it wouldn't be better to lay more store upon preserving people's lives than upon fulfiling a set of ideals. For if ideals aim not at improving the lot of mankind on earth, but at slaughtering men by the millions, one may well ask whether it wouldn't be more praiseworthy to live in a world wholly devoid of ideals, though such a life would be naturally be a very empty one. For if ideals are not life, and life it not ideals, what are ideals? And what is life? [N.B. This is from Independent People, not Under the Glacier]
- Poetry is being written about those who have neither the nature nor the sense to understand it, but other folk never hear a friendly word spoken to them.
- Come what may and go what may, man always has the memories of his dogs. Of these at least no one can deprive him, though both the prosperity of world war and the fulfilment of important people's ideals have proven to be no more than a cloud of dust that has swirled up to obscure the lone worker's vision. [N.B. This is from Independent People, not Under the Glacier]
- My opinion has always been this, that you ought to never 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. [N.B. This is from Independent People, not Under the Glacier]
- 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 just as well look you up this morning. [N.B. This is from Independent People, not Under the Glacier]
- War has always been the chief amusement of mankind. Other amusements are a surrogate for war.
[edit] Unsourced
- In literature, a hero is as much of a coward as the poorest beggar of the street.
- When we stop caring for our independence and are swept into some superpower’s ocean of nationhood, when the last old women who can recite an Icelandic verse is dead, then the world has become poorer. And the superpower who might have swallowed us would not be any the richer for it.
- As quoted in a speech by Mr. Valdas Adamkus, President of Lithuania
