Top 33 Quotes & Sayings by Halldor Laxness

Love of, and respect for, the humble routine of everyday life and its creatures was the only moral commandment which carried conviction when I was a child.

I spent my entire childhood in an environment in which the mighty of the earth had no place outside story books and dreams.

My thoughts fly to the old Icelandic storytellers who created our classics, whose personalities were so bound up with the masses that their names, unlike their lives' work, have not been preserved for posterity.

Some things in literature are inexplicable.

From the very first, my countrymen have followed my literary career, now criticizing, now praising my work, but hardly ever letting a single word be buried in indifference.

I feel a physical happiness when spring is coming.

The world is a song, but we do not know whether it is a good song because we have nothing to compare it with.

It is a matter of simple fact that Icelanders have always been notoriously indolent.

It's an old saying that one still has to know something, despite everything.

When a man has a flower in his life he builds a house.

A wise man once said that next to losing its mother, there is nothing more healthy for a child than to lose its father.

My motto is strong packaging, clear addressing.

Where the glacier meets the sky, the land ceases to be earthly, and the earth becomes one with the heavens; no sorrows live there anymore, and therefore joy is not necessary; beauty alone reigns there, beyond all demands.

For man is essentially alone, and one should pity him and love him and grieve with him.

A free man can live on fish.Independence is better than meat

Remember, any lie you are told, even deliberately, is often a more significant fact than a truth told in all sincerity.

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.

Of all the creatures that man kills for his amusement there is only one that he kills out of hatred—other men. Man hates nothing as much as himself. That is why war is called the leprosy of the human soul.

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. 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.

Don't forget that few people are likely to tell more than a small part of the truth: no one tells much of the truth, let alone the whole truth. Spoken words are facts in themselves, whether true or false. When people talk they reveal themselves, whether they're lying or telling the truth.

It's a useful habit to never 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.

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.

Bjartur declared that he had never denied that there was much that was strange in nature. "I consider that there's nothing wrong in believing in elves even though their names aren't on the parish register," he said. "It hurts no one, yes and even does you good rather than harm; but to believe in ghosts and ghouls-that I contend is nothing but the remains of popery and hardly fit for a Christian to give even a moment's consideration." He did his utmost to persuade the women to accept his views on these matters.

No one is so busy that he hasn't the time to dismantle a work of art.

You have fettered yourself of your own free will, man - break the fetters!

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.

It's a pity we don't whistle at one another, like birds. Words are misleading.

Icelanders are grateful to meet foreigners who have heard of their country. And even more grateful to hear someone say it deserves better.

What you have stolen can never be yours.

Whoever doesn't live in poetry cannot survive here on earth.

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.

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.

Like all great rationalists you believed in things that were twice as incredible as theology.