Frases de Halldór Laxness

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

—  Halldór Laxness

„Never did these thanes of hell escape their just deserts.“

—  Halldór Laxness

Sjálfstætt fólk (Independent People) (1935), Book One, Part I: Icelandic Pioneers
Contexto: Never did these thanes of hell escape their just deserts. No one ever heard of Harekur or Gongu-Hrolfur or Bernotus being worsted in the final struggle. In the same way no one will be able to say that Bjartur of Summerhouses ever got the worst of it in his world war with the country's specters, no matter how often he might tumble over a precipice or roll head over heels down a gully - "while there's a breath left in my nostrils, it will never keep me down, no matter how hard it blows."

„Sighing, he became aware of his own insignificance in the midst of this infinite chorus glory and radiance; his whole consciousness dissolved into one sacred, tearful yearning to be allowed to be one with the Highest and be no longer any part of himself. He lay for a long time on the sand or on the grass, and wept tears of deep and fervent happiness, face to face with the inexpressible. "God, God, God!" he cried, trembling with love and reverence, and kissed the ground and dug his fingers into the turf.“

—  Halldór Laxness

Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book One: The Revelation of the Deity
Contexto: He was not quite nine years old, in fact, when he began to have spiritual experiences... he felt he saw God's image open before him. He felt the deity reveal itself in Nature in an inexpressible music, the sonic revelation of the deity; and before he knew it, he himself had become a trembling voice in a celestial chorus of glory. His soul seemed to be rising out of his body like frothing milk brimming over the edge of a basin; it was as if his soul were flowing into an unfathomable ocean of higher life, beyond words, beyond all perception, his body suffused by some surging light that was beyond all light. Sighing, he became aware of his own insignificance in the midst of this infinite chorus glory and radiance; his whole consciousness dissolved into one sacred, tearful yearning to be allowed to be one with the Highest and be no longer any part of himself. He lay for a long time on the sand or on the grass, and wept tears of deep and fervent happiness, face to face with the inexpressible. "God, God, God!" he cried, trembling with love and reverence, and kissed the ground and dug his fingers into the turf.

„Never do hymns seem so long as in the days of childhood, never is their world and their language so alien to the soul. In old age the opposite is true, the hours are then too short for the hymns.“

—  Halldór Laxness

Sjálfstætt fólk (Independent People) (1935), Book One, Part II: Free of Debt

„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.“

—  Halldór Laxness

Sjálfstætt fólk (Independent People) (1935), Book Two, Part I: Hard Times

„His mother taught him to sing. And when he had grown up and had listened to the world's song, he felt that there could be no greater happiness than to return to her song. In her song dwelt the most precious and most incomprehensible dreams of mankind.“

—  Halldór Laxness

Sjálfstætt fólk (Independent People) (1935), Book One, Part II: Free of Debt
Contexto: His mother taught him to sing. And when he had grown up and had listened to the world's song, he felt that there could be no greater happiness than to return to her song. In her song dwelt the most precious and most incomprehensible dreams of mankind. The heath grew into the heavens in those days. The songbirds of the air listened in wonder to this song, the most beautiful song of life.

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

—  Halldór Laxness

Fonte: Under the Glacier

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

—  Halldór Laxness

Fonte: Under the Glacier

„The glimmer continued to play about the vault of heaven. To the west one could see the roofs of nearby mansions and the tower of Our Lady's Church silhouetted against the dull red glow of embers in the darkness of the night.“

—  Halldór Laxness

Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part III: Fire in Copenhagen

„The poet felt completely free now as he stood there on the deck in his collar and boots, sailing past new and ever newer districts; even if he did not own this land's resources, he owned its beauty.</b“

—  Halldór Laxness

Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Four: The Beauty of the Heavens

„Thereafter, when he himself was dead, he imagined that his poems would be published in some mysterious way, and the nation would read them for comfort in adversity, as it had read the poems of other poets before him; it was his highest wish that his poems could help those as unfortunate as himself to have patience to endure.</b“

—  Halldór Laxness

Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book One: The Revelation of the Deity

„A tiny light had been lit in a cottage on Álftanes; probably someone was going out fishing. Often there was frost and frozen snow, and the ice creaked in the night. Somewhere out in the infinite distance lay the spring, at least in God's mind, like the babies that are not yet conceived in the mother's womb.“

—  Halldór Laxness

Brekkukotsannáll (The Fish Can Sing) (1957)

„[T]o anyone who weeps, life has some importance.“

—  Halldór Laxness

Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book One: The Revelation of the Deity

„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.“

—  Halldór Laxness

Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Four: The Beauty of the Heavens

„Often the boy was overwhelmed by an uncontrollable yearning to write down in books everything he saw, despite what anyone said—two hundred books as thick as the Book of Sermons, whole Bibles, whole chests full of books.“

—  Halldór Laxness

Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book One: The Revelation of the Deity

„b>The first thing is to have the will; the rest is technique.</b“

—  Halldór Laxness, livro Kristnihald undir Jökli (bók)

Kristnihald undir Jökli (Under the Glacier/Christianity at Glacier) (1968)

„I do not see how the Creation can be turned into words, let alone letters, hardly even a fiction. History is always entirely different to what has happened. The facts are all fled from you before you start the story. History is simply a fact on its own. And the closer you try to approach the facts through history, the deeper you sink into fiction.“

—  Halldór Laxness, livro Kristnihald undir Jökli (bók)

Kristnihald undir Jökli (Under the Glacier/Christianity at Glacier) (1968)

„These problems never seemed to baffle my grandfather nor cause him any anxiety; difficulties which in most people's eyes would have led to endless complications were disposed of by my grandfather almost without thinking, with the easy assurance of a sleepwalker who strolls along a ledge halfway down a hundred-foot precipice—yes, I am tempted to say with the same disregard for the laws of nature as a ghost passing through locked doors.“

—  Halldór Laxness

Brekkukotsannáll (The Fish Can Sing) (1957)

„b>Oh, it's so good to be dead!
- little Anna“

—  Halldór Laxness

Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Two: The Palace of the Summerland