Quotes by Danish Authors

There is a trick to flying. The angels told me." He had smiled at my wide-eyed awe. "You need to forget everything you know as a human being. When you are human, you discover that there is great power in hating the earth. And it can almost make you fly. But it never will."I had frowned, not quite understanding him. "So, what's the trick?""Love the sky.
Anne Fortier
You know you are truly alive when you’re living among lions.
Karen Blixen
The voices of peace can’t be silenced by bombs, shootings, sieges, brutality and barbarism. Despite the challenges we face as peace-makers in a troubled region, all we want is peace and our campaign #WeWantPeace continues.
Widad Akreyi
Great love, you believe, carries the seeds of great sorrow. Well, perhaps you are right. Perhaps the wise spurn one to remain safe from the other, but I should rather choose to have my eyes burnt in their sockets than to have been born without.
Anne Fortier
The great systems that inform the world about the truth and life invariably claim to be absolutely truthful and well-balanced. In reality they are quaking bridges built out of yearning.
Peter Høeg
If envy were a fever all the world would be ill.
Danish proverb
You don't turn your back on your destiny.
Trine Villemann
There are things which cannot be carried through even with the good will of everybody concerned
Karen Blixen
For a moment Carl tried to picture everything in his mind, and then it happened. Somewhere inside of him, where cause and effect were not weighted against each other, and where logic and explanations never challenged consciousness, in that place where thoughts could live freely and played out against each other - right there in that spot, things fell into place, and he understood how it all fitted together
Jussi Adler-Olsen
Come now and let us go and risk our lives unnecessarily. For if they have got any value at all it is this that they gave got none. Frei lebt wer sterben kann.
Karen Blixen
My life will be the best illustration of all my work.
Hans Christian Andersen
When indeed does the temporal suffering oppress a man most terribly? Is it not when it seems to him that it has no significance, that it neither secures nor gains anything for him? Is it not when the suffering, as the impatient man expresses it, is without meaning or purpose?
Søren Kierkegaard
As the ironist does not have the new within his power, it might be asked how he destroys the old, and to this it must be answered: he destroys the given actuality by the given actuality itself.
Søren Kierkegaard
Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation but as a question.[A caution he gives his students, to be wary of dogmatism.]
Niels Bohr
This is Denmark. We are Danes. We keep our distance. We do not pick a seat close to strangers if other seats are available. We do not talk to strangers in the trains.”William Wilson in the short story 'Metro' by Steen Langstrup
Steen Langstrup
Peace may be hard to achieve, but is possible with small yet essential steps that are guided by courage and sufficient commitment.
Widad Akreyi
A PSYCHOLOGICAL TIPWhenever you're called on to make up your mind,and you're hampered by not having any,the best way to solve the dilemma, you'll find,is simply by spinning a penny.No -- not so that chance shall decide the affairwhile you're passively standing there moping;but the moment the penny is up in the air,you suddenly know what you're hoping.
Piet Hein
We were happy. I know I ought to be able to tell you about it, yet I cannot, for while a nightmare will stay with you like hunger, when you awake from a happy dream, you have no memory of it.
Erik Christian Haugaard
A strange thing happened to me in my dream. I was rapt into the Seventh Heaven. There sat all the gods assembled. As a special dispensation I was granted the favor to have one wish. "Do you wish for youth," said Mercury, "or for beauty, or power, or a long life; or do you wish for the most beautiful woman, or any other of the many fine things we have in our treasure trove? Choose, but only one thing!" For a moment I was at a loss. Then I addressed the gods in this wise: "Most honorable contemporaries, I choose one thing — that I may always have the laughs on my side." Not one god made answer, but all began to laugh. From this I concluded that my wish had been granted and thought that the gods knew how to express themselves with good taste: for it would surely have been inappropriate to answer gravely: your wish has been granted.
Søren Kierkegaard
Just as in earthly life lovers long for the moment when they are able to breath forth their love for each other, to let their souls blend in a soft whisper, so the mystic longs for the moment when in prayer he can, as it were, creep into God
Søren Kierkegaard
It's all a waste of time. Everything begins only to end. The moment you were born you began to die. That's how it is with everything.
Janne Teller
Whining is a virus, a lethal, infectious, epidemic disease.
Peter Høeg
Paris shook his head."Do you think I would teach just anyone to fight me to the death? I want you to be my wife. My one and only wife.
Anne Fortier
After pleasant scratching comes unpleasant smarting.
Danish proverb
I am poor—you are my riches; dark—you are my light; I own nothing, need nothing. And how could I own anything? After all, it is a contradiction that he can own something who does not own himself. I am happy as a child who is neither able to own anything nor allowed to. I own nothing, for I belong only to you; I am not, I have ceased to be, in order to be yours.”—Johannes De Silentio, from_Either/Or_
Søren Kierkegaard
I used to look at Jinks and marvel at her smooth complexion, but over the years I have come to realise that she has been spared wrinkles by virtue of never having succumbed to heavy thought.
Sandi Toksvig
But promises based on ignorance always prove disappointing.
Jussi Adler-Olsen
Though I had no respect for Jack Lewis, I respected the hole in his chest. He was dying, and you owe the dying your attention.
Carsten Jensen
Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.
Søren Kierkegaard
Everyone can only succeed with their own Dharma.
Anni Sennov
We all experience many freakish and unexpected events - you have to be open to suffering a little. The philosopher Schopenhauer talked about how out of the randomness, there is an apparent intention in the fate of an individual that can be glimpsed later on. When you are an old guy, you can look back, and maybe this rambling life has some through-line. Others can see it better sometimes. But when you glimpse it yourself, you see it more clearly than anyone.
Viggo Mortensen
There's always something when you're at fault, too, and that fault you must discover and learn to recognize and take the consequences of it.
Anne Holm
It is now my intention to draw out from the story of Abraham the dialecticalconsequences inherent in it, expressing them in the form ofproblemata, in order to seewhat a tremendous paradox faith is, a paradox which is capable of transforming amurder into a holy act well-pleasing to God, a paradox which gives Isaac back toAbraham, which no thought can master, because faith begins precisely there wherethinking leaves off.
Søren Kierkegaard
Yes you may come." Paris held up a hand to delay Myrina's raptures. "But this time you will not be wearing my crown. You will be my slave, and believe me I shall enjoy ordering you around.
Anne Fortier
deep inside I know that trying to figure things out leads to blindness, that the desire to understand has a built-in brutality that erases what you seek to comprehend. Only experience is sensitive.
Peter Høeg
A child who is born is something to seek out, something to search for, a star, a northern light, a column of energy in the universe. And a child who dies-that's an abomination.
Peter Høeg
The reason dying is so easy is because death has no meaning... And the reason death has no meaning is because life has no meaning. All the same, have fun!
Janne Teller
What a difference! Under the esthetic sky, everything is buoyant, beautiful, transient! when ethics arrives on the scene, everything becomes harsh, angular and infinitely boring
Søren Kierkegaard
Armed violence and peace cannot coexist. We need to overcome the challenges we face and seek practical solutions. We must replace the culture of war with the culture of peace.
Widad Akreyi
Deep within every human being there still lives the anxiety over the possibility of being alone in the world, forgotten by God, overlooked among the millions and millions in this enormous household. One keeps this anxiety at a distance by looking at the many round about who are related to him as kin and friends, but the anxiety is still there, nevertheless, and one hardly dares think of how he would feel if all this were taken away.
Søren Kierkegaard
It doesn't matter if you're born in a duck yard, so long as you are hatched from a swan's egg!
Hans Christian Andersen
Beautiful is what we see, More Beautiful is what we know, most Beautiful by far is what we don't
Nicolas Steno
...empathy is the driving force behind the experience of emotions in narratives (Keen, 2006; Mar et al., 2006; Oatley, 2011).
Mikkel Wallentin
The most common form of despair is not being who you are.
Søren Kierkegaard
After being told that the Professor “found it possible to believe for a moment in the existence of God,” Isak thought, “Has it been possible to God, at Mount Elgon, to believe for a moment in the existence of Professor Landgreen?
Isak Dinesen
When I was very young and in the cave of Trophonius I forgot to laugh. Then, when I got older, when I opened my eyes and saw the real world, I began to laugh and I haven’t stopped since. I saw that the meaning of life was to get a livelihood, that the goal of life was to be a High Court judge, that the bright joy of love was to marry a well-off girl, that the blessing of friendship was to help each other out of a financial tight spot, that wisdom was what the majority said it was, that passion was to give a speech, that courage was to risk being fined 10 rix-dollars, that cordiality was to say ‘You’re welcome’ after a meal, and that the fear of God was to go to communion once a year. That’s what I saw. And I laughed.
Søren Kierkegaard
You can recognize a small truth because its opposite is a falsehood. The opposite of a great truth is another truth.
Niels Bohr
So you've stopped thinking you're going to die?Oh, I'm more certain of it than ever. But I've stopped being scared.
Carsten Jensen
Coexistence and personal peace are at the heart of global peace and harmony.
Widad Akreyi
We just have to remind ourselves that the source of any happiness is mind itself.
Ole Nydahl
Why must a woman always surrender? I am not prey!""No I am. Your arrow struck me long ago." Paris took her hand and placed it on his chest."Right here. And every time I try to pull it out." He used her hand to demonstrate. "You force it back in.
Anne Fortier
Johannes had once said that violence and cruelty were just a stupid person's way of making himself felt, because it was easer to use your hands to strike a blow than to use your brain to find a logical and just solution to the problem.
Anne Holm
We may fondly imagine that we are impartial seekers after truth, but with a few exceptions, to which I know that I do not belong, we are influenced—and sometimes strongly—by our personal bias; and we give our best thoughts to those ideas which we have to defend.
August Krogh
For he who loves God without faith reflects on himself, while the person who loves God in faith reflects on God.
Søren Kierkegaard
Break the ice, or draw that which lives in the dimness out into the full light of speech - what happens is the same: that which is now seen and now grasped is not, in its clearness, the shadowy thing that was.
Jens Peter Jacobsen
Hard and cruel though it may seem," said the Cardinal, "yet we, who hold our high office as keepers and watchmen to the story, may tell you, verily, that to its human characters there is salvation in nothing else in the universe. If you tell them -- you compassionate and accommodating human readers -- that they may bring their distress and anguish before any other authority, you will be cruelly deceiving and mocking them. For within our whole universe the story only has authority to answer that cry of heart of its characters, that one cry of heart of each of them: 'Who am I?
Karen Blixen
Without discussing it with his mother, Anton went up to his teacher, Miss Katballe, and informed her that after seven years he was now quitting school. It was the best day of her life, she replied. With unexpected politeness he bowed, thanked her, and said, likewise.
Carsten Jensen
From Shore To ShoreOur Message of Love & PeaceTo ALL OUR Kids
Widad Akreyi
Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it.
Niels Bohr
No matter how close people get, they never reach each other. Including us now. Even now, there's a place where each of us is alone.
Peter Høeg