Quotes by Norwegian Authors - Page 2

No worse fate can befall a young man or woman than becoming prematurely entrenched in prudence and negation.
Knut Hamsun
Logically, when Maestro Gott some years ago, after an especially cruel critic had compared him to "a zombie who causes acute depression to innocent radio listeners", decided to stop performing in protest, the situation was considered so grave that the Minister of Culture himself went to console the deeply insulted star.
Terje B. Englund
They had studied law, information technology and art history as part of their beauty treatment, they had let Norwegian taxpayers finance years at university just so that they could end up as overqualified, stay-at-home playthings and sit here exchanging confidences about how to keep their sugar daddies suitably happy, suitably jealous and suitably on their toes.
Jo Nesbø
God alone fully understands what each one of us needs we make mistakes continually and pray for things which would be harmful to us if we received them. Afterwards we see our mistakes and realize that God is good and wise in not giving us these things even though we plead ever so earnestly for them.
O. Hallesby
The strongest man is the one who stands most alone.
Henrik Ibsen
NORA: Yes; it is just so, Torvald. While I was still at home with father, he used to tell me all his views, and so of course I held the same views; if at any time I had a different view I concealed it, because he would not have liked people with opinions of their own. He used to call me his little doll, and play with me, as I in my turn used to play with my dolls. Then I came to live in your house.
Henrik Ibsen
With regard to power, women don’t have the vanity men have. They don’t need to make power visible, they only want the power to give them the other things they want. Security. Food. Enjoyment. Revenge. Peace. They are rational, power-seeking planners, who think beyond the battle, beyond the victory celebrations. And because they have an inborn capacity to see weakness in their victims, they know instinctively when and how to strike. And when to stop. You can’t learn that...
Jo Nesbø
Since the Renaissance, people have had to get used to living their life on a random planet in the vast galaxy.
Jostein Gaarder
Only philosophers embark on this perilous expedition to the outermost reaches of language and existence. Some of them fall off, but others cling on desperately and yell at the people nestling deep in the snug softness, stuffing themselves with delicious food and drink. 'Ladies and Gentlemen,' they yell, 'we are floating in space!' But none of the people down there care
Jostein Gaarder
It is the will of our heavenly Father that we should come to Him freely and confidently and make known our desires to Him just as we would have our children come freely and of their own accord and speak to us about the things they would like to have.
O. Hallesby
But what is a person, George? How much is a person worth? Are we nothing but dust that is whipped up and spread to the winds?
Jostein Gaarder
Sometimes you don’t know what you’re looking for until you find it,” Harry answered. “It’s a methodology.
Jo Nesbø
The path to happiness at work starts with a simple decision: You must want to be happy. If you don’t commit to being happy at work, you won’t be. You won’t make the choices that make you happy. You won’t take the actions needed to get there. You won’t change the things that need to change.
Alexander Kjerulf
An acquaintanceship with the literature of the world may be won by any person who will devote half an hour a day to the careful reading of the best books. The habit of reading good books is one that gives great comfort in all the stages and among all the vicissitudes of life. The man who has learned to love good reading is never alone. His friends are the great ones of human history, and to them he may always go for stimulating and helpful communion. --GQ 71 (GQ is A Guide for Quorums of the Melchizedek Priesthood, 3rd Edition, 1930)
John A. Widtsoe
Losing your life is not the worst thing that can happen. The worst thing is to lose your reason for living.
Jo Nesbø
Just imagine walking away from something you’ve started. Something you really believed would be good. I don’t think i could ever do that.
Jo Nesbø
The meaning is hidden in man, but it is only man himself who can find it.
Liv-Christine Hoem
We should not be afraid when praying to God to give expression to a definite desire even though we are in doubt at the time we are praying whether it is really the right thing to pray for or not.
O. Hallesby
A hydrogen atom in a cell at the end of my nose was once part of an elephant's trunk. A carbon atom in my cardiac muscle was once in the tail of a dinosaur.
Jostein Gaarder
As impossible as it is for us to take a breath in the morning large enough to last us until noon so impossible is it to pray in the morning in such a way as to last us until noon. Let your prayers ascend to Him constantly audibly or silently as circumstances throughout the day permit.
O. Hallesby
It was not my intention to collapse; no, I would die standing.
Knut Hamsun
The peace is won by accompanying God into the battle.
Eivind Josef Berggrav
Without denying that adaptation may be one of God's methods of operation, it may be definitely said, that an intelligent Master of the universe, in which we believe, has the power to prepare an earth to fit the needs of man; or fit man to meet the conditions of earth. If He were not able to do so, He would be inferior to His creatures who build houses for human comfort, and equip them with heating, freezing, and many other devices. The argument for adaptation, standing alone, requires chance as a creative force. That we do not and cannot believe.
John A. Widtsoe
Prayer is a condition of mind an attitude of heart which God recognizes as prayer whether it manifests itself in quiet thinking in sighing or in audible words.
O. Hallesby
From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them, and that is eternity.
Edvard Munch
A life without an objective is much like a ship at sea with no port in mind. It drifts with the waves or storms, or with the whim of the captain. They are tempted to ask, amidst the battles of life, "Is the struggle worth-while?" That attitude lessens the joy of living. They who say that there is no purpose in life are not unhappy, but become dangerous to themselves and others, for they have no safe guide for their actions. Indeed, life has not objective save physical satisfactions, it is empty and valueless.
John A. Widtsoe
Actually there were only two forms of existence, I reflected: one that was tied to a place and one that wasn't. Both had always existed. Neither could be chosen.
Karl Ove Knausgård
A great White Bear waits outside. He has faithfully promised to make us all rich if he can but have our youngest daughter.
Peter Christen Asbjørnsen
I don't mean to mock the gods, but Freyja seems to me a bitch.- Hjalti Skjeggjason
Robert Ferguson
A rat is neither good nor evil. It just does what a rat is suppose to do. From Phantom
Jo Nesbø
...you suddenly realise that every chance of being the person you really wanted to be, is gone for ever, and the one you were, is the one those around you will remember.
Per Petterson
The world was full of forces you couldn't fight against which suddenly loomed up and aimed a crushing blow at you.
Tarjei Vesaas
And so, when the chips are down, I must say, though not without a sense of repugnance, that if you wish to show your belief in democracy, you also have to do so when you are in the minority, convinced both intellectually and, not least, in your innermost self, that the majority, in the name of democracy, is crushing everything you stand for and that means something to you, indeed, all that gives you the strength to endure, well, that gives a kind of meaning to your life, something that transcends your own fortuitous lot, one might say. When the heralds of democracy roar, triumphantly bawling out their vulgar victories day after day so that it really makes you suffer, as in my own case, you still have to accept it; I will not let anything else be said about me, he thought.
Dag Solstad
Happiness at work is not about eliminating all the bad stuff from your job. It’s about being happy at work even though some of these bad things are present. It’s about building your skills and your energy to fix the problems, and to create more and more positive experiences at work.
Alexander Kjerulf
And although I have seen nothing but black crows in my life, it doesn't mean that there's no such thing as a white crow. Both for a philosopher and for a scientist it can be important not to reject the possibility of finding a white crow. You might almost say that hunting for 'the white crow' is science's principal task.
Jostein Gaarder
Joining a sub-culture, any sub-culture, for whatever reason, is as I see it never a legitimate self-expression. It is always a result of sheep mentality; a wish to belong somewhere.
Varg Vikernes
Writing isn't black magic. You just have to come up with an idea...
Karl Ove Knausgård
When we go to our meeting with God we should go like a patient to his doctor first to be thoroughly examined and afterwards to be treated for our ailment. Then something will happen when you pray.
O. Hallesby
Prayer can assume very different forms from quiet blessed contemplation of God in which eye meets eye in restful meditation to deep sighs or sudden exclamations of wonder joy gratitude or adoration.
O. Hallesby
I have layer upon layer of thoughts in my head and the bottom one has nothing to grip on to.
Hanne Ørstavik
He who hasn't experienced a full depression alone and over a long period of time--he is a child.
Jens Bjørneboe
Doesn't matter where you go, home is uphill
Gunnar Staalesen
That room was Rolandsen’s world. Rolandsen was not just irresponsibility and inebriation, he was also great thinker and inventor. There was a smell of acids that permeated the corridor and came to the notice of every visitor. Rolandsen made no secret of the fact that he had all these medicaments there solely to disguise the aroma of all the brandy he consumed. But this was part of an act designed purely to give himself an air of inscrutability.
Knut Hamsun
Can you feel it? The vibration? It’s the energy from everyone around us. It’s in the air. If you’re dying and you think no one can save you, just go out and stretch your arms into the air and absorb some of the energy. You can have eternal life. It’s true!- Runa Molnes
Jo Nesbø
I have gone around observing your activities from the outside. Because of this I have also been able to see things to which you have been blind... Every morning you have gone to work, but you have never been fully awake. Of course, you have seen the sun and the moon, the stars in the sky, and everything that moves, but you haven't really seen it at all. It is different for the Joker, because he was put into this world with a flaw: He sees too clearly and too much.
Jostein Gaarder
She sent me a sunny smile, and what a smile, George; it was a smile that could have melted the whole world, because if the whole world had seen it, it would have had the power to stop all wars and hatred on the face of the planet, or at lease there would have been some long ceasefires.
Jostein Gaarder
The smooth, flat rocks were exactly the same, the sea pounded down on them in the same way, and also the landscape under the water, with its small valleys and bays and steep chasms and slopes, strewn with starfish and sea urchins, crabs and fish, was the same. You could still buy Slazenger tennis rackets, Tretorn balls, and Rossignol skis, Tyrolia bindings and Koflach boots. The houses where we lived were still standing, all of them. The sole difference, which is the difference between a child’s reality and an adult’s, was that they were no longer laden with meaning. A pair of Le Coq soccer boots was just a pair of soccer boots. If I felt anything when I held a pair in my hands now it was only a hangover from my childhood, nothing else, nothing in itself. The same with the sea, the same with the rocks, the same with the taste of salt that could fill your summer days to saturation, now it was just salt, end of story. The world was the same, yet it wasn’t, for its meaning had been displaced, and was still being displaced, approaching closer and closer to meaninglessness.
Karl Ove Knausgård
I don’t care what other people think about me. Most people are idiots, and they can think whatever they want.
Ida Løkås
Did you know that darkness has a taste, Grandma?
Jo Nesbø
We shall never meet, but there is something I want you to know. My time is not the same as your time. Our times are not the same. And do you know what that means? That means that time does not exist. Do you want me to repeat that? There is no time. There is a life and a death. There are people and animals. Our thoughts exist. And the world. The universe, too. But there is no time. You might as well take it easy. Do you feel better now? I feel better. This is going to work out. Have a nice day.
Erlend Loe
I didn't feel lonely until there was something to yearn for. Loneliness and longing are two sides of the same coin.
Jostein Gaarder
She [Catherine of Siena] found a place of refuge in a lonely wood, where some hermits lived. It is generally thought that this brotherhood was the community of hermits in Vallombrosa, founded by St. John Gualbert, the man who had spared the life of his deadly enemy because it was Good Friday, and later rushed into the nearest church and fell before the feet of the crucified Christ, as though drunk with this adventure - the adventure of forgiveness. And the Saviour leaned down from the cross and kissed the boy.
Sigrid Undset
You arranged everything according to your own taste, and so I got the same tastes as you - or else I pretended to. I am really not quite sure which - I think sometimes the one and sometimes the other.
Henrik Ibsen
They were handsome, proper and normal family fathers who built the concentration camps and whipped the prisoners to death. And who was Nietzsche? A narcotized syphilitic.
Jens Bjørneboe
A lot of people experience the world with the same incredulity as when a magician pulls a rabbit out of a hat.…We know that the world is not all sleight of hand and deception because we are in it, we are part of it. Actually we are the white rabbit being pulled out of the hat. The only difference beween us and the white rabbit is that the rabbit does not realize it is taking part in a magic trick.
Jostein Gaarder
What do we mean by ‘crazy’? What do we mean by ‘mad’? At what point is a person just different and at what point can we call it a disease and say that they are not responsible for their actions? Or are we all slaves to the chemical processes that go on in our brains?
Jo Nesbø
But now it was spring again, and spring was almost unbearable for sensitive hearts. It drove creation to its utmost limits, it wafted its spice-laden breath even into the nostrils of the innocent.
Knut Hamsun
When we succeed in truly thanking God we feel good at heart. The reason is that we have been created to give glory to God now and for-evermore. And every time we do so we feel that we are in harmony with His plans and purposes for our lives. Then we are truly in our element. That is why it is so blessed.
O. Hallesby
There are only two things worse then an empty canvas: death and taxes.
Ragnar Tørnquist
Her heart felt as if it were breaking in her breast, bleeding and bleeding, young and fierce. From grief over the warm and ardent love which she had lost and still secretly mourned; from anguished joy over the pale, luminous love which drew her to the farthest boundaries of life on this earth. Through the great darkness that would come, she saw the gleam of another, gentler sun, and she sensed the fragrance of the herbs in the garden at world's end.
Sigrid Undset