Quotes by Norwegian Authors - Page 3

No doing without some ruing.
Sigrid Undset
The of sitting a telescope in space was obviously not to get closer to the stars and planets the telescope was to study. That would have been about as daft as standing on tip-toe to get a better picture of the craters on the moon. The whole idea of a space telescope is to study space from a point outside the earth' atmosphere that gives that impression, in roughly the same way the ripping surface of a lake can give the impression that the stones beneath are wavy and indistinct. Or the reverse: from the bottom of a swimming pool it's not easy to see what's happening above the surface.
Jostein Gaarder
And when we give each other Christmas gifts in His name, let us remember that He has given us the sun and the moon and the stars, and the earth with its forests and mountains and oceans--and all that lives and move upon them. He has given us all green things and everything that blossoms and bears fruit and all that we quarrel about and all that we have misused--and to save us from our foolishness, from all our sins, He came down to earth and gave us Himself.
Sigrid Undset
Marriage is something you have to give your whole mind to.
Henrik Ibsen
While I think of it, Mr. Werle, junior — don't use that foreign word: ideals. We have the excellent native word: lies.
Henrik Ibsen
The better men know the Lord, the better may the eternal truths we learn be applied in our daily lives.
John A. Widtsoe
God help me, how Tolstoy sweats over drying up people's sources of life, of wild and joyful life, drying them up and making the world fat with the love of God and everyman. ... But the man is old, after all, his fountains of life run dry, without a trace remaining of human affections. ... Only someone who has become slow and watertight with old age, satiated and hardened with pleasure, will go to youth and say, Renounce! ... And yet the youth renounces nothing, but sins royally for forty years. Such is the course of nature!
Knut Hamsun
Perhaps we aren’t fully developed. The physical development of human beings necessarily had to precede the psychological. Perhaps the physical nature of the universe is merely a necessary external material for its own self-awareness.
Jostein Gaarder
Young hearts have their unfathomable depths.
Knut Hamsun
It takes billions of years to create a human being. And it takes only a few seconds to die.
Jostein Gaarder
I look and I look...I must have come to the wrong planet.It's so strange here.
Sigbjørn Obstfelder
Well, it is in fact possible to put things behind you, Rakel. The art of dealing with ghosts is to dare to look at them long and hard until you know that is what they are. Ghosts. Lifeless, powerless ghosts.
Jo Nesbø
Culture is something you cannot buy something you cannot import something you cannot learn or produce at will. A writer an artist or musician cannot sit down and say 'Now I will produce culture.' Culture is something that evolves out of the simple enduring elements of everyday life elements most truthfully expressed in the folk arts and crafts of a nation.
Thor Hansen
Man is the measure of all things', said the Sophist Protagora (c. 485-410 B.C.). By that he meant that the question of whether a thing is right or wrong, good or bad, must always be considered in relation to a person's needs.
Jostein Gaarder
One should never put on one's best trousers to go out to battle for freedom and truth.
Henrik Ibsen
Studies consistently show that happy companies are way more productive, creative and service-oriented than unhappy ones. Therefore, the happy companies will beat the pants off the unhappy ones in the market place. The future of business is happy! It’s inevitable.
Alexander Kjerulf
Animals can be understimulated, but hardly bored.
Lars Fr. H. Svendsen
The rearing of children is considered too important to be left to the individual and should be the responsibility of the state.
Jostein Gaarder
But perhaps that's why we take snaps...to provide false evidence to underpin the false claim that we were happy. Because the thought that we weren't happy at least for some time during our lives is unbearable. Adults order children to smile in the photos, involve them in the lie, so we smile, we feign happiness.
Jo Nesbø
A dead dog is more quiet than a house on the steppes, a chair in a empty room.
Per Petterson
Harry doesn't like people, you see." "I do like people," Harry said. "I just don't like being with them. Particularly when there's a lot of them at the same time.
Jo Nesbø
Our spirits rose after a few beers, all that lay between us during the day, the silences that could develop from nowhere, the irritation that could set in, the sudden inability to find areas of common interest, even though there were so many, all of that vanished as our spirits soared and we felt the concomitant warmth: we looked at each other and knew who we were.
Knausgaard
Know yourselves- be infertile and let the earth be silent after ye.
Peter Wessel Zapffe
One day I have to wake up and realize that you are gone.
Liv-Christine Hoem
I opened my eyes; how could I keep them shut when I could not sleep? The same darkness brooded over me; the same unfathomable black eternity which my thoughts strove against and could not understand. I made the most despairing efforts to find a word black enough to characterize this darkness; a word so horribly black that it would darken my lips if I named it. Lord! how dark it was! and I am carried back in thought to the sea and the dark monsters that lay in wait for me. They would draw me to them, and clutch me tightly and bear me away by land and sea, through dark realms that no soul has seen. I feel myself on board, drawn through waters, hovering in clouds, sinking--sinking.
Knut Hamsun
People so easily forget their past selves.
Henrik Ibsen
You can’t be happy at work every day. No matter how much you love your job, there are still going to be bad days. And that’s cool—it’s always OK to have a bad day at work.
Alexander Kjerulf
I demolish my bridges behind me ... then there is no choice but forward.
Firdtjof Nansen
My praying friend continue to make known your desires to God in all things. ... Let Him decide whether you are to receive what you ask for or not.
O. Hallesby
One mood can be replaced by another, but it is impossible to leave attunement altogether. However, profound boredom brings us as close to a state of un-attunement as we can come.
Lars Fr. H. Svendsen
He was quite a Casanova, no doubt about it. He was in a very good mood today and stopped longer than usual. The girls could see he was gloriously drunk. ’Well, Ragna, why do you think I come here so often?’ asked Rolandsen. ’I’ve no idea,’ Ragna answered. ’You must think I’m sent by old Laban.’The girls giggled. ’When he says Laban he really means Adam.’’I’ve come to save you,’ said Rolandsen. ’You have to beware of the fishermen around here, they’re out-and-out seducers!’’There’s no greater seducer than you,’ said another girl. ’You’ve got two kids already. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.’ ’How can you talk like that, Nicoline? You’ve always been a thorn in my flesh and you’ll be the death of me, you know damned well. But as for you, Ragna, I’m going to save your soul wether you like it or not!
Knut Hamsun
There is a purpose in life--to raise men nearer to the likeness of God. Whoever seeks that ideal, daily, finds joy; and in no other way can true joy be found.
John A. Widtsoe
You know too little and it doesn't exist. You know too much and it doesn't exist. Writing is drawing the essence of what we know out of the shadows. That is what writing is about. Not what happens there, not what actions are played out there, but the THERE itself. There, that is writing's location and aim. But how to get there?
Karl Ove Knausgård
It is the business of man to become acquainted with the material universe in all of its manifestations, so far as may be possible, in order to provide a foundation of knowledge on which the reasoning mind of man may increasingly build.
John A. Widtsoe
Life`s a gift, aim for the sky
Juma Iraki
But that's life. That's what you learn from when things happen. Especially at your age. You just have to take it in and remember to think afterwards and not forget and never grow bitter.
Per Petterson
Does this mean that religious consumption will increase online? That could be. We do not know yet, but to expect religion to disappear because of online technology is like expecting people to stop listening to music because Napster, Spotify and Wimp are offering us all the music we want online
Torkel Brekke
Pray for whatsoever you will. In the name of Jesus you have permission not only to stand in the presence of God but also to pray for everything you need.
O. Hallesby
An action made by a unwitting man, shall not define, nor justify a common though and interpretation.
Even Engesland
The breeze is cold and refreshing, I draw the night into my lungs and try to calm myself down.
Kjersti Annesdatter Skomsvold
What can you do when everyone around you is strong and clever?
Tarjei Vesaas
It is better to go skiing and think of God, than go to church and think of sport.
Fridtjof Nansen
It is not your fate that is your verdict, but how you deal with your fate. If you find yourself in a story contrary to every vow you have made or wish to make, then you must silence your mind and observe everything closely. You must see the patterns of possible fates in the world around you and choose that which your holy soul tells you to choose." - Thordis, Thunder priestess
Maria Kvilhaug
God isn't here. God doesn't even know about this place
Johan Harstad
What is the difference in being alone with another and being alone by one's self?
Henrik Ibsen
What you want most you push away from you.You want more than you care to admit.
Tarjei Vesaas
I was scared. Not of being dead, that I could not comprehend, to be nothing was impossible to grasp and therefore nothing really to be scared of, but the dying itself I could comprehend, the very instant when you know that now comes what you have always feared, and 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
Life is both sad and solemn. We are led into a wonderful world, we meet one another here, greet each other - and wander together for a brief moment. Then we lose each other and disappear as suddenly and unreasonably as we arrived.
Jostein Gaarder
If we pray for anything according to the will of God we already have what we pray for the moment we ask it. We do not know exactly when it will arrive but we have learned to know God through the Spirit of God and have learned to leave this in His hands and to live just as happily whether the answer arrives immediately or later.
O. Hallesby
Believe in The Universe
Svein Erik Scheie
As white snowflakes fall quietly and thickly on a winter day, answers to prayer will settle down upon you at every step you take, even to your dying day. The story of your life will be the story of prayer and answers to prayer.
Ole Hallesby
I wondered who in this room I would go to if I had problems. Anyone my own age looked silly, immature, unfocused. The older ones seemed too perfect and uptight. I couldn't find anyone I'd confide in. The only person I trusted here in this group, apart from God, was myself.
Hanne Ørstavik
All I needed to know, all true knowledge, the only really essential knowledge, was to be found in the books I read and the music I listened to
Karl Ove Knausgård
Born in inquity and conceived in sin the spirit of nationalism has never ceased to bend human institutions to the service of dissension and distress.
Thorstein Veblen
We will talk of this again, when the grass has first withered on her grave. Then you'll hear him spouting about "the child too early torn from her father's heart;" then you'll see him steep himself in a syrup of sentiment and self-admiration and self-pity. Just you wait!
Henrik Ibsen
I look out of the window again. The rain is trickling down silently, evenly, like the tears that cover my face. Perhaps God is in the water, in the raindrops. I put my hand against the cold pane to be close to Him. To be as close as I can without imposing.
Hanne Ørstavik
It's not him who's disturbed. But he likes to disturb others--to shake them out of their rut.
Jostein Gaarder
It is not only blessed to give thanks it is also of vital importance to our prayer life in general. If we have noted the Lord's answers to our prayers and thanked Him for what we have received of Him then it becomes easier for us and we get more courage to pray for more.
O. Hallesby
You see, there are some people that one loves, and others that perhaps one would rather be with.
Henrik Ibsen
I've nothing against eye make-up and lipstick. But the fact is we're actually living on a planet in space. For me that's an extraordinary thought. It's mind-boggling just to think about the existence of space at all. But there are girls who can't see the universe for eye-liner. And there are probably boys whose eyes are never raised above the horizon because of football. There can be quite a chasm between a small make-up mirror and a proper mirror telescope! I think it's what they call a 'matter of perspective'. Perhaps it could also be called an 'eye-opener' as well. It's never too late to experience an eye-opener. But many people live their entire lives without realizing that they're floating through empty space.There's too much going on down here. It's hard enough thinking about your looks.We belong on this earth. I'm not trying to dispute it. We're part of nature's life on this planet. Monkeys and reptiles have shown us how we breed, and I have no quarrel with that. In different natural surroundings everything might have been very different, but here we are. And I repeat: I'm not denying it. I just don't think that prevent us from trying to see a little beyond the ends of our noses.
Jostein Gaarder