Quotes by Norwegian Authors - Page 4

I had never imagined that happiness could hurt so much.
Knausgaard
no one is as they seem, and most of life, apart from honest betrayal, is lies and deceit. And the day we discover we are no different is the day we no longer want to live.
Jo Nesbø
In order to live a meaningful life,humans need answers, i.e., a certain understanding of basic existential questions. These ‘answers’ do not have to be made completely explicit, as a lack of words does not necessarily indicate a lack of understanding, but one has to able to place oneself in the world and build a relatively stable identity. The founding of such an identity is only possible if one can tell a relatively coherent story about who one has been and who one intends to be.
Lars Fr. H. Svendsen
What people are afraid of can tell us a lot about society.
Anne Holt
Although I've always been easily led by my imagination, I was, and I remain, a rational person.
Jostein Gaarder
The truth is that I feel totally helpless, or totally inconsolable, to be more honest. I’m not trying to hide it, but it’s something you’re not to worry about.
Jostein Gaarder
Do not complain beneath the stars about the lack of bright spots in your life.
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
Do not forget, some give little, and it is much for them, others give all, and it costs them no effort; who then has given most?
Knut Hamsun
I pretend he doesn’t exist, and he does the same with me.
Ida Løkås
The answer is not relevant to the knowledge of an inquiring mind.
Even Engesland
I am learning that if I just go on accepting the framework for life that others have given me if I fail to make my own choices the reason for my life will be missing. I will be unable to recognize that which I have the power to change.
Liv Ullmann
Politics is the application of Sufism to earthlife...To refuse to act politically is to starve your children, destroy civilization.
Shamcher Bryn Beorse
Until I moved to Stockhold I had felt there was a continuity to my life, as if it stretched unbroken from childhood up to the present, held together by new connections, in a complex and ingenious pattern in which every phenomenon I saw was capable of evoking a memory which unleashed small landslides of feeling in me, some with a known source, others without. The people I encountered came from towns I had been to, they knew other people I had met, it was a network, and it was a tight mesh. But when I moved to Stockholm this flaring up of memories became rarer and rarer, and one day it ceased altogether. That is, I could still remember; what happened was that the memories no longer stirred anything in me. No longing, no wish to return, nothing. Just the memory, and a barely perceptible hint of an aversion to anything that was connected with it.
Karl Ove Knausgård
The one who says he doesn't understand anything about art, doesn't know himself.
Jostein Gaarder
What's a man's first duty? The answer is brief: To be himself.
Henrik Ibsen
Even though God could create all kinds of things, he could hardly create himself before he had a "self" to create with. So there was only one possibility left: God had always existed. But she had already rejected that possibility! Everything that existed had to have a beginning.
Jostein Gaarder
The difficult is what takes a little time. The impossible is what takes a little longer.
Fridtjof Nansen
I was the kind to endure. No one had said you couldn’t become a better person through endurance.
Knausgaard
On the one hand we need the image of "the text" in order to focus on anything at all; on the other hand we use the metaphor of "reading" to signal that our apprehension of a text will always be partial, that we never quite reach the "text itself," a realization that has led certain critics to question the very existence of such an object.
Espen J. Aarseth
Different people have different duties assigned to them by Nature Nature has given one the power or the desire to do this the other that. Each bird must sing with his own throat.
Henrik Ibsen
To love a person is to learn the song that is in their heart and to sing it to them when they have forgotten.
Arne Garborg
I no longer feel the need to see and sense more than I've already experienced. I just want so desperately to hang on what I have.
Jostein Gaarder
The strongest men are the most alone.
Henrik Ibsen
Under a bad leadership Serbs are capable of committing the most terrible atrocities; under good leaders we can do great deeds. It's like a field - if it's not cared for, the weeds will take over. But if you tend it, water and feed the seeds, you will read a bountiful harvest. Serbs are lazy, we lack discipline and have no capacity for self-criticism." With Their Backs to the World
Åsne Seierstad
It was a fantastic feeling, but it left me restless because the most important thing in it was the longing, for what was going to be, not for what I did or had done.
Karl Ove Knausgård
Writing was a defeat, it was a humiliation, it was coming face-to-face with yourself and seeing you weren't good enough.
Karl Ove Knausgård
I wonder whether the Christmas feeling has anything to do with the sixth sense. Perhaps we're a little more the angels at Christmas than we are during the rest of the year. And Christmas is about all the other senses. I can smell Christmas, I can taste Christmas, and I can see and hear it.
Jostein Gaarder
I can tell she’s upset, but I can’t be bothered to say anything. Some days are just like that.
Ida Løkås
A joker is a little fool who is different from everyone else. He's not a club, diamond, heart, or spade. He's not an eight or a nine, a king or a jack. He is an outsider. He is placed in the same pack as the other cards, but he doesn't belong there. Therefore, he can be removed without anybody missing him.
Jostein Gaarder
It's not a silly question if you can't answer it.
Jostein Gaarder
Jesus is moved to happiness every time He sees that you appreciate what He has done for you. Grip His pierced hand and say to Him "I thank Thee Savior because Thou hast died for me." Thank Him likewise for all the other blessings He has showered upon you from day to day. It brings joy to Jesus.
O. Hallesby
Helmer: I would gladly work night and day for you. Nora- bear sorrow and want for your sake. But no man would sacrifice his honor for the one he loves.Nora: It is a thing hundreds of thousands of women have done.
Henrik Ibsen
You decide for yourself when it will hurt.
Per Petterson
We all need somebody to talk to. It would be good if we talked ... not just pitter-patter but real talk. We shouldn't be so afraid because most people really like this contact that you show you are vulnerable makes them free to be vulnerable.
Liv Ullmann
The best thing that can come with success is the knowledge that it is nothing to long for.
Liv Ullmann
Imagine that one day you are out for a walk in the woods. Suddenly you see a small spaceship on the path in front of you. A tiny Martian climbs out the spaceship and stands on the ground looking up at you…What would you think? Never mind, it’s not important. But have you ever given any thought to the fact that you are a Martian yourself?It is obviously unlikely that you will ever stumble upon a creature from another planet. We do not even know that there is life on other planets. But you might stumble upon yourself one day. You might suddenly stop short and see yourself in a completely new light. On just such a walk in the woods. I am an extraordinary being, you think. I am a mysterious creature.You feel as if you are waking from an enchanted slumber. Who am I? you ask. You know that you are stumbling around on a planet in the universe. But what is the universe?If you discover yourself in this manner you will have discovered something as mysterious as the Martian we just mentioned. You will not only have seen a being from outer space. You will feel deep down that you are yourself an extraordinary being.
Jostein Gaarder
– The life of the worlds is a roaring river, but Earth’s is a pond and a backwater.– The sign of doom is written on your brows – how long will ye kick against the pin-pricks?– But there is one conquest and one crown, one redemption and one solution.– Know yourselves – be infertile and let the earth be silent after ye.
Peter Wessel Zapffe
I've knitted myself a hat, it's plum red with an appealing lace pattern, I figured that a few air holes would be nice now that it's spring. I put it on and feel like a cranberry in the snow, and I wonder if they can see me from the moon. Me and the Great Wall.
Kjersti Annesdatter Skomsvold
Borders? I have never seen one. But I have heard they exist in the minds of some people.
Thor Heyerdahl
Cage an eagle and it will bite at the wires, be they ofiron or of gold.
Henrik Ibsen
Balance is of the essence,' she said. 'That appies to all good, harmonious relationships. Balance in guilt, balance in shame and pangs of conscience.
Jo Nesbø
One of the qualities of liberty is that, as long as it is being striven after, it goes on expanding. Therefore, the man who stands in the midst of the struggle and says, "I have it," merely shows by doing so that he has just lost it.
Henrik Ibsen
The story goes that one day Socrates stood gazing at a stall that sold allkinds of wares. Finally he said, “What a lot of things I don’t need!
Jostein Gaarder
It was all too easy to make things up, it was like skating on thin ice, it was like doing dainty pirouettes on a brittle crust over water thousands of fathoms deep.
Jostein Gaarder
Indifference is one of the seven deadly sins, actually the greatestof them all, because it is the only one that sins against life.
Karl Ove Knausgård
The more helpless you are the better you are fitted to pray and the more answers to prayer you will experience.
O. Hallesby
One of the things that kills Buddhist spiritual life is excessive seriousness.
Gil Fronsdal
My helpless friend your helplessness is the most powerful plea which rises up to the tender father-heart of God. You think that everything is closed to you because you cannot pray. My friend your helplessness is the very essence of prayer.
O. Hallesby
Laughter's all the damned thing's fit for.
Henrik Ibsen
To seek one's goals and to drive toward it steeling one's heart is most uplifting!
Henrik Ibsen
There was a gay man who lived nearby when I was growing up,’ Harry recounted. ‘He must have been forty or so, lived alone, and everyone in the neighbourhood knew he was gay. In the winter we threw snowballs at him, shouted “buttfucker” then ran like mad, convinced he would give us one up the backside if he caught us. But he never came after us, just pulled his hat further down over his ears and walked home. One day, suddenly, he moved. He never did anything to me, and I’ve always wondered why I hated him so much.’‘People are afraid of what they don’t understand. And hate what they’re afraid of.
Jo Nesbø
In order to stand well in the eyes of the community it is necessary to come up to a certain somewhat indefinite conventional standard of wealth.
Thorstein Veblen
As white snow flakes 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.
O. Hallesby
Anthropocentrism gave rise to boredom, and when anthropomorphism was replaced by technocentrism, boredom became even more profound.
Lars Fr. H. Svendsen
I am sure my music has a taste of codfish in it.
Edvard Grieg
I know many people who believe in God, and I expected to find Him on my way to the South Pole if he exists. My religious experiences were very different however, [only] involving myself, nature and the universe.
Liv Arnesen
We can be hindered in our development and our personal growth by political conditions. Outer circumstances can constrain us. Only when we are free to develop our innate abilities can we live as free beings. But we are just as much determined by inner potential and outer opportunities as the Stone Age boy on the Rhine, the lion in Africa, or the apple tree in the garden.
Jostein Gaarder
. We have this attitude that people become drug addicts against their will. That they couldn’t possibly want this kind of life. But maybe that’s not true. Maybe they don’t want to live like other people — it just wouldn’t suit them.
Jo Nesbø
Almost nothing need be said when you have eyes.
Tarjei Vesaas
There is a god in man, and in nature. He, who sits in the dark, is the bringer of light. This beauty, the sign of an open eye.
Gorgoroth