Frasi di Halldór Kiljan Laxness pagina 7

“La guerra è sempre stata il principale divertimento dell'umanità. Gli altri divertimenti sono un surrogato della guerra.”

da Kristnihald undir Jökli

“La storia è sempre differente da quello che è capitato.”

da Kristnihald undir Jökli

“Fin da quando avevo imparato a leggere, mi avevano sempre infastidito le storie che contenevano un insegnamento morale, un tentativo educativo o comunque un secondo significato celato dietro avvincenti prolusioni o sotto le mentite spoglie di una fiaba. Avevo sempre avuto l'impressione che questo uso improprio della parola mirasse a ingannarmi, e d'istinto smettevo di leggere o di ascoltare non appena cominciavo a sospettare che la narrazione avesse lo scopo d'instillarmi una saggezza che qualcun altro riteneva importante, una virtù che a qualcun altro sembrava bella - invece di raccontarmi una storia, dato che le storie sono la cosa più splendida che si possa raccontare.”

da Kristnihald undir Jökli

“Ecco che cosa intendo per esperienze paranormali, soprannaturali. Se l'umanità si accontentasse di quelle, come faceva una volta, non avrebbe bisogno del tabacco e dell'acquavite.”

Sette maghi

“Che creatura ripugnante, l'uomo", commentò.
"Perché?" chiesi.
"Beve il latte di altri animali", spiegò. "In effetti è l'apice del contronatura. Quando mai a un cavallo viene in mente di farsi allattare da una vacca?”

Sette maghi

“The most remarkable thing about man's dreams is that they all come true; this has always been the case, though no one would care to admit it.”

Sette maghi

Halldór Kiljan Laxness: Frasi in inglese

“b>A man is not independent unless he has the courage to stand alone.

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

“Listen, don't look so depressed, old fellow. This is what all of Heine's poems are like, it's only peasants who don't laugh at them; or rather, perhaps, Calvinists. Abroad, it's the normal practice that if someone is looking really sad in the street, a horde of fat men comes running over waving checkbooks and hire him for a circus; they teach people like that to ride a bicycle that disintegrates when they try to mount it, or else make them play a stringless fiddle with a broomstick.”

Sjálfstætt fólk (Independent People) (1935), Book Two, Part III: Conclusion

“Everyone always believes everything nasty of everyone else, and especially if it's a lie.”

Garðar Hólm
Brekkukotsannáll (The Fish Can Sing) (1957)

“When has human fortune ever been regarded as something better than a crime, or been enjoyed in any other way than in secret, directly contrary to the laws of God and man?”

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

“What made Ingolfur Arnarson a great man was first and foremost his ideals, his unquenchable love of mankind, his conviction that the people needed improved conditions of life and better facilities for cultural advancement, his determination to mitigate his fellow men's sufferings by establishing a better form of government in the country... Middlemen and other parasites would no longer be allowed to batten on the farming classes. Ingolfur wanted to elevate the farmer's life to a position of honor and dignity, not in word alone, but in deed.”

Arnas Arnæus
Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part II: The Fair Maiden

“When my daughter wakes up on her first morning in God's City of Zion, the sun will rise over Sierra Benida and shine upon the saints: the sun of the All-Wisdom; the sun of the Beehive, the Sego-lily, and Seagull... My son will understand that Egill Skallagrímsson and the Norse kings live here in Spanish Fork, but that they now have the gleam of righteousness in their eyes and have become leaders in the Stake, Seventies, and High Priests.”

Sjálfstætt fólk (Independent People) (1935), Book Two, Part II: Years of Prosperity

“It makes no difference where one sleeps in God's City of Zion, the air is everywhere just as all-embracingly pleasing.”

Steinar
Paradísarheimt (Paradise Reclaimed) (1960)

“b>The love which demands nothing but beauty itself and lives in selfless worship... is the love that no disappointment can ever conquer, perhaps not even death itself”

Steinar
Paradísarheimt (Paradise Reclaimed) (1960)

“The fire's hottest for the one who burns himself.”

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

“It's you who are strange. Talking to you is like talking to someone who has no shadow.”

Jón Hreggviðsson
Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part I: Iceland's Bell

“My opinion has always been this, that you ought to never give up as long as you live, even though they have stolen everything from you. If nothing else, you can always call the air you breath your own, or at any rate you can claim that you have it on loan. Yes, lass, last night I ate stolen bread and left my son among men who are going to use pick-handles on the authorities, so I thought I might just as well look you up this morning.”

Jórunn
Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Three: The House of the Poet

“Yes, it is a painful lot to be a poet and to love both God and man by the farthest northern seas!”

Bjartur talking with Asta Sollilja
Sjálfstætt fólk (Independent People) (1935), Book Two, Part III: Conclusion

“Icelanders! You are the descendants of Nordic vikings! Down with Irish slaves!”

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

“And so it went on, day after day. This was not the first time that those who had at first smiled at him turned their backs on him and began to think of themselves isntead of thinking of him. Sometimes it was as if you understood people's souls; a few days later, you understood nothing. One day you were kissed, and it meant everything; next day, you were not kissed.... He consoled himself by looking at his exercise books with the poems approaching the thousand total soon, and more. Perhaps the world would some day understand that the heart existed. Some day.</b”

The True Icelanders of Sviðinsvík
Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Three: The House of the Poet

“I didn't expect you to have learnt to smile yet. When one is born, one only knows how to cry. It's only very gradually that one learns to smile.”

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

“Learn never to look forward to anything. It is the beginning of knowing how to endure everything.”

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

“The words themselves say least of all, if in fact they say anything; what really informs us is the inflection of the voice (and no less so if it is restrained), the breathing, the heartbeat, the muscles round the mouth and eyes, the dilation and conctraction of the pupils, the strength or the weakness in the knees, as well as the chain of mysterious reactions in the nerves and the secretions from hidden glands whose names one never knows even though one has read about them in books; all that is the essence of a conversation—the words are more or less incidental.”

Thórarna, the woman from Landbrot
Brekkukotsannáll (The Fish Can Sing) (1957)

“I swear—swear—swear: by everything which is and has been sacred to this nation from the beginning: Iceland shall not be sold.”

Halldór Laxness libro The Atom Station

Atómstöðin (The Atom Station) (1948)

“Flowers are immortal. You cut them in autumn and they grow again in spring—somewhere.”

Halldór Laxness libro The Atom Station

the Prime Minister
Atómstöðin (The Atom Station) (1948)

“Dear darling Americans, Jesus let them come with the atom bomb quick.”

Halldór Laxness libro The Atom Station

the organist
Atómstöðin (The Atom Station) (1948)

“It is a waste of words to try to impute to the Creator democratic ideas or social virtues; or to think that one can move Him with weeping and wailing, and persuade Him with logic and legal quibbles. Nothing is so pointless as words.”

Halldór Laxness libro The Atom Station

Cleopatra
Atómstöðin (The Atom Station) (1948)

“[T]ime passed and there was really no romance in life anymore, only the tedious tranquility of marriage without excitement or curiosity, the dull routine of making a comfortable living with nothing to nourish the imagination.”

Halldór Laxness libro Kristnihald undir Jökli (bók)

Pastor Jón's eulogy to Dr. Sýngmann
Kristnihald undir Jökli (Under the Glacier/Christianity at Glacier) (1968)

“Slow good luck is best.”

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

Álfgrímur's grandmother
Brekkukotsannáll (The Fish Can Sing) (1957)

“White ravens are rare.”

“It is anything but easy trying to speak of a person one knows so little about but who is nevertheless so close to me.”

Björn of Brekkukot
Brekkukotsannáll (The Fish Can Sing) (1957)