Halldór Laxness Quotes

Icelanders are grateful to meet foreigners who have heard of their country. And even more grateful to hear someone say it deserves better.

For man is essentially alone, and one should pity him and love him and grieve with him.

Whoever doesn't live in poetry cannot survive here on earth.

My motto is strong packaging, clear addressing.

Remember, any lie you are told, even deliberately, is often a more significant fact than a truth told in all sincerity.

It's a useful habit to never believe more than half of what people tell you, and not to concern yourself with the rest. Rather keep your mind free and your path your own.

It's a pity we don't whistle at one another, like birds. Words are misleading.

What you have stolen can never be yours.

When a man has a flower in his life he builds a house.

You have fettered yourself of your own free will, man - break the fetters!

Like all great rationalists you believed in things that were twice as incredible as theology.

No one is so busy that he hasn't the time to dismantle a work of art.

A wise man once said that next to losing its mother, there is nothing more healthy for a child than to lose its father.

A free man can live on fish.Independence is better than meat

It's an old saying that one still has to know something, despite everything.

People don't have the imagination to understand politicians. People are too innocent

The life of man is so short that ordinary people simply cannot afford to be born

That blasted family could never look at a living thing without wanting to make a profit out of it, preferably by killing it.

For once the crofter was at a a rather loss for words, for to him nothing has ever been more completely unintelligible than the reasoning that is bred of tears.

Immoral women do not exist", said the organist. "That this only a superstition. On the other hand there exist women who sleep thirty times with one man, and women who sleep once with thirty men.