Sigrid Undset Quotes

The reason why I hated school so intensely [was that] it interfered with my freedom.

It’s a good thing when you don’t dare do something if you don’t think it’s right. But it’s not good when you think something’s not right because you don’t dare do it.

No one and nothing can harm us, child, except what we fear and love.

All my days I have longed equally to travel the right road and to take my own errant path.

All things that a man owns hold him far more than he holds them.

One cannot escape dogmas—those who hold most firmly to dogmas today are those whose only dogma is that dogmas should be feared like the plague.

The morality code that remains after the religion that produced it is rejected is like the perfume that lingers in an empty bottle.

I went to work in an office and learned, among other lessons, to do things I did not care for, and to do them well. Before I left this office, two of my books had already been published.

Many a man is given what is intended for another, but no man is given another's fate.

Easy for them to keep their youth who will never learn a lesson.

I hated school so intensely. It interfered with my freedom. I avoided the discipline by an elaborate technique of being absent-minded during classes.

No doing without some ruing.

I was sent to a school because my father was already aware that his days were numbered, and he was anxious for me to acquire a good education and follow in his footsteps.

The times when we need prayers or counsel, we are little like to be in a mood to learn, nor yet to understand.

All fires burn out at last.

God grant ... that he may learn to understand in time, that whoso is minded to do as he himself wills will soon enough see the day when he will find he has done that which he had never willed.

I rolled myself up into a tight ball of resistance and it was thus that I went through my school years.

I saw not till now what sin brings with it - that we must tread others underfoot.

Most of my father's life consisted of traveling to almost every part of Europe.

But I didn’t realize then that the consequence of sin is that you have to trample on other people.

I am not so foolish as to murmur, if now, since I have drunk up my wine and beer, I have to put up with skimmed milk and sour.

Tis well when we dare not do a thing we think is not good and fair; but not so well when we think a thing not good and fair because we dare not do it.

You tug and strain like a young horse when it's first tied up at the stake, whenever you are tied by your heartstrings.

I've done many things that I thought I would never dare to do because they were sins. But I didn't realize then that the consequence of sin is that you have to trample on other people.