126 quotes
In actual fact, no man is honest when sober; in actual fact, you cannot believe a single word that a sober man says. I wish I were drunk myself.
Atómstöðin (The Atom Station) (1948)
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.
Sjálfstætt fólk (Independent People) (1935)
I came to you a crossbearer on a stretcher and an outcast from humanity, and I went from you a conqueror of life.
Heimsljós (World Light) (1940)
Three things, according to poets, are considered bliss in Iceland: hot rye-cakes, plump girls, and cold buttermilk.
Paradísarheimt (Paradise Reclaimed) (1960)
It is anything but easy trying to speak of a person one knows so little about but who is nevertheless so close to me.
Brekkukotsannáll (The Fish Can Sing) (1957)
It's a common saying that the children of children are fortune's favorites.
Atómstöðin (The Atom Station) (1948)
The first thing is to have the will; the rest is technique.
Kristnihald undir Jökli (Under the Glacier/Christianity at Glacier) (1968)
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)
Slowly, slowly winter day opens his arctic eye.
Sjálfstætt fólk (Independent People) (1935)
Was all human endeavor then, even the beautiful of the world, of so little consequence compared with murder?
Heimsljós (World Light) (1940)
My mother once sent me out to buy pepper, and I have not returned home yet.
Brekkukotsannáll (The Fish Can Sing) (1957)
How much can one sacrifice for the sake of one's pride? Everything, of course—if one is proud enough.
Atómstöðin (The Atom Station) (1948)
Never did these thanes of hell escape their just deserts.
Sjálfstætt fólk (Independent People) (1935)
His mother taught him to sing. And when he had grown up and had listened to the world's song, he felt that there could be no greater happiness than to return to her song. In her song dwelt the most precious and most incomprehensible dreams of mankind.
Sjálfstætt fólk (Independent People) (1935)
Icelanders! You are the descendants of Nordic vikings! Down with Irish slaves!
Heimsljós (World Light) (1940)
All that you ask for, you shall have.
Atómstöðin (The Atom Station) (1948)
Hope springs eternal in the human breast. (Original to Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man (1734))
Heimsljós (World Light) (1940)
Hauling fish from the sea—what endless toil. One could almost say, what an eternal problem.
Heimsljós (World Light) (1940)
Work on the one side, the home on the other—they were two walls in the one prison.
Heimsljós (World Light) (1940)
As a rule, the only way that anyone could escape from the castle of Bremerholm was through a dead-end opening: namely, the grave.
Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946)