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Never do hymns seem so long as in the days of childhood, never is their world and their language so alien to the soul. In old age the opposite is true, the hours are then too short for the hymns.

— Halldór Laxness Sjálfstætt fólk (Independent People) (1935)

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More quotes by Halldór Laxness

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

Heimsljós (World Light) (1940)

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

Atómstöðin (The Atom Station) (1948)

Although grace comes from above, that is not to say that everyone has the ability to accept to it.

Heimsljós (World Light) (1940)

One of the first things I had been taught as a child was never to believe a single word that was written in newspapers.

Atómstöðin (The Atom Station) (1948)

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

Kristnihald undir Jökli (Under the Glacier/Christianity at Glacier) (1968)

All Halldór Laxness quotes →

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Halldór Laxness (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.