Quotes by Danish Authors - Page 2

I don't think that ... one gets a flash of happiness once and never again it is there within you and it will come as certainly as death....
Isak Dinesen
Wherever there is a crowd there is untruth.
Søren Kierkegaard
Truth is not introduced into the individual from without but was within him all the time.
Søren Kierkegaard
Purity of heart is to will one thing.
Søren Kierkegaard
Most people believe that the Christian commandments are intentionally a little too severe - like setting a clock half an hour ahead to make sure of not being late in the morning.
Søren Kierkegaard
Man reaches the highest point of lovableness at 12 to 17 - to get it back in a second flowering at the age of 70 to 90.
Isak Dinesen
Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.
Søren Kierkegaard
I think these difficult times have helped me to understand better than before how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way that so many things that one goes around worrying about are of no importance whatsoever.
Isak Dinesen
An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field.
Niels Bohr
The rose, however, made us girls somewhat fainthearted, because it really was something we felt mattered, the white bridal dream with the wedding bouquet and the kiss from the man who was to be ours forever. But then Laura said that the lady who had given it to us had gotten divorced only five years later. And since many of our parents were also divorce, if indeed they had ever been married at all, that dream clearly wasn't worth our time.
Janne Teller
Of all the emotional relationships in life, is there any more delicate, more noble, and more intense than a boy's deep and yet so totally bashful love for another boy? The kind of love that never speaks, never dares give way to a caress, a glance, or a word, the kind of vigilant love that bitterly grieves over every shortcoming or imperfection in the one who is loved, a love which is longing and admiration and negation of self, and which is pride and humility and calmly breathing happiness.
Jens Peter Jacobsen
My opinion is, of course, completely my own. I would not impose it on anyone else and decline any pressure to change it.
Søren Kierkegaard
The motive for our actions doesn't lie ahead of us. It's something behind us that we're trying to escape.
Peter Høeg
No-one can own our Lord Buddha. That would be a foolish claim, but the roads that lead to him, the Way... That is a different matter. They are all filled with toll-gates, like the roads of Japan, and the monks collect the fees.
Erik Christian Haugaard
How dreadful boredom is — how dreadfully boring; I know no stronger expression, no truer one, for like is recognized only by like… I lie prostrate, inert; the only thing I see is emptiness, the only thing I live on is emptiness, the only thing I move in is emptiness. I do not even suffer pain… Pain itself has lost its refreshment for me. If I were offered all the glories of the world or all the torments of the world, one would move me no more than the other; I would not turn over to the other side either to attain or to avoid. I am dying death. And what could divert me? Well, if I managed to see a faithfulness that withstood every ordeal, an enthusiasm that endured everything, a faith that moved mountains; if I were to become aware of an idea that joined the finite and the infinite.
Søren Kierkegaard
All men are bores. Surely no one will prove himself so great a bore as to contradict me in this. . . . The gods were bored, and so they created man. Adam was bored because he was alone, and so Eve was created. Thus boredom entered the world, and increased in proportion to the increase of population. Adam was bored alone; then Adam and Eve were bored together; then Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel were bored en famille; then the population of the world increased, and the peoples were bored en masse. To divert themselves they conceived the idea of constructing a tower high enough to reach the heavens. This idea is itself as boring as the tower was high, and constitutes a terrible proof of how boredom gained the upper hand.
Søren Kierkegaard
Life itself is the most wonderful fairytale.
Hans Christian Andersen
It is time for the international community to work for the creation of an independent Kurdistan as they did once for the Jews after the Holocaust. The current war against ISIS, which is perceived by many as World War Three, can be compared to World War Two. After horrible wars, great changes can be brought about for those who have suffered extreme injustice.
Widad Akreyi
I’ve been washing stairs my whole life. One day after the other. Since I was five years old. I’ve never complained. Shame on you. I’m embarrassed to have a son like you…can’t even look after his own bicycle. You just wait until your dad comes home. Then you’ll be in trouble, I can tell you that much.”Poul-Erik’s MotherThe Informer
Steen Langstrup
The man is well inside the train before the dreadful truth occurs to me. He is the man from the newspaper. The rapist. My doppelganger. My mirrored doppelganger.”William Wilson in the short story 'Metro' by Steen Langstrup.
Steen Langstrup
It was one of those moments that no scientist can ever reduce to numbers, try as she might.
Anne Fortier
I will follow anyone and tell everyone my message because it is urgent: Please humanity Protect Yazidis.
Widad Akreyi
Our values were under attacks, in ParisTell them:We stand UNITEDWe'll defend our valuesWe'll NOT be DIVIDED
Widad Akreyi
Generalization is the biggest challenge that must be dealt with if we are to create spaces for constructive dialogue where muslims feel they are welcomed. This is equally true with regards to Westerners! Not all Westerners are against muslims, and not all terrorist attacks in the West are linked to Islamic jihadists.
Widad Akreyi
I Will Follow AnyoneAnd Ask EveryoneTo Stand Together As One Civilisation Against Terrorism
Widad Akreyi
The free world cannot afford to accept any form of extremism, whether it is fascism, racism or religious extremism.
Widad Akreyi
I will follow anyone... and invite everyone... too unite and defend the freedom of expression.
Widad Akreyi
It is vital to acknowledge the new reality before taking any steps to change the existing policies. The world is not the same anymore. Tackling religion-based terrorism is perhaps one, if not the most serious threat the world face in the 21st century. Unfortunately, more terror attacks like the ones in San Bernardino, Brussels and Paris are expected to occur. While those attacks were a reminder of the challenges that lay ahead, they exposed the need to have an improved early warning system that may ultimately save civilian lives. Such a system should take into account the shortcomings of the current warning frameworks and evaluate the usefulness of warnings generated by improved models that would cover a broad range of attacks, larger geographic areas within the country in question and a wide range of potential attack scenarios. The system is likely to facilitate well informed decisions on the assessment of information gathered from different sources. In this vein, finding a balance between protecting human rights and ensuring national security is key.
Widad Akreyi
We were supposed to be heroes.”“There’s no such thing as heroes.”Conversation between ‘Alis K’ and ‘Borge’The Informer by Steen Langstrup
Steen Langstrup
On the occasion of Mahatma Gandhi's birthday, I salute every individual who honors the core values of his legacy, making him proud of humanity.
Widad Akreyi
Compassion is a reflection of our connectedness. YOUR devotion to helping others is an expression of YOUR greatness.
Widad Akreyi
Femininity is wearing shoes that make it difficult to run, skirts that inhibit movement, and underclothes that interfere with blood circulation. It can hardly be coincidental that the clothes men find most flattering on a woman are precisely those that make it most difficult for her to defend herself against aggression.
Suzanne Brøgger
So you've stopped thinking you're going to die?Oh, I'm more certain of it than ever. But I've stopped being scared.
Carsten Jensen
The science of genetics is in a transition period, becoming an exact science just as the chemistry in the times of Lavoisier, who made the balance an indispensable implement in chemical research.
Wilhelm Johannsen
You are too kind, and I am unused to it. For your own sake, do not stroke my misery. It knows not how to respond, but with a vicious bite.
Anne Fortier
Peace may be hard to achieve, but is possible with small yet essential steps that are guided by courage and sufficient commitment.
Widad Akreyi
Hangovers are a vivid form of vengeance. Last night my apartment became the venue for a small, introverted chardonnay festival. A melancholy choir of Bulgarians provided the entertainment, via a set of headphones that ended up irredeemably tangled beneath the bed. Part of me just watched. The other part was in charge.
Liz Jensen
...or perhaps about acknowledging that life is a delicate balance of great forces, and that good would lose its potency if there was no evil left to fight in the world.
Anne Fortier
Never does a person feel so wise, so mature and so adult as when she is not.
Pia Juul
There is a pleasant firmness of tone when one is in harmony with oneself. Even when it's a weak ethic one is resonating with.
Peter Høeg
Someday this war will be over. A new order of the world will appear in its place. The idea of Socialism will prevail. In the future they’ll remember us as heroes.”Thorkild aka ‘Borge’The Informer by Steen Langstrup
Steen Langstrup
After a little while you became aware of how still it was out here. Now, looking back on my life in Africa, I feel like it might altogether be described as the existence of a person who had come from a rushed and noisy world, into a still country.
Isak Dinesen
If I know a song of Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back, of the plows in the fields and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Will the air over the plain quiver with a color that I have had on, or the children invent a game in which my name is, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or will the eagles of the Ngong Hills look out for me?
Karen Blixen
Following the path of earlier unificationists, one of Eddington's aims was to reduce the contingencies in the description of nature, for example, by explaining the fundamental constants of physics rather than accepting them as merely experimental data. One of these constants was the fine-structure constant ..., which entered prominently in Dirac's theory and was known to be about 1/137.
Helge Kragh
How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.
Niels Bohr
What is a poet? An unhappy man who hides deep anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so formed that when the sigh and cry pass through them, it sounds like lovely music.... And people flock around the poet and say: 'Sing again soon' - that is, 'May new sufferings torment your soul but your lips be fashioned as before, for the cry would only frighten us, but the music, that is blissful.
Søren Kierkegaard
Omit the non-essential.
Per Mollerup
Coexistence and personal peace are at the heart of global peace and harmony.
Widad Akreyi
Come now and let us go and risk our lives unnecessarily. For if they have got any value at all it is this that they gave got none. Frei lebt wer sterben kann.
Karen Blixen
Nobody can be lucky all the time,so when your luck deserts you in some fashiondon't think you've been abandoned in your prime,but rather that you're saving up your ration.
Piet Hein
It is difficult to restrain admirers of Shakespeare once they have begun to speak of him.
Karen Blixen
Do you know what the mathematical expression is for longing? ... The negative numbers. The formalization of the feeling that you are missing something.
Peter Høeg
With the daguerreotype everyone will be able to have their portrait taken—formerly it was only the prominent—and at the same time everything is being done to make us all look exactly the same, so we shall only need one portrait.
Søren Kierkegaard
Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true.
Niels Bohr
Sex doesn't sell anything other than itself
Martin Lindstrom
90 percent of all Gillette shavers are bought by women for the men in their lives
Martin Lindstrom
The more consciousness there is in such a sufferer who in despair wills to be himself, the more his despair intensifies and becomes demonic. It usually originates as follows. A self that in despair wills to be itself is pained in some distress or other that does not allow itself to be taken away from or separated from his concrete self. So now he makes precisely this torment the object of all his passion, and finally it becomes a demonic age. By now, even if God in heaven and all the angels offered to help him out of it- no, he does not want that, now it is too late. Once he would gladly have given everything to be rid of this agony, but he was kept waiting; now it is too late, now he would rather rage against everything and be the wronged victim of the whole world and of all life, and it is of particular significance to him to make sure that he has his torment on hand and that no one takes it away from him- for then he would not be able to demonstrate and prove to himself that he is right. This eventually becomes such a fixation that for an extremely strange reason he is afraid of eternity, afraid that it will separate him from his, demonically understood, infinite superiority over other men, his justification, demonically understood, for being what he is.
Søren Kierkegaard
Riches and abundance come hypocritically clad in sheep's clothing, pretending to be security against anxieties, and they become then the object of anxiety. They secure a man against anxieties just about as well as the wolf that is put to tending the sheep.
Søren Kierkegaard
We may fondly imagine that we are impartial seekers after truth, but with a few exceptions, to which I know that I do not belong, we are influenced—and sometimes strongly—by our personal bias; and we give our best thoughts to those ideas which we have to defend.
August Krogh
As Eternity has reckonedThere's a lifetime in a second
Piet Hein