Quotes by Danish Authors - Page 7

He felt Miss Kristina's presence like something poisonous and something infinitely sweet mixing together in his blood. Inside him, a lack of willpower and a colossal tension battled it out. He felt both weak and furious at the same time. He went around with his fists clenched, ready to fight, yet what he wanted most of all was to hold and be held.
Carsten Jensen
What was it Danilov told me before I left? Something about how one day I would stand at a crossroads where I could choose the Light, which illuminated the sky with its warmth and golden glow - or the Darkness, which at first seemed soothing and inviting, but which would consume me in its flames. But do I have to wait for that crossroads? Isn't it present at every moment of my life?
Peter H. Fogtdal
Your dissatisfaction with yourself speaks of a self-absorption, a vanity, which always gets in the way of your truly coming to rejoice in life.
Matias Dalsgaard
Life is a circus: you go in, bow, run around, bow again and leave.
Storm Petersen
I'd rather live one day as a lionthan live a hundred years as a sheepI'd rather reign in Hell than serve in Heavenlive my dream out in reality and not in my dreams
Lukas Graham
Hard and cruel though it may seem," said the Cardinal, "yet we, who hold our high office as keepers and watchmen to the story, may tell you, verily, that to its human characters there is salvation in nothing else in the universe. If you tell them -- you compassionate and accommodating human readers -- that they may bring their distress and anguish before any other authority, you will be cruelly deceiving and mocking them. For within our whole universe the story only has authority to answer that cry of heart of its characters, that one cry of heart of each of them: 'Who am I?
Karen Blixen
I WILL FOLLOW ANYONEAND TELL EVERYONEABOUT...THE REAL WAR ON WOMENON YAZIDI GIRLS & WOMEN
Widad Akreyi
WHILE THE WORLD'S ASLEEP, ANGELS REFUSE TO SLEEP!
Widad Akreyi
From the moment we are born, we begin to die.
Janne Teller
You can do the impossible, because you have been through the unthinkable.
Christina Rasmussen
The voice of grief is rather convincing, isn’t it? It tells you you’re “too old,” “not good enough,” or “not worthy enough” for another chance at life, that starting over is impossible. This voice in your head is the first thing you hear in the morning and the last thing you hear at night. It drives with you to work. It stays with you at lunch. Its message is so consistent that because of its repetitive power, you may be inclined to believe it. But, as persuasive as the voice of grief is, everything it says is a lie.It’s all a pack of lies.Do you want the truth? If you do, then start listening to life calling to you inside your grief.How? Every time you are yearning to be held and loved, to laugh again, listen to your yearning. Do not listen to your fear . . . Listen to life calling you, “I am here, come on over. Take a chance on me. I am your life, and you’re all that I’ve got.
Christina Rasmussen
I had to see the beauty of my future so I could create it. I gave airtime to my dreams, and they spoke to me.I recognized grief’s voice and turned the volume down. Was it easy? No.Was I scared? Yes.Did fear get in the way? Heck, no. And it never will.My life is worth more than that. Your life is too.
Christina Rasmussen
When the dream that was no longer can be, you have to dream a different dream.
Christina Rasmussen
We were familiar with the line that separates grief from madness, and we know that sometimes the only way to stay on the right side of it is to scream.
Carsten Jensen
Her grief was a burden so heavy, he came close to collapsing under it, and yet he couldn't lay it down.
Carsten Jensen
... The women's song was always the same, as monotonous as the beating of the waves against the beach: loss, loss. The conch offered them no enchantment. When they put their ear to it, all they heard was the echo of their mourning.
Carsten Jensen
By seeing the multitude of people around it, by being busied with all sorts of worldly affairs, by being wise to the ways of the world, such a person forgets himself, in a divine sense forgets his own name, dares not believe in himself, finds being himself too risky, finds it much easier and safer to be like the others, to become a copy, a number, along with the crowd. Now this form of despair goes practically unnoticed in the world. Precisely by losing oneself in this way, such a person gains all that is required for a flawless performance in everyday life, yes, for making a great success out of life. Here there is no dragging of the feet, no difficulty with his self and its infinitizing, he is ground smooth as a pebble, as exchangeable as a coin of the realm. Far from anyone thinking him to be in despair, he is just what a human being ought to be. Naturally, the world has generally no understanding of what is truly horrifying.
Søren Kierkegaard
Loss was a night that never ended.
Carsten Jensen
All the sorrows of life are bearable if only we can convert them into a story.
Izak Dinesen
Losing one glove is certainly painful,but nothing compared to the pain,of losing one, throwing away the other,and finding the first one again.
Piet Hein
To want to understand is an attempt to recapture something we have lost.
Peter Høeg
Love has something to do with recognition, We can be fascinated by the unknown, we can be attracted by it, but love is something that grows, slowly, in an atmosphere of trust.
Peter Høeg
Am I on my way toward that light? Are we always on our way toward the light like a shining blinding opening out of time and darkness? I ask myself as I walk on. I don't know where these words come from, because I'm not aware that I've ever had such thoughts before or that I've inherited such words. Is that what it's all about? Always under way? Always alone? Under way from this group in the half darkness, from these beings who will always follow us, never completely pale around us, no matter where we are, but who can be found around us in those closest to us, in those we meet, even if we travel across the sea...
Ole Sarvig
Nearly all samurai practice Zen - it is the Way of Enlightenment." "Possibly the light of Zen is so strong that it has blinded me to its virtue." Yoshitoki smiled. "It is very good discipline for the mind, as the martial arts are for the body." Kenmotsu looked very smug as he said this. "I do Zazen twice a week." "I think it will do no-one any harm, though personally I find it more pleasant to think than to empty my mind of thought.
Erik Christian Haugaard
With age I have voluntarily chosen certain limitations. I don't have the energy to start over again. To learn new skills or fight my own personality or figure out diesel engines.
Peter Høeg
Will it take the rest of my life to process what has happened? I don't know.If Freddy were here, he would say, 'Yet', as per the rules of a playful accord we have concerning unacquired knowledge, whereby if one of us said they didn't know something, the other had to say 'Yet'. And then the other one--usually me--would provide the missing information, or we'd look it up, or just speculate.
Liz Jensen
WHO IS LEARNED? A definition One who, consuming midnight oilin studies diligent and slow,teaches himself, with painful toil,the things that other people know.
Piet Hein
Beautiful is what we see, More Beautiful is what we know, most Beautiful by far is what we don't
Nicolas Steno
That what you think that you are, that, you are
Carsten Ostergaard Pedersen
The mind is the chisel, matter is the stone and life is the sculpture. Make sure you use your chisel wisely
Carsten Ostergaard Pedersen
When you get up in the morning, you select what you want to wear, however you do not realise you can also select what thoughts you are going to have. Your clothe leaves an impression on other people, your thoughts leaves an impression on you, choose wisely - Carsten Ostergaard Pedersen-
Carsten Ostergaard Pedersen
PRAYER to the sun above the clouds.Sun that givest all things birth,shine on everything on earth!If that's too much to demand,shine at least on this our land.If even that's too much for thee,shine at any rate on me.
Piet Hein
Just as in earthly life lovers long for the moment when they are able to breath forth their love for each other, to let their souls blend in a soft whisper, so the mystic longs for the moment when in prayer he can, as it were, creep into God
Søren Kierkegaard
God of the green pastures and the still waters, please don't help me. I want to do it by myself so that You'll know I've found something I can do for You ... I am David. Amen.
Anne Holm
If you have to wait for a long time, you have to seize hold of the waiting or it will become destructive. If you let things slide, your consciousness will waver, awakening fear and restlessness, then depression strikes, and you're pulled down.
Peter Høeg
In addition to my other numerous acquaintances, I have one more intimate confidant… My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known — no wonder, then, that I return the love.
Søren Kierkegaard
For with his little secret that he cannot divulge, the poet buys this power of the word to tell everybody else's dark secrets. A poet is not an apostle; he drives out devils only by the power of the devil.
Søren Kierkegaard
Around a child, people come and go, objects appear and are taken away, surroundings take shape and disintegrate. And no explanation is given, because how can you explain the world to a child?So she had used the words. Words call forth and secure that which has gone away. With her lists she had ensured that whatever she had once known would come back
Peter Høeg
The great systems that inform the world about the truth and life invariably claim to be absolutely truthful and well-balanced. In reality they are quaking bridges built out of yearning.
Peter Høeg
After being told that the Professor “found it possible to believe for a moment in the existence of God,” Isak thought, “Has it been possible to God, at Mount Elgon, to believe for a moment in the existence of Professor Landgreen?
Isak Dinesen
The meaning of life consists in the fact that it makes no sense to say that life has no meaning.
Niels Bohr
Every mental act is composed of doubt and belief,but it is belief that is the positive, it is beliefthat sustains thought and holds the world together.
Søren Kierkegaard
It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey.
Søren Kierkegaard
Unnecessary bureaucracy hinders creativity, growth, justice and the attainment of peace.
Widad Akreyi
It is not enough to be wrong, one must also be polite.
Niels Bohr
For he has faith enough, he feels, if he were really to delve into himself, faith enough to move mountains, but he cannot manage to put his back into it. Once in a while the need to create wells up in him, the longing to see a part of himself set free in a work by him, and for days at a time his being can be tensed with joyous, titanic efforts to mold the clay into his Adam. But he is never able to shape him into a semblance of his image, he does not have enough stamina to maintain the self-discipline that it demands. It make take weeks for him to give up the work, but he does give it up, and irritably asks himself why he should keep on: what more does he have to gain? He has enjoyed the pleasure of creation, the tedium of upbringing remains, to nurse, nurture, and support entirely - why? for whom? He is no pelican, he says. But whatever he says, he is still ill at ease and feels that he has not done justice to the expectations he has of himself. It doesn’t help him to confront these expectations and try to doubt that their demands on him are justified. He is faced with a choice, and he must choose; for life is such that when the first youth is gone, sooner or later - depending on the natural disposition of the person - sooner or later a day dawns when resignation comes to you like a seducer and tempts you, and you have to say farewell to the impossible and accept it.
Jens Peter Jacobsen
I have read true piety defined as: loving one’s destiny unconditionally – and there is something in it. That is to say: I think that in a way this sort of “religiousness” is the condition for real happiness.
Karen Blixen
My whole thing was, if I can put in 5 percent of the effort of somebody getting an A, and I can get a C minus, that’s amazing,” he explains. “It’s certainly good enough, right? [Then] I can take the other 95 percent of the time and invest it in something I really care about.
David Heinemeier Hansson
In our secular world, we no longer see eternal paradise as a carrot at the end of the stick of life, but try to cram as much as possible into our relatively short time on the planet instead. This is, of course, a futile endeavour, doomed to failure. It is tempting to interpret the modern epidemics of depression and burnout as the individual's response to the unbearable nature of constant acceleration. The decelerating individual - who slows down instead of speeding up, and maybe even stops completely - seems out of place in a culture characterised by manic development, and may be interpreted pathologically (i.e. diagnosed as clinically depressed).
Svend Brinkmann
Living isa thing you donow or never --which do you?
Piet Hein
When everything looks the same on the outside, yet everything has changed on the inside, we break. We break in half.This is the duality of loss.
Christina Rasmussen
It's these small differences in people's karma that determine if we get up or remain lying on the ground.
Peter Høeg
...empathy is the driving force behind the experience of emotions in narratives (Keen, 2006; Mar et al., 2006; Oatley, 2011).
Mikkel Wallentin
Narratives are universally used for mediating emotional experiences. The purpose of aesthetic objects has been defined, in part, as 'the awakening, intensifying, or maintaining of definite emotional states' (Lee, 1913: 99–100). When we read or hear stories, we put aside our own goals and plans, and we temporarily replace our own goals and plans with those of the story characters.
Mikkel Wallentin
Within this enclosed women's world, so to say, behind the walls and fortifications of it, I felt the presence of a great ideal, without which the garrison would not have carried on so gallantly; the idea of a Millennium when women were to reign supreme in the world. The old mother at such times would take on a new shape, and sit enthroned as a massive dark symbol of that mighty female deity who had existed in old ages, before the time of the prophet's God. Of her they never lost sight, but they were, before all, practical people with an eye on the needs of the moment and with infinite readiness of resource.
Karen Blixen
It may upset my secret sisters that I say this, but between you and me, if you're so fortunate as to have captured the perfect male, peeling off that chain-mail bikini and becoming a part-time Amazon is not so bad after all.-Author's Note, Anne Fortier
Anne Fortier
There is hardly any other sphere in which prejudice and superstition of the most horrific kind have been retained so long as in that of women, and just as it must have been an inexpressable relief for humanity when it shook off the burden of religious prejudice and superstition, I think it will be truly glorious when women become real people and have the whole world open before them.
Karen Blixen
Now she has power and passion and the struggle has significance for me-let the momentary consequences be what they may. Suppose that in her pride she becomes giddy, suppose that she does break with me-all right! -she has her freedom, but she will still belong to me. That the engagement should bind her is silly-I want to possess her only in her freedom
Søren Kierkegaard
So now begins the first war with Cordelia' in which I retreat and thereby teach her to be victorious as she pursues me. I continually fall back, and in this backward movement I teach her to know through me all the powers of erotic love, its turbulent thoughts' its passion, what longing is, and hope, and impatient expectancy. As I perform this set of steps before her' all this will correspondingly in her' It is a triumphant procession in which I am leading her, and I myself am just as much the one who dithyrambically sings praises to her victory as I am the one who shows the way. She will gain courage to believe in erotic love, to believe it is an etemal force, when she sees its dominion over me, sees my movements. She will believe me, partly because I rely on my artistry, and partly because at the bottom of what I am doing there is truth. If that were not the case, she would not believe me. With my every move, she becomes stronger and stronger; love is awakening in her soul; she is being enthroned in her meaning as a woman
Søren Kierkegaard
You don't turn your back on your destiny.
Trine Villemann