Quotes by Norwegian Authors - Page 6

Happiness at work is not about eliminating all the bad stuff from your job. It’s about being happy at work even though some of these bad things are present. It’s about building your skills and your energy to fix the problems, and to create more and more positive experiences at work.
Alexander Kjerulf
The path to happiness at work starts with a simple decision: You must want to be happy. If you don’t commit to being happy at work, you won’t be. You won’t make the choices that make you happy. You won’t take the actions needed to get there. You won’t change the things that need to change.
Alexander Kjerulf
See, happiness at work is an emotion. It comes from inside of you, and like all other emotions it is difficult to define, but inescapable once it’s present. Or not present. Can you define love? Poets have tried for thousands of years and aren’t getting much closer. But when you’re feeling love, you’re acutely aware of it, even though you have no formal definition.
Alexander Kjerulf
Seriously: Do you want to spend your working life simply being satisfied? When you look back on 50 years spent in business, do you want to be able to say, “Well, I was satisfied"?? No! Make happiness your goal. As in, “Let’s make this a workplace where people are happy to work." As in, “I’ve been working for 50 years now, and it absolutely rocks! To me work is challenging, stimulating and just plain fun.
Alexander Kjerulf
You can’t be happy at work every day. No matter how much you love your job, there are still going to be bad days. And that’s cool—it’s always OK to have a bad day at work.
Alexander Kjerulf
It was all too easy to make things up, it was like skating on thin ice, it was like doing dainty pirouettes on a brittle crust over water thousands of fathoms deep.
Jostein Gaarder
I demolish my bridges behind me...then there is no choice but to move forward
Fridtjof Nansen
Most people are ennobled by the actual presence of death. But how long do you suppose this nobility will last in him?
Henrik Ibsen
We will talk of this again, when the grass has first withered on her grave. Then you'll hear him spouting about "the child too early torn from her father's heart;" then you'll see him steep himself in a syrup of sentiment and self-admiration and self-pity. Just you wait!
Henrik Ibsen
I remember his eyes. They are just like mine. Every time I look in the mirror I see him. I try not to look at my self too much.
Ida Løkås
She [Catherine of Siena] found a place of refuge in a lonely wood, where some hermits lived. It is generally thought that this brotherhood was the community of hermits in Vallombrosa, founded by St. John Gualbert, the man who had spared the life of his deadly enemy because it was Good Friday, and later rushed into the nearest church and fell before the feet of the crucified Christ, as though drunk with this adventure - the adventure of forgiveness. And the Saviour leaned down from the cross and kissed the boy.
Sigrid Undset
Incidentally, I really agree with those who say that the capacity to forgive says something about the essential quality of a person. I'm the lowest grade.''I didn't mean to criticize you.''I promise to be better in my next life...
Jo Nesbø
When we look up at the sky, we are trying to find the way back to ourselves
Jostien Gaarder
I pretend he doesn’t exist, and he does the same with me.
Ida Løkås
I can tell she’s upset, but I can’t be bothered to say anything. Some days are just like that.
Ida Løkås
Yes, we were good at using the grapevine. But what we were best at, what we were really the kings of, that was buses and sitting around in bedrooms.No one could beat us at that.None of this led anywhere. Well, we probably weren’t very good at doing things that led somewhere. We didn’t have particularly good conversations, no one could say we did, the few topics we had developed so slowly we ourselves assumed they had nowhere to go; not one of us was a brilliant guitarist, although that is what we would have loved to be, more than anything else, and as far as girls were concerned, it was rare we came across one who wouldn’t object if we pulled up her jumper so that we could lower our heads and kiss her nipples. These were great moments. They were luminous shafts of grace in our world of yellowing grass, grey muddy ditches and dusty country roads. Yes, that was how it was for me. I assumed it was the same for him.What was this all about? Why did we live like this? Were we waiting for something? In which case, how did we manage to be so patient? For nothing ever happened! Nothing happened! It was always the same. Day in, day out! Wind and rain, sleet and snow, sun and storm, we did the same. We heard something on the grapevine, went there, came back, sat in his bedroom, heard something else, went by bus, bike, on foot, sat in someone’s bedroom. In the summer we went swimming. That was it.What was it all about?We were friends, there was no more than that.And the waiting, that was life.
Karl Ove Knausgård
But the dream of something unlikely has its own special name. We call it hope.
Jostein Gaarder
The secret prayer chamber is a bloody battleground. Here violent and decisive battles are fought out. Here the fate of souls for time and eternity is determined, in quietude and solitude.
Ole Hallesby
As white snowflakes fall quietly and thickly on a winter day, answers to prayer will settle down upon you at every step you take, even to your dying day. The story of your life will be the story of prayer and answers to prayer.
Ole Hallesby
He who hasn't experienced a full depression alone and over a long period of time--he is a child.
Jens Bjørneboe
...because if there was one thing he didn't like it was big words, they just lied and covered things up, those big words, they didn't let what really was live and breathe but just carried it off into something that wanted to be big, that's what he thought...
Jon Fosse
Words - take her with youlet her rest in your rhymesWords - take her awaysomewhere beyond timeWords - ease her breathinglay her softly on the floorthere - let her lingerand listen like ever beforeLeave her windows uncovered at nightand fill her room with the citylightsas they illuminate the skyit reminds her of the people outsidecause she won't sleep unless she heals her lonelinessWalk with her beneath the treetopscreate new paths and memoriesshow her how the sunlightglances through the gaps between the leavesWords - help her change the worldin only one versetell her to reach for the starsand to always put love firstLeave her windows uncovered at nightand fill her rooms with the citylightsas they illuminate the skyit reminds her of the people outsideit reminds her of the peopleit reminds her of the peopleit reminds her of the people outside.
Ane Brun
He couldn't imagine using the word 'rewarding' about a work of art - for instance that such and such a book has given me so much, taught me so much, etc etc. - but thought solely that it enlightened him, made him see, cynically and withough false expectations, so that he felt he was alive.
Dag Solstad
It was a fantastic feeling, but it left me restless because the most important thing in it was the longing, for what was going to be, not for what I did or had done.
Karl Ove Knausgård
Asbjørn had a nose, that was his great talent, I had never met anyone with such sureness of taste as him, but what use was it, part from being the hub student life revolved around? The essence of a nose is judgment, to judge you have to stand outside, and that is not where creativity takes place.
Karl Ove Knausgård
They spell-caught the sounds of cat paws, the breath of fish, the spittle of birds, the hairs of a woman's beard, and the roots of a mountain, and spun them around the sinews of a bear. That made a bond that looked as fine as a ribbon of silk, but, since it was made of things not in this world, it was so strong nothing in the world could break it.
Ingri d'Aulaire
Over the entrance to the temple at Delphi was a famous inscription: KNOW THYSELF! It reminded visitors that man must never believe himself to be more than mortal - and that no man can escape his destiny.
Jostein Gaarder
When, shortly afterward, I stopped at the top of the hill and saw the town beneath me, my feeling of happiness was so ecstatic that I didn’t know how I would be able to make it home, sit there and write, eat, or sleep. But the world is constructed in such a way that it meets you halfway in moments precisely like these, your inner joy seeks an outer counterpart and finds it, it always does, even in the bleakest regions of the world, for nothing is as relative as beauty. Had the world been different, in my opinion, without mountains and oceans, plains and seas, deserts and forests, and consisted of something else, inconceivable to us, as we don’t know anything other than this, we would also have found it beautiful. A world with gloes and raies, evanbillits and conulames, for example, or ibitera, proluffs, and lopsits, whatever they might be, we would have sung their praises because that is the way we are, we extol the world and love it although it’s not necessary, the world is the world, it’s all we have. So as I walked down the steps toward the town center on this Wednesday at the end of August I had a place in my heart for everything I beheld. A slab of stone worn smooth in a flight of steps: fantastic. A swaybacked roof side by side with an austere perpendicular brick building: so beautiful. A limp hot-dog wrapper on a drain grille, which the wind lifts a couple of meters and then drops again, this time on the pavement flecked with white stepped-on chewing gum: incredible. A lean old man hobbling along in a shabby suit carrying a bag bulging with bottles in one hand: what a sight. The world extended its hand, and I took it.
Knausgaard
this was not the end of the world, actually it was the world.
Knausgaard
Perhaps I should stop seeing myself as an individual and start identifying myself with the totality, but I just can't do that.
Kjersti Annesdatter Skomsvold
I don't imagine you will dispute the fact that at present the stupid people are in an absolutely overwhelming majority all the world over.
Henrik Ibsen
She was an extraordinary person too! Would you believe it, she cut her hair short, and used to go about in men’s boots in bad weather
Henrik Ibsen
Every Christian who studies history can only grieve over the atrocities that have been committed in the name of God by people who refuse to follow His ways.
Berit Kjos
When I was at home with papa, he told me his opinion about everything, and so I had the same opinions; and if I differed from him I concealed the fact, because he would not have liked it. He called me his doll-child, and he played with me just as I used to play with my dolls.
Henrik Ibsen
You arranged everything according to your own taste, and so I got the same tastes as you - or else I pretended to. I am really not quite sure which - I think sometimes the one and sometimes the other.
Henrik Ibsen
NORA: Yes; it is just so, Torvald. While I was still at home with father, he used to tell me all his views, and so of course I held the same views; if at any time I had a different view I concealed it, because he would not have liked people with opinions of their own. He used to call me his little doll, and play with me, as I in my turn used to play with my dolls. Then I came to live in your house.
Henrik Ibsen
NORA: No; only merry. And you were always so friendly and kind to me. But our house has been nothing but a nursery. Here I have been your doll-wife, just as at home I used to be papa's doll-child. And my children were, in their turn, my dolls. I was exceedingly delighted when you played with me, just as children were whenever I played with them. That has been our marriage, Torvald.
Henrik Ibsen
Sick is a relative concept. We’re all sick. The question is, what degree of functionality do we have with respect to the rules society sets for desirable behavior? No actions are in themselves symptoms of sickness. You have to look at the context within which these actions are performed.
Jo Nesbø
Writing isn't black magic. You just have to come up with an idea...
Karl Ove Knausgård
To bear children into this world is like carrying wood to a burning house.
Peter Wessel Zapffe
There is only one thing children find harder to hold back than tears, and that is joy.
Karl Ove Knausgård
No one can leave someone they have good sex with. They can try, but they always go back. We’re simple souls like that, aren’t we?
Jo Nesbø
You're just being cryptic again. It's like soap opera sex. Lots of boring dialogue and when they finally do go to bed, everything's dark and covered by blankets.
Ragnar Tørnquist
Life`s a gift, aim for the sky
Juma Iraki
A rat is neither good nor evil. It just does what a rat is suppose to do. From Phantom
Jo Nesbø
The right? Ah, what does it help to be in the right if you don't have any power?
Henrik Ibsen
I had always liked staying the night with other families, having your own room with a freshly made bed, full of unfamiliar objects, with a towel and a washcloth nicely laid out, and from there straight into the heart of family life, despite there always being, no matter whom I visited, an uncomfortable side, because even though people always try to keep existing tensions in the background whenever guests are present, the tensions are still noticeable, and you can never know if it is your presence that has caused them or whether they are just there and indeed your presence is helping to suppress them. A third possibility is, of course, that all these tensions were just tensions that lived their own lives in my head.
Karl Ove Knausgård
For money you can have everything it is said. No, that is not true. You can buy food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; soft beds, but not sleep; knowledge but not intelligence; glitter, but not comfort; fun, but not pleasure; acquaintances, but not friendship; servants, but not faithfulness; grey hair, but not honor; quiet days, but not peace. The shell of all things you can get for money. But not the kernel. That cannot be had for money.
Arne Garborg
Music makes you braver.
Two Steps From Hell
All I needed to know, all true knowledge, the only really essential knowledge, was to be found in the books I read and the music I listened to
Karl Ove Knausgård
... and it occured to me then and forever afterwards, that films, theatre books and poems were just a fraud. It's only music that doesn't deceive, it doesn't pretend to be anything else except what it is. Music.
Lars Saabye Christensen
There are times where you need to step it up even higher
Erik Bertrand Larssen
Believe in The Universe
Svein Erik Scheie
I had never imagined that happiness could hurt so much.
Knausgaard
It seems to her [Saint Catherine of Siena] that the devil has this world in his power, not by his own will, for he is powerless, but through our help because we obey him. The evil aroma rising from the ... wars which are waged by Christians against Christians, are the same as war against God. ... Peace, peace, for the sake of the love of the crucified Christ, and not war; that is the only solution.
Sigrid Undset
There is a god in man, and in nature. He, who sits in the dark, is the bringer of light. This beauty, the sign of an open eye.
Gorgoroth
An increasing number of people who lead mental lives of great intensity, people who are sensitive by nature, notice the steadily more frequent appearance in them of mental states of great strangeness ... a wordless and irrational feeling of ecstasy; or a breath of psychic pain; a sense of being spoken to from afar, from the sky or the sea; an agonizingly developed sense of hearing which can cause one to wince at the murmuring of unseen atoms; an irrational staring into the heart of some closed kingdom suddenly and briefly revealed.
Knut Hamsun
I believe that before all else I am a reasonable human being, just as you are--or, at all events, that I must try and become one.
Henrik Ibsen
But if the history of mankind was her own history, in a way she was thousands of years old.
Jostein Gaarder
Nothing is final in history. It always moves on. Peace must be built again and again.
Thorbjørn Jagland