Independent People

by Halldór Laxness

In every croft, somehow, there lives and persists the dream of something better; for a thousand years they have imagined that they will rise above penury in some mysterious manner and acquire a large estate and the title of landed farmers, the eternal dream. Some consider that it will only be fulfilled in heaven.

there are few things so comforting as to be able to weep.

Independence is the most important thing of all in life. I say for my part that a man lives in vain until he is independent. People who aren’t independent aren’t people. A man who isn’t his own master is as bad as a man without a dog.”

No entiendo el significado del perro

as is usual with self-willed people, enthusiastic and quick-tempered.

strange how the bygone errors of childhood’s unwitting days continued to prey on the mind, though actually nothing at all had happened;

Some people grumble about monotony,—such complaints are the marks of immaturity, sensible people don’t like things happening.

Supernatural phenomena are most unpleasant for this reason: that having reduced to chaos all that ordered knowledge of the world about him which is the foundation a man stands on, they leave the soul floating in mid-air, where it does not rightly belong.

As a man cuts down worm-diseased sheep in the spring, so did he cut down both religion and philosophy on the night when he drove the parish to the door and ordered his children to bed.

God was never farther away from them than when they had read this book.

the same way as people acknowledge the existence of God on their death-beds in case there should actually prove to be a God after all.

the inimical over-self which condemns human nature on Christian grounds.

sweet is a hand that soothes.

THE MOST remarkable thing about man’s dreams is that they all come true; this has always been the case, though no one would care to admit it. And a peculiarity of man’s behaviour is that he is not in the least surprised when his dreams do come true; it is as if he had always expected nothing else. The goal to be reached and the determination to reach it are brother and sister, and slumber both in the same heart.

independent men do not receive letters; such things are for those who rely on others rather than on themselves.

“It’s a useful habit never to 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.”

The fact is that it is utterly pointless to make anyone a generous offer unless he is a rich man; rich men are the only people who can accept a generous offer. To be poor is simply the peculiar human condition of not being able to take advantage of a generous offer. The essence of being a poor peasant is the inability to avail oneself of the gifts that politicians offer or promise and to be left at the mercy of ideals that only make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

never nurture your grief, rather content yourself with what you have left, when you have lost what you had;

To be able to look forward is to live.

never harbour your grief, never mourn what you have lost.