Giants in the Earth Quotes

“But more to be dreaded than this tribulation was the strange spell of sadness which the unbroken solitude cast upon the minds of stone.”
― O.E. Rølvaag, Giants in the Earth

“Here was the endless prairie, so rich in its blessings of fertility, but also full of great loneliness--a form of freedom which curiously affected the minds of strangers, especially those to whom the Lord had given a sad heart.”
― O.E. Rølvaag, Giants in the Earth

“When the quarrel had finally worn itself out they had found themselves at opposite ends of the earth, though lying side by side in the same bed.”
― OLE RØLVAAG, Giants in the Earth: A Saga of the Prairie

“A feeling of unfathomable loneliness settled upon her.”
― O.E. Rølvaag, Giants in the Earth

“Weak and insignificant, he yet bore within him the talisman to set her direst magic at naught. For he beguiled the heavy-hearted folk into laughing, and what can avail against folk who laugh-- who dare to laugh in the face of a winter like this one? . . . That winter it was he who saved people from insanity and the grave.”
― O. E. Rölvaag, Giants in the Earth

“An endless plain. From Kansas--Illinois, it stretched, far into the Canadian North, God alone knows how far; from the Mississippi River to the wester Rockies, miles without number... Endless...beginningless.”
― O.E. Rølvaag, Giants in the Earth

“The explanation was plain; this desolation out here called forth all that was evil in human nature.”
― O.E. Rølvaag, Giants in the Earth

“Tish-ah!" said the grass. "Tish-ah, tish-ah!" Never had it said anything else--never would it say anything else. It bent resiliently under the trampling feet; it did not break, but it complained aloud every time--for nothing like this had ever happened to it before.”
― O.E. Rølvaag, Giants in the Earth

“Many and incredible are the tales the grandfathers tell from those days when the wilderness was yet untamed, and when they, unwittingly, founded the Kingdom.”
― O.E. Rølvaag, Giants in the Earth

“Everything he had planted that spring was blooming like a garden. Why, he could just hear the potatoes grow!”
― O.E. Rølvaag, Giants in the Earth

“The caravan headed for the sky; it steered straight onward. Now, at last, Per Hansa had time to look about him and rejoice in what he saw... All he saw was beautiful”
― O.E. Rølvaag, Giants in the Earth

“People had never dwelt here, people would never come; never could they find home in this vast, wind-swept void.”
― O.E. Rølvaag, Giants in the Earth

“It seemed plain to her now that human life could not endure in this country.”
― O.E. Rølvaag, Giants in the Earth

“But it had been as if a resistless flood had torn them loose from their foundations and was carrying them helplessly along on it's current---flinging them here and there, hurling them madly onward, with no known destination ahead.”
― O.E. Rølvaag, Giants in the Earth