Mogens and Other Stories Quotes

“...he looked so strange and absentminded; quite obviously he had just been reading a book, one could tell that from the expression in his eyes, from his hair, from the abstracted way in which he managed his hands.”
― Jens Peter Jacobsen, Mogens and Other Stories

“Of what are you thinking now?" she asked.
"I am thinking of myself."
"That's just what I am doing."
"Are you also thinking of yourself?"
"No, of yourself—of you, Mogens.”
― Jens Peter Jacobsen, Mogens and Other Stories

“There was no style in nature.”
― Jens Peter Jacobsen, Mogens and Other Stories

“But what joy can you take in a tree or a bush, if you don’t imagine that a living being dwells within it, that opens and closes the flowers and smooths the leaves? When you see a lake, a deep, clear lake, don’t you love it for this reason, that you imagine creatures living deep, deep down below, that have their own joys and sorrows, that have their own strange life with strange yearnings?”
― J. P. Jacobsen, Mogens, and Other Stories

“Just so! I can take joy in every leaf, every twig, every beam of light, every shadow. There isn’t a hill so barren, nor a turf-pit so square, nor a road so monotonous, that I cannot for a moment fall in love with it.”
― J. P. Jacobsen, Mogens, and Other Stories

“Finally Thora went to her room, but Mogens remained sitting in the conservatory, miserable that she had gone. He drew black imaginings for himself, that she was dead and gone, and that he was sitting here all alone in the world and weeping over her, and then he really wept. At length he became angry at himself and stalked up and down the floor, and wanted to be sensible. There was a love, pure and noble, without any coarse, earthly passion; yes, there was, and if there was not, there was going to be one. Passion spoiled everything, and it was very ugly and unhuman. How he hated everything in human nature that was not tender and pure, fine and gentle! He had been subjugated, weighed down, tormented, by this ugly and powerful force; it had lain in his eyes and ears, it had poisoned all his thoughts.”
― Jens Peter Jacobsen, Mogens and Other Stories