Quotes from Njal's Saga

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“Those we murder with our mouths often live longest”
― quote from Njal's Saga


“She was endowed with great beauty for all those attributes that were outside her control, but it was said that in all characteristics for which she herself was responsible, she was utterly wicked”
― quote from Njal's Saga


“Few people are spoken of in the way they would choose”
― quote from Njal's Saga


“He snatched the cloak away and tossed a pair of blue trousers at Flosi, saying he would have greater need of them than a cloak. Why should I need them more? said Flosi. Skarp-Hedin replied, you certainly will if you are, as I have heard, the mistress of the Svinafell Troll, who uses you as a woman every ninth night”
― quote from Njal's Saga


“He will give you a friendly greeting in return and ask if you are a northerner. You reply that you are from Eyjafjord. He will then ask you whether there are a lot of good men up there, to which you reply, "a lot of perverts, that's about all”
― quote from Njal's Saga



“When Thorhall heard this he was so shocked that he could not speak a word. He sprang out of bed, snatched with both hands the spear that Skarp-Hedin had given him, and drove it deep into his own leg. The flesh and core of the boil clung to the blade as he gouged it out of his leg, and a torrent of blood and matter gushed across the floor like a stream. Then he strode from the booth without a limp, walking so fast that the messenger could not keep pace with him.”
― quote from Njal's Saga


“He had to wife Thorhillda Skaldwife; she had a sharp tongue of her own, and was given to jeering. Thrain loved her little.”
― quote from Njal's Saga


“Now Thrain Sigfus' son kept staring at Thorgerda Glum's daughter; his wife Thorhillda saw this, and she got wroth, and made a couplet upon him. "Thrain,”
― quote from Njal's Saga


“That's true," says Bergthora, "yet neither of us finds fault with the other for it; but Thorwald, thy husband, was not beardless, and yet thou plottedst his death." Then”
― quote from Njal's Saga


“Let me have two locks of your hair, and help my mother plait them into a bow-string for me. "Does anything depend on it asked Hallgerd". "My life depends on it replied Gunnar.”
― quote from Njal's Saga



“You have many qualities that make you as great a man as any other here at the Althing. In the first place, you are as well-born as all those who are descended from Ragnar Hairy-Breeks.”
― quote from Njal's Saga


“Cold is the counsel of women.”
― quote from Njal's Saga


“Eigi er það sættarrof," segir Njáll, "að hver hafi lög við annan því að með lögum skal land vort byggja en eigi með ólögum eyða.”
― quote from Njal's Saga


“This is a terribly dangerous journey" said Bjorn, "and few would have the courage to make it except you and me". His wife said, "if you let Kari down, you had better realise that you will never be allowed into my bed again, and that my kinsmen will force a division of property between us”
― quote from Njal's Saga


Popular quotes

“Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without his unfolding grace.—2 Corinthians 4:16”
― Eugene H. Peterson, quote from The Message Remix (Bible in Contemporary Language)


“Probably most catastrophes end this way without an ending, the dead not even knowing how they died...,those who loved them forever questioning "this unnecessary death," and the rest of us tiring of this inconsolable catastrophe and turning to the next one.”
― Norman Maclean, quote from Young Men and Fire


“You'll never know what's happening inside the heads of other people.”
― Etgar Keret, quote from The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God & Other Stories


“partner ACC Colin Carswell based at police HQ Sir David Strathern chief constable of Lothian and Borders Police Jean Burchill Rebus’s current partner, museum curator”
― Ian Rankin, quote from Resurrection Men


“Let us not, however, exaggerate our power. Whatever man does, the great lines of creation persist; the supreme mass does not depend on man. He has power over the detail, not over the whole. And it is right that this should be so. The Whole is providential. Its laws pass over our head. What we do goes no farther than the surface. Man clothes or unclothes the earth; clearing a forest is like taking off a garment. But to slow down the rotation of the globe on its axis, to accelerate the course of the globe on its orbit, to add or subtract a fathom on he earth's daily journey of 718,000 leagues around the sun, to modify the precession of the equinoxes, to eliminate one drop of rain--never! What is on high remains on high. Man can change the climate, but not the seasons Just try and make the moon revolve anywhere but in the ecliptic!

Dreamers, some of them illustrious, have dreamed of restoring perpetual spring to the earth. The extreme seasons, summer and winter, are produced by the excess of the inclination of the earth's axis over the place of the ecliptic of which we have just spoken. In order to eliminate the seasons it would be necessary only to straighten this axis. Nothing could be simpler. Just plant a stake on the Pole and drive it in to the center of the globe; attach a chain to it; find a base outside the earth; have 10 billion teams, each of 10 billion horses, and get them to pull. THe axis will straighten up, ad you will have your spring. As you can see, an easy task.

We must look elsewhere for Eden. Spring is good; but freedom and justice are beter. Eden is moral, not material.

To be free and just depends on ourselves.”
― Victor Hugo, quote from The Toilers of the Sea


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