“Those we murder with our mouths often live longest”
“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”
“Few people are spoken of in the way they would choose”
“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”
“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”
“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.”
“He had to wife Thorhillda Skaldwife; she had a sharp tongue of her own, and was given to jeering. Thrain loved her little.”
“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,”
“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”
“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.”
“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.”
“Cold is the counsel of women.”
“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.”
“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”
“In fact, the sickness I was suffering from was that I had been driven out of the paradise of childhood and had not found my place in the world of adults. I had set myself up in the absolute in order to gaze down upon this world which was rejecting me; now, if I wanted to act, to write a book, to express myself, I would have to go back down there: but my contempt had annihilated it, and I could see nothing but emptiness. The fact is that I had not yet put my hand to the plow. Love, action, literary work: all I did was to roll these ideas round in my head; I was fighting in an abstract fashion against abstract possibilities, and I had come to the conclusion that reality was of the most pitiful insignificance. I was hoping to hold fast to something, and misled by the violence of this indefinite desire, I was confusing it with the desire for the infinite.”
“a degree in psychiatry merely qualifies one to begin learning about the intricacies and foibles of the human personality.”
“My name is Abbey. And I'm in love with a ghost.”
“Come on, Sardothien,” he said, slinging an arm around her shoulders. “If you’re done liberating slaves and destroying pirate cities, then let’s go home.”
“...to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, [and] criticise after dinner...”
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