Knut Hamsun Quotes - Page 2

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• Keep it, keep it!" I answered. "You are very welcome to it! It is only a couple of small things, doesn't amount to anything—about everything I own in the world.

  Knut Hamsun

  Couple, World, Welcome

  Knut Hamsun (2008). “Hunger: A Novel”, p.56, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

• Rather than admire the mediocre great men over whom passersby nudge each other in awe, I venerate the young, unknown geniuses who die in their teens, their souls shattered - delicate, phosphorescent glowworms that one must see to know they really did exist.

  Knut Hamsun

  Men, Soul, Genius

  5 Copy quote

• I stood in the lee of an overhanging rock and thought of many things.

  Knut Hamsun

  Light, Rocks

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• Today riches and honours have been lavished on me, but one gift has been lacking, the most important one of all, the only one that matters, the gift of youth.

  Knut Hamsun

  Important, Matter, Today

  Ernest Hemingway, Knut Hamsun, Hermann Hesse (1971). “Ernest Hemingway, Knut Hamsun [and] Hermann Hesse”

  11 Copy quote

• No, what I should really like to do right now, in the full blaze of lights, before this illustrious assembly, is to shower every one of you with gifts, with flowers, with offerings of poetry - to be young once more, to ride on the crest of the wave.

  Knut Hamsun

  Flower, Light, Offering

  Ernest Hemingway, Knut Hamsun, Hermann Hesse (1971). “Ernest Hemingway, Knut Hamsun [and] Hermann Hesse”

  7 Copy quote

• I suffered no pain, my hunger had taken the edge off; instead I felt pleasantly empty, untouched by everything around me and happy to be unseen by all. I put my legs up on the bench and leaned back, the best way to feel the true well-being of seclusion. There wasn't a cloud in my mind, nor did I feel any discomfort, and I hadn't a single unfulfilled desire or craving as far as my thought could reach. I lay with open eyes in a state of utter absence from myself and felt deliciously out of it.

  Knut Hamsun

  Pain, Taken, Eye

  Knut Hamsun (1999). “Hunger”, p.39, Canongate Books

  9 Copy quote

• You are welcome to your intellectual pastimes and books and art and newspapers; welcome, too, to your bars and your whisky that only makes me ill. Here am I in the forest, quite content.

  Knut Hamsun

  Art, Book, Intellectual

  7 Copy quote

• The whisper of the blood and the pleading of the bone marrow.

  Knut Hamsun

  Blood, Bones, Pleading

  9 Copy quote

• What if one were up there, drifting about among suns and feeling the tails of comets fan one's forehead! How small the earth was and how puny the people; a Norway of two million provincial souls and a mortgage bank to help feed them! What was life worth at such a rate? You elbowed yourself ahead in the sweat of your face for a few mortal years, only to perish all the same, all the same!

  Knut Hamsun

  Years, Sweat, Two

  7 Copy quote

• But now it was spring again, and spring was almost unbearable for sensitive hearts. It drove creation to its utmost limits, it wafted its spice-laden breath even into the nostrils of the innocent.

  Knut Hamsun

  Spring, Heart, Spices

  Knut Hamsun (2012). “Dreamers”, p.10, Souvenir Press

  8 Copy quote

• Heaven knows that there are plenty of opportunities in later life, too, for being carried away. What of it? We remain what we are and, no doubt, it is all very good for us!

  Knut Hamsun

  Opportunity, Heaven, Doubt

  Ernest Hemingway, Knut Hamsun, Hermann Hesse (1971). “Ernest Hemingway, Knut Hamsun [and] Hermann Hesse”

  7 Copy quote

• I was conscious all the time that I was following mad whims without being able to do anything about it … . Despite my alienation from myself at that moment, and even though I was nothing but a battleground for invisible forces, I was aware of every detail of what was going on around me.

  Knut Hamsun

  Mad, Details, Able

  Knut Hamsun (2008). “Hunger: A Novel”, p.6, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

• Great men are excellent topics of conversation, but the superior man, the superior men, the masters, the universal spirits on horseback, have to stop and search their memories merely to know who these so-called great men might be. And so the great man is left with the crowd, the worthless majority...for his admirers.

  Knut Hamsun

  Memories, Men, Majority

  4 Copy quote

• I can't even make up a rhyme about an umbrella, let alone death and life and eternal peace.

  Knut Hamsun

  Life And Death, Umbrella, Rhyme

  Knut Hamsun (2011). “Mysteries”, p.35, Souvenir Press

  11 Copy quote

• The other one he loved like a slave, like a madman and like a beggar. Why? Ask the dust on the road and the falling leaves, ask the mysterious God of life; for no one knows such things. She gave him nothing, no nothing did she give him and yet he thanked her. She said: Give me your peace and your reason! And he was only sorry she did not ask for his life.

  Knut Hamsun

  Sorry, Fall, Dust

  5 Copy quote

• There was a rock in front of my hut, a tall, gray rock. By its looks it seemed to be well-disposed toward me.

  Knut Hamsun

  Rocks, Looks, Gray

  7 Copy quote

• No, I don't admire the genius. But I admire and love the result of the genius's activity in the world, of which the great man is only the poor necessary tool, only, so to speak, the paltry awl to bore with.

  Knut Hamsun

  Men, And Love, Tools

  4 Copy quote

• Small jerks began to appear in my legs, my walk became unsteady precisely because I wanted it to be smooth.

  Knut Hamsun

  Legs, Jerk, Smooth

  Knut Hamsun (2008). “Hunger: A Novel”, p.25, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

• The long, long road over the moors and up into the forest - who trod it into being first of all? Man, a human being, the first that came here. There was no path before he came.

  Knut Hamsun

  Men, Long, Path

  Knut Hamsun (2013). “Growth of the Soil”, p.1, Courier Corporation

  4 Copy quote

• Were I more conversant with literature and its great names, I could go on quoting them ad infinitum and acknowledge my debt for the merit you have been generous enough to find in my work

  Knut Hamsun

  Names, Debt, Goes On

  Ernest Hemingway, Knut Hamsun, Hermann Hesse (1971). “Ernest Hemingway, Knut Hamsun [and] Hermann Hesse”

  7 Copy quote

• ...I will exile my thoughts if they think of you again, and I will rip my lips out if they say your name once more. Now if you do exist, I will tell you my final word in life or in death, I tell you goodbye.

  Knut Hamsun

  Goodbye, Rip, Thinking

  4 Copy quote

• A few days back someone sent me two feathers. Two bird's feathers in a sheet of note-paper with a coronet, and fastened with a seal. Sent from a place a long way off; from one who need not have sent them back at all. That amused me too, those devilish green feathers.

  Knut Hamsun

  Two, Long, Bird

  Knut Hamsun (1921). “Pan”

  7 Copy quote

• I have had much to learn from Sweden's poetry and, more especially, from her lyrics of the last generation.

  Knut Hamsun

  Generations, Sweden, Lasts

  Ernest Hemingway, Knut Hamsun, Hermann Hesse (1971). “Ernest Hemingway, Knut Hamsun [and] Hermann Hesse”

  4 Copy quote

• The heavy red roses smoldering in the foggy morning, blood-colored and uninhibited, made me greedy, and tempted me powerfully to steal one--I asked the prices merely so I could come as near them as possible.

  Knut Hamsun

  Morning, Blood, Rose

  Knut Hamsun (2008). “Hunger: A Novel”, p.43, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

• What will I do when I can no longer dig?

  Knut Hamsun

  Hard Work, Earth, I Can

  4 Copy quote

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