Sigrid Undset Quotes

She went as through a forest
the columns were furrowed like ancient trees, and in through the forest flowed the light, many-hued and clear as song, from the pictured windows. High up above her, beasts and men sported among the stone leafage, and angels played
and yet far, dizzily far higher, the vaulting soared, lifting the church towards God. In a hall that lay to one side, worship was being held at an altar. Kristin sank down on her knees by a pillar. The singing cut into her like a too strong light. Now she saw how low she lay in the dust ... Pater noster. Credo in unum Deum. Ave Maria, gratia plena. ~ Sigrid Undset

For I've realized more and more with each year I've lived: There is no worthier work for the person who has been geared with the ability to see even a small part of God's mercy than to serve Him and to keep vigil and to pray for those people whose sight is still clouded by the shadow of worldly matters. ~ Sigrid Undset

Yes, well... I suppose the man who owns nothing is free."
Gunnulf replied, "A man's possessions own him more than he owns them. ~ Sigrid Undset

Many a man is given what is intended for another, but no man is given another's fate. ~ Sigrid Undset

Easy for them to keep their youth who will never learn a lesson ... ~ Sigrid Undset

Do you know who 'twas that first knew our Lord had caused Himself to be born? 'Twas the cock; he saw the star, and so he said–all the beasts could talk Latin in those days; he cried: 'Christus natus est!' "
He crowed these words so like a cock that Kristin fell to laughing heartily. And it did her good to laugh, for all the strange things Brother Edvin had just been saying had laid a burden of awe on her heart.
The monk laughed himself:
"Ay, and when the ox heard that, he began to low: 'Ubi, ubi, ubi.'
"But the goat bleated, and said: 'Betlem, Betlem, Betlem.'
"And the sheep so longed to see Our Lady and her Son that she baa-ed out at once: 'Eamus, eamus!'
"And the new-born calf that lay in the straw, raised itself and stood upon its feet. 'Volo, volo, volo!' it said. ~ Sigrid Undset

Her father's marvelous gentleness was not because he lacked a keen enough perception of the faults and wretchedness of others; it came from his constant searching of his own heart before God, crushing it in repentance over his own failings. No, ~ Sigrid Undset

All my days I have longed equally to travel the right road and to take my own errant path. ~ Sigrid Undset

It was too much for weak men, of more or less good will, who knew in their hearts that the Pope was right ad that they ought to cooperate with him, when the Pope demanded, with harsh and angry words, that they should immediately change their way of life and give up all small comforts they had grown accustomed to, in order to live in a state of self-denial suitable for the strictest ascetic. They were agreed that it was time for a reform within the Church. But if this were reform ... And the language he used when he broke into a rage! "Shut up!" he said to the cardinals. He shouted "Pazzo!" -Idiot- to Cardinal Orsini, and "Ribaldo!" -Bandit- to the Cardinal of Geneva. His electors began to regret their choice bitterly. ~ Sigrid Undset

You must have known it yourself, Erlend- a thicket of briers and thorns and nettles had you sowed around you- how could you draw a young maid in to your side and she not be torn and wounded and bleeding-" –p. 93 ~ Sigrid Undset

It's a good thing when you don't dare do something if you don't think it's right. But it's not good when you think something's not right because you don't dare do it. ~ Sigrid Undset

One cannot escape dogmas - those who hold most firmly to dogmas today are those whose only dogma is that dogmas should be feared like the plague. ~ Sigrid Undset

I was sent to a school because my father was already aware that his days were numbered, and he was anxious for me to acquire a good education and follow in his footsteps. ~ Sigrid Undset

I'm not as good a man as you are. I can't so easily forgive those I have wronged. ~ Sigrid Undset

She [Catherine of Siena] compares Christ, too, with a knight who has ridden out to fight for us; for our sake He came down from Heaven to fight and triumph over the devil. The crown of thorns is His helmet, his flayed flesh His mail, the nails in His Hands and Feet, His gauntlet and spurs. So we should follow our Knight and take new courage in our trials and difficulties. ~ Sigrid Undset

If I were truly talented, as I once imagined I was, then I would have understood long ago that life is just about people. ~ Sigrid Undset

All those wasted and squandered years when I did nothing but go around looking inside myself until I ended up alone even though I was surrounded by people. But I paid attention only to what was happenstance about them - not their true selves. ~ Sigrid Undset

I'm not to blame, Ramborg, if a man's heart is created in such a fashion that whatever is inscribed on it when it's young and fresh is carved deeper than all the runes that are later etched. ~ Sigrid Undset

Help me, Gunnulf," begged Kristin. She was white to the very edge of her lips. "I don't know my own will." "Then say: Thy will be done," replied the priest softly. ~ Sigrid Undset

The blood that ran down from the cross in redemption for all sins and penance for all sorrows - that was the visible sign. ~ Sigrid Undset

The most dangerous temptations are not due to the active, sudden flames of desire, 'the lusts of the flesh,' but to the disinclinations of the flesh, its indolence and sluggishness, our tendency to become creatures of habit. ~ Sigrid Undset

She saw the world as if in a vision: a dark room into which a beam of sunlight fell, with dust motes tumbling in and out, from darkness to light, and she felt that now she had finally moved into the sunbeam. ~ Sigrid Undset

Christ, you who were crucified! Now I have given up everything that could bind me. And I have placed myself in your hands, if you would find my life worthy enough to be freed from its servitude to Satan. Take me so that I may feel that I am your slave, for then I will possess you in return. ~ Sigrid Undset

But I didn't realize then that the consequence of sin is that you have to trample on other people. ~ Sigrid Undset

She walked as if through a forest. The pillars were furrowed like ancient trees, and into the woods the light seeped, colorful and as clear as song, through the stained-glass windows. High overhead animals and people frolicked in the stone foliage, and angels played their instruments. At an even higher, more dizzying height, the vaults of the ceiling arched upward, lifting the church toward God ... The song cut through her like a blinding light. Now she saw how deep in the dust she lay. ~ Sigrid Undset

All things that a man owns hold him far more than he holds them. ~ Sigrid Undset

It is an easy matter, Olav, to be a good Christian so long as God asks no more of you than to hear sweet singing in church, and to yield Him obedience while He caresses you with the hand of a father. But a man's faith is put to the test on the day God's will is not his. ~ Sigrid Undset

Catherine [of Siena] compares justice combined with mercy with a precious pearl. Justice without mercy would be dark, cruel, more like injustice than justice. But mercy without justice would be like salve on a sore which should be cleansed with the red-hot iron; if the salve is applied before the wound is cleansed it only makes it smart, and does not heal it ~ Sigrid Undset

God grant ... that he may learn to understand in time, that whoso is minded to do as he himself wills will soon enough see the day when he will find he has done that which he had never willed. ~ Sigrid Undset

With the few small spots of light like golden stars in the night, the sweet stale scent of incense, and the warm smell of the burning wax. And she at rest within her own star. ~ Sigrid Undset

God will find you," said the priest quietly. "Stay calm and do not flee from Him who has been seeking you before you even existed in your mother's womb. ~ Sigrid Undset

By the grace of God, we two unworthy souls were joined together in holy marriage. Branded by the flames of sin, bowed by the burdens of sin, we came together at the portals of God's house; together we received the Savior's Host from the hand of the priest. Should I now complain if God is testing my faith? Should I now think about anything else but that I am his wife and he is my husband for as long as we both shall live? ~ Sigrid Undset

You tug and strain like a young horse when it's first tied up at the stake, whenever you are tied by your heartstrings. ~ Sigrid Undset

Most of my father's life consisted of traveling to almost every part of Europe. ~ Sigrid Undset

It seems to her [Saint Catherine of Siena] that the devil has this world in his power, not by his own will, for he is powerless, but through our help because we obey him. The evil aroma rising from the ... wars which are waged by Christians against Christians, are the same as war against God ... Peace, peace, for the sake of the love of the crucified Christ, and not war; that is the only solution. ~ Sigrid Undset

I saw not till now what sin brings with it - that we must tread others underfoot. ~ Sigrid Undset

Tis well when we dare not do a thing we think is not good and fair; but not so well when we think a thing not good and fair because we dare not do it ... ~ Sigrid Undset

No one and nothing can harm us, child, except what we fear and love. ~ Sigrid Undset

I hated school so intensely. It interfered with my freedom ~ Sigrid Undset

Her heart felt as if it were breaking in her breast, bleeding and bleeding, young and fierce. From grief over the warm and ardent love which she had lost and still secretly mourned; from anguished joy over the pale, luminous love which drew her to the farthest boundaries of life on this earth. Through the great darkness that would come, she saw the gleam of another, gentler sun, and she sensed the fragrance of the herbs in the garden at world's end. ~ Sigrid Undset

Saint Olav turned her eyes toward Christ on the cross - see, Kristin: God's love. ~ Sigrid Undset

Feelings of longing seemed to burst from her heart; they ran in all directions, like streams of blood, seeking out paths to all the places in the wide landscape where she had lived, to all her sons roaming through the world, to all her dead lying under the earth. ~ Sigrid Undset

But these events had touched her so little - like the echo of thunder from the mountains after a storm had passed over the countryside and was far away. ~ Sigrid Undset

They received food from the monks at the churches they visited, and when they drank the blood-red wine and broke off the golden crust from the bread made of wheat, all four priests from the barley lands understood why Christ had honored wine and wheat, which were purer than all other foodstuffs that God had given humankind, by manifesting himself in their likeness during the holy communion. ~ Sigrid Undset

Pre-Christian paganism is a love poem to a God who remained hidden, or it was an attempt to gain the favour of the divine powers whose presence man felt about him. The new paganism is a declaration of war against a God who has revealed Himself ~ Sigrid Undset

What we miss - what we lose and what we mourn - isn't it this that makes us who, deep down, we truly are. To say nothing of what we wanted in life but never got to have. ~ Sigrid Nunez

I always watch the French news on the Internet while having my breakfast. ~ Sigrid Agren

I wish I could sing or play an instrument. ~ Sigrid Agren

A pause here to confess, not without shame: I never heard the news that you'd fallen in love without experiencing a pang, nor could I suppress a surge of joy each time I heard that you were breaking up with someone. ~ Sigrid Nunez

We actually do have a lot of guns. There's a lot of hunting in Norway. But there's almost no gun violence."
"Why do you think that is?"
"On a fundamental level," says Sigrid, "I think it's because we don't want to shoot each other."
"That could be our problem right there," says Melinda ~ Derek B. Miller

If we could talk to animals, goes the song.
Meaning, if they could talk to us.
But of course that would ruin everything. ~ Sigrid Nunez

I don't want to talk about you, or to hear others talk about you. It's a cliche, of course: we talk about the dead in order to remember them, in order to keep them, in the only way we can, alive. But I have found that the more people say about you, for example those who spoke at the memorial - people who loved you, people who knew you well, people who were very good with words - the further you seem to slip away, the more like a hologram you become. ~ Sigrid Nunez

I'm from an island, so I've always been near the water. I don't think I could live somewhere far from the sea. ~ Sigrid Agren

Tempted to put too much faith in the great male mind, remember this: It looked at cats and declared them gods. It looked at women and asked, Are they human? And, once that nut had been cracked: But do they have souls? ~ Sigrid Nunez

Helga Sigrid was born in Reykjavik, Iceland, and still had an accent right out of Wagner. She was almost as tall as he was, and as Nordic as it was possible to get without disappearing altogether whenever the sun came out. ~ Carsten Stroud

I love yoga. I can practice it wherever I am, at home, in my hotel room ... I like playing tennis, too, but that's more of a hobby because I'm not very good! ~ Sigrid Agren

It is one of the great bafflements of student fiction. I have read that college students can spend up to ten hours a day on social media. But for the people they write about - also mostly college students - the internet barely exists. ~ Sigrid Nunez

I was shopping with my mother in 2006 and saw that there was a model casting going on. A couple of months later, I was one of the fifteen finalists in an international contest. ~ Sigrid Agren

Rather than write about what you know, you told us, write about what you see. Assume that you know very little and that you'll never know much until you learn how to see. ~ Sigrid Nunez

I know this is all moronically anthropomorphic, but sometimes that is the form love takes. ~ Sigrid Nunez

I try to force myself to travel light; otherwise, I tend to bring a million things that I end up never using! ~ Sigrid Agren

During the 1980s, in California, a large number of Cambodian women went to their doctors with the same complaint: they could not see. The women were all war refugees. Before fleeing their homeland, they had witnessed the atrocities for which the Khmer Rouge, which had been in power from 1975 to 1979, was well known. Many of the women had been raped or tortured or otherwise brutalized. Most had seen family members murdered in front of them. One woman, who never again saw her husband and three children after soldiers came and took them away, said that she had lost her sight after having cried every day for four years. She was not the only one who appeared to have cried herself blind. Others suffered from blurred or partial vision, their eyes troubled by shadows and pains.

The doctors examined the women - about a hundred and fifty in all - found that their eyes were normal. Further tests showed that their brains were normal as well. If the women were telling the truth - and there were some who doubted this, who thought the women might be malingering because they wanted attention or were hoping to collect disability - the only explanation was psychosomatic blindness.

In other words, the women's minds, forced to take in so much horror and unable to take more, had managed to turn out the lights. ~ Sigrid Nunez

even women of great beauty cannot fare well if they lack mental power. ~ Sigrid Weidenweber

You didn't think it was possible for a woman to wander the streets in the same spirit and manner as a man. A female pedestrian was subject to constant disruptions: stares, comments, catcalls, gropes. A woman was raised to be always on guard: Was this guy walking too close? Was that guy following her? How, then, could she ever relax enough to experience the loss of sense of self, the joy of pure being that was the ideal of true flânerie? ~ Sigrid Nunez

If we keep the calves away from their mothers there is a real risk that dairy production will go out of business in markets where animal welfare is a priority for the consumers. ~ Sigrid Agenäs

When people are very young they see animals as equals, even as kin. That humans are different, unique and superior to all other species - this they have to be taught. ~ Sigrid Nunez

Queers can't destroy science fiction. No one can. No one can destroy the future. But we can, through malice or complacency or inattention, limit the future. ~ Sigrid Ellis

I like that the Aborigines say dogs make people human ~ Sigrid Nunez

He is convinced--and what immigrant isn't?--that all Americans are crazy. ~ Sigrid Nunez

In The Last of Her Kind, Sigrid Nunez once again creates characters of such depth and situations of such vivid moral complexity that reading these pages is like living them. Only as I closed the book did I sadly realize that Georgette and Ann weren't my neighbors. But happily I can revisit them again, and again, in this beautiful and absorbing novel. ~ Margot Livesey

I'm always stressed when I have to wear a long dress, especially with those high heels. I'm like, 'Oh my God, I'm going to fall! My feet are going to get caught in the dress!' ~ Sigrid Agren

Nothing has changed. It's still very simple. I miss him. I miss him every day. I miss him very much.
But how would it be if that feeling was gone?
I would not want that to happen.
I told the shrink: it would not make me happy at all not to miss him anymore. ~ Sigrid Nunez

Your whole house smells of dog, says someone who comes to visit. I say I'll take care of it. Which I do by never inviting that person to visit again. ~ Sigrid Nunez

Every time I come home, it is the same great pleasure to lie down in my bed. That's when I think, 'home sweet home.' ~ Sigrid Agren

Are you a political prisoner, Dooley?"
Her blue eyes, immense now in her gaunt face, turned a pitying gaze on the reporter who'd asked her this. "Yes," she said. "And so are you. ~ Sigrid Nunez

Here is what I learned: Simone Weil was right. Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. ~ Sigrid Nunez

There's a certain type of person who, having read this far, is anxiously wondering: Does something bad happen to the dog? ~ Sigrid Nunez

Come walk with me, come walk with me; We were not once so few But Death has stolen our company As sunshine steals the dew - He took them one by one and we Are left the only two. The ~ Sigrid Vansandt

Consider rereading, how risky it is, especially when the book is one that you loved. Always the chance that it won't hold up, that you might, for whatever reason, not love it as much. When this happens, and to me it happens all the time (and more and more as I get older), the effect is so disheartening that I now open old favorites warily. ~ Sigrid Nunez

Who doesn't know that the dog is the epitome of devotion? But it's this devotion to humans, so instinctual that it's given freely even to persons who are unworthy of it, that has made me prefer cats. Give me a pet that can get along without me. ~ Sigrid Nunez

The poet Rilke once reported seeing a dying dog give its mistress a look full of reproach. Later, he gave this experience to the narrator of a novel: He was convinced I could have prevented it. It was now clear that he had always overrated me. And there was no time left to explain it to him. He continued to gaze at me, surprised and solitary, until it was over. ~ Sigrid Nunez

[Brodsky] loved cats, and sometimes for a greeting would meow. ~ Sigrid Nunez

Strays is what a writer I recently read calls those who, for one reason or another, and despite whatever they might have wanted earlier in life, never really become a part of life, not in the way most people do. They may have serious relationships, they may have friends, even a sizable circle, they may spend large portions of their time in the company of others. But they never marry and they never have children. On holidays, they join some family or other group. This goes on year after year, until they finally find it in themselves to admit that they'd really rather just stay home.

But you must see a lot of people like that, I say to the therapist.

Actually, he says, I don't. ~ Sigrid Nunez