The Icelanders never got anything in exchange from the Danes except hunger. - Halldór Laxness

You can take everything from me except the freedom to look up at the sky occasionally.

What made Ingolfur Arnarson a great man was first and foremost his ideals, his unquenchable love of mankind, his conviction that the people needed improved conditions of life and better facilities for cultural advancement, his determination to mitigate his fellow men's sufferings by establishing a better form of government in the country . . . Middlemen and other parasites would no longer be allowed to batten on the farming classes. Ingolfur wanted to elevate the farmer's life to a position of honor and dignity, not in word alone, but in deed.

Once upon a time these two men had been in the same situation; now the difference between them was like the difference between a wish and its fulfillment. The one was what the other had dreamed of, and therefore they did not know one another anymore. He who has wishes yearns for a friend; but when the wishes have been fulfilled, the friends are the first thing we forget.