Curiosity can be called a virtue or a vice, depending on what kind of elementary ethics one reads; in our house at Brekkukot, curiosity was considere… - Halldór Laxness

I was hoping the bishop would be coming himself. He's a terribly agreeable old chap. I always find it so enjoyable to blether with the old fellow. We don't agree about anything. But everything depends on agreeing to disagree.

Do you know that these mountains you're looking at don't really exist at all? Or can't you see that they belong more to the sky than the earth? All this enchanting blueness which enthralls you is an illusion.

The boy felt now that no injustice could ever be victorious in his life in the future. He would never forget this presence, and even though he might never live to see another happy day, he was now more than ever determined to make his life an unbroken echo of what he had perceived when he was young, and to teach other men in poetry what he had learned in sorrow . . . . It was certainly true—this boy had perhaps become a little disappointed in people, he had instinctively believed that people were more perfect than they actually are; in childhood, one cannot help believing this.