Er ek geng, þat er í þeim skóm er ek valda

كل الخطوات بأولها زلة

It is remarkable how much long-term advantage we have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent,

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

Most people have forgotten nowadays what a house can mean, though some of us have come to realize it as never before. It is a kingdom of its own in the midst of the world, a stronghold amid life’s storms and stresses, a refuge, even a sanctuary.

There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune

I think it is best to face as a challenge…getting through the next twenty-four hours as brilliantly, as truthfully, as clearly, and as kindly as you possibly can. This is how goals are met; friends are made and retained; sanity is kept…your work matures; and you are seen in the clearest, truest light. The acceptance of genius comes in the long-term, but the work that might be labeled as such is done in tiny, deliberate steps…in the next twenty-four hours.

In my case, I have tried to live outside of the fashionable trends. This has got me into trouble all the time. I make my own observations, and […] I create my own world view out of the knowledge that I derive from the world itself. When you travel on foot, for example—and I don’t mean backpacking or hiking, I mean, for example, travelling on foot from Munich to Paris—you are given a world view, an insight that is different or outside of the average knowledge. I have a dictum: ‘The world reveals itself to those who travel on foot.’ I do not want to explain it any further.

The mystery of life isn’t a problem to solve, but a reality to experience. A process that cannot be understood by stopping it. We must move with the flow of the process. We must join it. We must flow with it.

Ancestors, I ask you for your guidance. Blessed mother, come to me with the Gods’ desire for my future. Blessed father, watch over my wife and son with a ready sword. Whisper to them that I live only to hold them again, for all else is dust and air. Ancestors, I honor you and will try to live with the dignity that you have taught me.

Oh, Pretty Boy, Can’t You Show Me Nothing but Surrender

I have lived through war, and lost much. I know what’s worth the fight, and what is not. Honor and courage are matters of the bone, and what a man will kill for, he will sometimes die for, too. And that, O kinsman, is why a woman has broad hips; that bony basin will harbor a man and his child alike. A man’s life springs from his woman’s bones, and in her blood is his honor christened. For the sake of love alone, I would walk through fire again.

If you start at the top of the ladder, there’s only one way to go.

A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never become a butterfly.

This is an absolute necessity for anybody today. You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.

Nei gi meg en due,
som kurrer mot maken sin,
som åpner sitt hjerte
med ømhet og nakent sinn.

I need more than sex to nourish my equilibrium.
But I do need sex.
I also need sun, trees, stars, creativity and love.
But you saturate my sould with too much of one.
And not enough of the other.
Therefore I cry.
But why do we cry.
Because tears cleanse the windows of our minds.

In the modern world there is hardly any leisure, not because men work harder than they did, but because their pleasures have become as strenuous as their work. The result of that, while cleverness has increased, wisdom has decreased because no one has time for the slow thoughts out of which wisdom, drop by drop, is distilled.

It’s very important to be just to other people. It takes years and years of living to learn that injustce against oneself is always unimportant.

A man living alone is a king of sorts.

Unfortunately his kingdom is small with very few comforts.s