I wonder what my grandfather Björn of Brekkukot really thought what Latin was? Did he think it was the magic Sesame which opened all cliffs in Iceland? If so, I am not at all sure that he was all that far from the truth. Where fish leaves off in Iceland, Latin takes over.
Halldor Laxness
» Halldor Laxness - all quotes »
I have no idea whether my grandfather took notice of everything in it, or nothing. If he believed at all, he was just like those theologians who store their theology somewhere in a locked compartment of the brain, or rather, perhaps, like those travelers who carry a bottle of iodine in their luggage and take care to keep it tightly corked in case it leaks and ruins their belongings. To be honest, I think my grandfather Björn of Brekkukot would not have been significantly different if he had lived here in Iceland in pagan times, or if his home had been somewhere in the world where people never read from Vídalín's Book of Sermons but believed instead in the bull Apis, or the god Ra, or the bird Colibri . . . . "A Bible that costs half a hen? Pshaw!"
Halldor Laxness
Because there are indeed women in Iceland, it will now be proven to you, you ugly wench, that there are also men in Iceland!
Halldor Laxness
It obliges one to think with a particular kind of logic and severity. If it is nonsense, it will not go into Latin...I regard it as cruelty to the young to deprive them of that insight into language...Who would have thought Thatcher would be responsible for introducing the Prussian system, of dictating from central government the content of education in the supposed interest of the state? Translation into Latin was the great stamp and mark of English classical scholarship...My fatal decision was not to be pedantic and leave it in Latin. I had written Et Tiberim multo spumantem sanguine cerno: from Virgil in the Aeneid. And at the last minute I said, 'I can't put that out in Latin, that's pedantic'...In Latin, it would have been lost.
Enoch Powell
I was recently on a tour of Latin America, and the only regret I have was that I didn't study Latin harder in school so I could converse with those people.
Dan Quayle
He learnt to write what is regarded by competent critics as the purest Latin of the middle ages…The breadth of his reading in the Latin classics is astonishing.
John of Salisbury
Laxness, Halldor
Layard, Austen Henry
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