Quotes from Sigrid Undset

I stared until I was blind at the fact that Otto didn't understand me. It never occurred to me that I didn't understand him.

Don't do it if it's not something you want to do, Marta. These matters can't possibly look the same to you, standing in the midst of life, as they do to me. You should understand that you mustn't do it for my sake, but for your own.

The other day I came across a book which illustrates in a rather droll way the extent to which Northern European women have taken it for granted that this peculiar North European form of the subjection of women since the Reformation was characteristic of the whole past of Europe. It was a little essay by an English writer, Virginia Woolf—I confess that it is all I have read of hers,1 but she is said to have a great reputation as a novelist.

But never had she felt so clearly as in this hour that it was on her father and mother all the life of this home had rested. What ever hidden troubles they might have had to struggle with, warmth and help, peace and safety had flowed out from them to all that lived about them.

El amor no crea regla alguna, las rompe todas Sigrid Undset

One learns least from people one lives with.

God bless you, little Kristin, I've been to Paris and traveled elsewhere in the world as well, and yet you mustn't think me any better for it, for I fear the Devil and love and desire this world like a fool.

So many paths have led me astray . . . But now things are going to be different. I don't know what life is, but it is not loneliness.

What does it matter if one person has black hair and another brown, one has a straight back and another stoops? Our bodies brea the life in the same fashion; blood runs through our veins, and we require food and drink. Our souls need the same things, suffer the same hunger and thirst.

Behind the commandment lay also a care for the slayer—the slayer also exposed his soul to many kinds of evil powers, which now found occasion for sudden assaults.

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

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

And when we give each other Christmas gifts in His name, let us remember that He has given us the sun and the moon and the stars, and the earth with its forests and mountains and oceans--and all that lives and move upon them. He has given us all green things and everything that blossoms and bears fruit and all that we quarrel about and all that we have misused--and to save us from our foolishness, from all our sins, He came down to earth and gave us Himself.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Are you so arrogant that you think yourself capable of sinning so badly that God's mercy is not great enough? . . .

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.

the world is just as harsh a taskmaster as any other lord, and in the end it's a lord without mercy.

All that had happened and would happen was meant to be. Everything happens as it is meant to be.

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.