Knut Hamsun Quotes & Sayings

“In old age we are like a batch of letters that someone has sent. We are no longer in the past, we have arrived.”

“No, what I should really like to do right now, in the full blaze of lights, before this illustrious assembly, is to shower every one of you with gifts, with flowers, with offerings of poetry - to be young once more, to ride on the crest of the wave.”

“There is nothing like being left alone again, to walk peacefully with oneself in the woods. To boil one's coffee and fill one's pipe, and to think idly and slowly as one does it.”

“For I mean to roam and think and make great irons red-hot.”

“In my solitude, many miles from men and houses, I am in a childishly happy and carefree state of mind, which you are incapable of understanding unless someone explains it to you.”

“I have gone to the forest.”

“However, I must not indulge in homespun wisdom here before so distinguished an assembly, especially as I am to be followed by a representative of science.”

“No worse fate can befall a young man or woman than becoming prematurely entrenched in prudence and negation.”

“When good befalls a man he calls it Providence, when evil fate.”

“You are welcome to your intellectual pastimes and books and art and newspapers; welcome, too, to your bars and your whisky that only makes me ill. Here am I in the forest, quite content.”