PEARLS BEFORE PIGS
W o r d s O f W i s d o m A n d P l e a s a n t r y
Chapter 21 - 25
Chapter 21 On good and bad custom
Chapter 22 On patriotism and local characteristics
Chapter 23 On lies, crimes and punishment
Chapter 24 On the weather, the seasons, the sun and the stars
Chapter 25 On friendship and solidarity
Chapter 21 On good and bad custom(upd.250106)
A proverb is a short sentence based on long experience.
-Miguel de Cervantes
Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement.
-Military proverb
People are divided into two groups - the righteous and the unrighteous - and the righteous do the dividing.
-Oscar Wilde
Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.
-Jean Cocteau
A blind man can see his mouth.
-Irish proverb
That is the saving grace of humor, if you fail, no one is laughing at you.
-A. Whitney Brown
He who laughs last thinks slowest.
-Unknown
If you smile when no one else is around, you really mean it.
-Andy Rooney
Start every day off with a smile and get it over with.
-W.C.Fields
Listen to those who make you cry and not to those who make you laugh.
-Proverb from Arabia
At all the weddings, my aunts would come up and poke me in the ribs, cackling 'you 're next'! They stopped after I started doing the same thing
to them at funerals.
-Unknown
Passive smoking is strictly forbidden.
-Unknown
Many people use glasses just to look good.
-Unknown
A stone that is not moving, kills the grass underneath it.
-Maxim Gorky
The greatest thoughts lose nothing by being expressed in a simple manner. They are destroid by pathos.
-La Bruyère
Don't feed your consience with excuses. You don't feed a watchdog with sleeping pills.
-Søren Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher
Either we follow our consince, or it follows us.
-George Wulff
Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.
-Abraham Lincoln
Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it's hard to get it back in.
-H.R.Haldeman
Anyone selling elastic band by the metre, must be of high moral fiber.
-Unknown
Taxi driver to drunk passenger: Do you want to throw up?
No, many thanks.
-Steinar Lyse, Norwegian humourist
The mirror should take some time for reflection before it returns the image.
-Jean Cocteau
If a master can't do without his slave, which of the two is a free man?
-Albert Camus
Thinking is the hardest work there is.
-Henry Ford
Every notice that even the busiest people are never too busy to tell you just how busy they are?
-Unknown
Melancholy is the happiness of being sad.
-Victor Hugo
A ship is always referred to as SHE because it costs so much to keep on in paint and powder.
-Chester Nimitz
The advertisement business is the most fun you can have with your clothes on.
-Unknown
Some people pay their tax with pleasure - others with money.
-Kristian Rakvåg
All youths place three exclamation marks behind every sentence they e-mail me. That's quite unnecessary - after all
my hearing is not that bad.
-Kristian Rakvåg
What's the point of being at time, when nobody is there to appreciate it?
-Unknown
Not to except a compliment is asking to be given a compliment twice.
-Francis La Rochefoucald
A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on.
-Samuel Goldwyn
Words of insults are futile, the more they fit, the more they are lost.
-Norwegian proverb
Oh! don't use big words. They mean so little.
-Oscar Wilde
You will not choke on big words and bacon fat.
-Norwegian proverb
A valid point in an argument is like a shot from a crossbow, it is equally effective whether it is a giant or a dwarf who is doing the shooting.
-Francis Bacon
We have reached the point where we cannot disagree with anyone without being suspected of agreeing with someone else.
-Notorius
Nothing is more fairly distributed than common sense: no one thinks he needs more of it than he already has.
-Rene Descartes
A good listener is a good talker with a sore throat.
-Katharine Whitehorn
I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.
-George Bernard Shaw
Oh, come an and give it up, Andy, so that we can agree.
-Strong-willed woman from Trøndelag, Norway
Don't shout for help at night. You may wake your neightbors.
-Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
As long as there is doubt, there is hope.
-Lars Lillo Stenberg, Norwegian musician
Your body, treated well, can last a life time.
-Enrique Claraso Daudi
Education is when you read the fine print. Experience is what you get if you don't.
-Pete Seeger
For my birthday I got a humidifier and a de-humidifier... I put them into the same room and let them fight it out.
-Steven Wright
Common sense is not so common.
-Voltaire
Never give advice in a crowd.
-Arab proverb
Silence is unbearable for some because they have too much noise inside them.
-Robert Fripp
I cannot afford to waste my time making money.
-Alexander Agassiz
By swallowing evil words unsaid, no one has ever harmed his stomach.
-Sir Winston Churchill
Never express yourself more clearly than you think.
-Niels Bohr
A city is a large community where people are lonesome together.
-Herbert Prochnow
Life takes up too much of a person's time.
-Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
Life is something that happens when you can't sleep.
-Fran Lebowitz
Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans.
-John Lennon
Life is a long live transmission.
-Jostein Pedersen, Norwegian TV
Monday is an awful way to spend 1/7th of your life.
-Anon
A vacation is having nothing to do and all day to do it in.
-Robert Orben
People generally quarrel because they cannot argue.
-G.K.Chesterton
No man can think clearly when his fists are clenched.
-George Jean Nathan
Do not use a hatchet to remove a fly from your friend's forehead.
-Chinese proverb
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
-Susan Ertz
Only presidents, editors and people with tapeworm have the right to use the editorial 'we'.
-Mark Twain
An intellectual is a person who uses more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.
-Dwight D. Eisenhower
All the brains in the world are powerless against any kind of stupidity that is in vogue.
-Jean de la Fontaine
You are unique. Just like everyone else.
-Unknown
When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.
-Eric Hoffer
I have simple tastes. Iam always satisfied with the best.
-Oscar Wilde
I am writing this very slowly because I know you aren't reading English very fast.
-Unknown
If I have written such a long letter, it means that I did not have enough time to make it shorter.
-Blaise Pascal
Sometimes matters that fill the heart spill over from the nose.
-Kristian Rakvåg
Clyster is really shit.
-Marve Fleksnes, Norwegian comedian
Folk shiver at such awful talk - because they have just had the same thoughts themselves.
-Olav Duun, Norwegian writer
A psychiatrist is a fellow who asks you a lot of expensive questions your wife asks for nothing.
-Joey Adams
A diplomat is a man who always remember a woman's birthday but never remember her age.
-Robert Frost
In archaeology you uncover the unknown. In diplomacy you cover the known.
-Thomas Pickering
A true diplomat is a person who can ask you to go to hell in a manner which actually makes you look forward to the trip.
-Caskie Stinnett
Consul. In American politics, a person who having failed to secure an office from the people is given one by the Administration on condition that he leave the country.
-Ambrose Bierce
He who snores loudest falls asleep first.
-Unknown
When people ask me now if I ever would consider shortening it, I tell them I already did. It was Deer With Horns Running Through The
Woods On A Crisp Autumn Day Being Chased By A Pack Of Wolves.
-Wendell Deer With Horns, Native American, comment to his name
I had a linguistics professor who said that it's man's ability to use language that makes him dominant species on the planet. That may be true.
But I think there's one other thing that separates us from animals. We aren't afraid of vacuum cleaners.
-Jeff Stilson
Nothing dries faster than tears.
-Nicole
You must believe in free will; there is no choice.
-Isaac B. Singer
When pygmies cast long shadows, it's definitely evening.
-Unknown
His miserly brother had moved to America and not phoned or written home in almost one year. At December the 23.th Jens was
visited by the postman, who brought a letter from Seattle and a penalty of 3.50 Norwegian kroner for the payment of his brother's
lack of postal fee. Jens went out, found a flat, little rock which he wraped in a piece of paper and put it in an envelope carrying a 50
øre's stamp. On the paper he wrote:
Thank you very much for the Christmas greeting! Enclosed is the stone that fell from my heart when I finally a sign of life from you.
-An idea from Reader's Digest
She is limping, but only when she's walking.
-Unknown
On thin ice everybody have the same strength.
-Proverb
A
fine man is polite, but does not grovel. A common man grovels, but is not polite.
-Confusius
Your
dubious reputation is in the best of hands.
-Marve
Fleksnes, Norwegian humour figure
Silence is golden, but the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
-Unknown
If
you say too much, what you say will not stand.
-Kjell
Askildsen, Norway
100
words: The Ten Commandments
300
words: The American Declaration of Independence
26 000 words: The European Union Directive on production of duck eggs
-Unknown
Talk
above somebody's head rather than behind their back.
-Adlai Stevenson
Sin
is not perfect until one prides oneself on it.
-Norwegian
proverb
He
who buys what he cannot afford, will have to sell what he needs.
-Spanish
proverb
We
shouldn't make fun of the nudists; after all, they're born that way.
-From Lene Egeli's HP
Take
sides in a fight between brothers, and they will unite against you.
-Proverb
from Arabia
Life
itself is the greatest gift, it's just a shame that some people never really
unwrap it.
-
Unknown
You
must love and be grateful to your skeleton, which year after year so faithfully
prevents you from falling completely to pieces.
-Benny
Andersen, Denmark
Finally, a hug in honour of the occasion – not every day is Tuesday.
-Kristian
Rakvåg
You
catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.
-Proverb
A lot of wise words come as a joke. But that can't messure up to stupidities spoken in serenity.
-Unknown
A small key can open a big door.
-Turkish proverb
We never meet teasonable people other than those who share our opinions.
-Francois de La Rochefoucauld
You never know a human being before you have been entitled to the same inharitance as he.
-Proverb
I used to think that the brain is the most fantastic part of the human body, but than the question struck me: From where do I get this?
-Emo Phillips
When we are asleep, reason leaves us, and imagination celebrates carnival in our minds.
-Charles H. Spurgeon
He who knows only few things, has little to forget.
-Norwegian proverb
I've been a bachelor since I was four, and thanks God for that.
-NRK entertainment
Reading without understanding, is like ploughing without sawing.
-Danish proverb
It is better to be a master in a cottage than servant in a castle.
I smiled out loud.
-Sverre Løberg
Man is a strange animal. He generally cannot read the handwriting on the wall until his back is up against it.
-Adlai Stevenson
She who dances with the chimney sweeper will eventually end up black.
-Proverb
If there is anybody here whom I havn't insulted, I ask for their apologies.
-Johannes Brahms was a socially rude person
Alexander Dumas Jr.: My father is 60 years old, and he still smokes.
Madmoiselle Brohan: If he hadn't done that, he would probably have been 70.
Chapter 22 On patriotism and local characteristics(upd.240904)
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.
-George Bernard Shaw
True patriots we; for be it understood we left our country for our country's good.
-George Barrington
A true patriot is the type of person who gets a parking ticket and is happy that the system works.
-Bill Vaughan
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious.
-Oscar Wilde
Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first.
-Charles De Gaulle
A man's feet should be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world.
-George Santayana
I dislike feeling at home when I'm abroad.
-George Bernard Shaw
Love of country knows nothing about the borders of others.
-Stanislav Jerzy Lec
A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in a national election.
-Billy Vaughan
Races did not bother the Americans. They were something a lot better than any race. They were a people. They were the first self-constituted,
self-created people in the history of the world.
-Archibald Macleish+++
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civillization in between.
-Oscar Wilde ????
I love Americans, but not when they try to talk French. What a blessing it is that they never try to talk English.
-Hector Hugh Munro
England and America are are two countries separated by the same language.
-George Bernard Shaw
We send missionaries to China so the Chinese can get to heaven, but we won't let them into our country.
-Pearl S. Buck
America is a country that doesn't know where it is going, but is determined to set a speed record getting there.
-Laurence J. Peter
Italians lose wars as if they where football matches, and football matches as if they where wars.
-Sir Winston Churchill
I married a German. Every night I dress up as Poland and he invades me.
-Bette Midler
A Canadian is somebody who knows how to make love in a canoe.
-Pierre Berton
An Irishman is the only man in the world who will step over the bodies of a dozen naked women to get a bottle of stout.
-Unknown
If the aborigine drafted an IQ test, all of Western civilization would presumably flunk it.
-Mahatma Gandhi
And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.
-John F. Kennedy
Washington [D.C.] is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.
-John F. Kennedy
I have just returned from Boston. It's the only thing to do if you find yourself up there.
-Fred Allen
When they in Scotland throw out the christmas trees, then summer really is around the corner.
-Denison Flamingo
Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia.
-Charles Schultz
Security for a Dane is to have a beer-opener attached to the rocking chair.
-Benny Andersen
Malicious pleasure - the national Danish joy of life.
-Georg Brandes
If you don't understand humor, you don't understand Danish.
-Georg Brandes
The Americans look up to women, Englishmen look down at women, the French just look at women.
-Yves Montant
To learn a foreign language is to salute their nation.
-Unknown
Talk about what home is - snow and spruce forest is home.
-Tarjei Vesaas, Norway
People from Romsdal - a speech therapist's dream.
-Jofrid
If you know yhe fjord you know the people.
-Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson on the Romsdal area inhabitants in Norway
German tourists in Norway are very afraid of people talking Toten-dialect.
-Kristian Rakvåg (Toten is an area not far from Lillehammer)
Ethiopia always has a special place in my imagination and the prospect of visiting Ethiopia attracted me more strongly than a trip to France,
England and America combined. I felt I would be visiting my own genesis, unearthing the roots of what made me an African.
-Nelson Mandela
The most just men.
-Greek historian Herodot, on Ethiopians
The underdeveloped countries have overdeveloped Cadillacs.
-Bob Hope, on unresponible politicians
The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes.
-Stanley Kubrick
When a people no longer dares to defend its language, it is ripe for slavery.
-Remy de Gourmont
If it weren't for us Trøndelag citizens, there wouldn't be as many pages in the history of Norway.
-Local patriot
I would never live in Oslo, that city is too outlying.
-Kristian Rakvåg - living in Bergen
Hans Wilhelm Steinfeld is definetely an authentic citizen of Bergen - he is absolutely always angry.
-Soviet diplomat in the eighties
A hopeful young man from Bergen on his way to seek his fortune in the world received the following instructions from his father:
When you meet someone, never ask where they are from. Because if thet are from Bergen, you'll recognize them by their dialect, and if they
aren't from Bergen, then you 'll have avoided embarrassing them.
-Local joke
New recidents of Bergen soon speak a watered down dialect. Is that because of all the rain?
-Kristian Rakvåg
When God created Bergen he said: This city is so beautiful it has to be washed every day.
-Kurt Oddekalv, shy man from Bergen
When a citizen of Bergen catches a cough, he/she goes to a classical concert rather than see a doctor.
-Unknown
...that strange city no one escapes from until it has left its mark on him...
-Knut Hamsun on Christiania (Oslo) in Hunger
The Swedes have one thing worth the Danish and the Norwegians envy: good neighbours.
-Victor Borge, born Danish
Why do you always make the Swede`s noses blue, can`t you
ever draw their noses the same colour as the others?
Of course I could, but how in the world can one see that it is a Swede then?
-Storm P., Danish humorist
The Swedish intellectuals (yes, there ARE two of them) are presently discussing the following theme: can infertility be inherited?
-Unknown
Mauritius is so fertile that all the women there give birth twice a year, no matter if they want or not.
-Kristian Rakvåg
The conditions as they were in the 1920s and 1930s had left the working class of this country with a feeling that they had no mother country. The
national
symbols, «Ja, vi elsker» (the national anthem of Norway) and the flag, were
the symbols of the upper class.
-Einar Gerhardsen, Norwegian Prime Minister 1945-1965
A German tourist at North Cape asked an elderly native lady for a match.
Oh
no, not for the life of me, the last time I lent a match to a German he burnt
down half of Northern Norway.
When the later Minister of the Interior of Hessen, Schneider, came to Yugoslavia after the war, he heard of the cruel slaughter of seven thousand
people in a small town. That made a tremendous impression on me, and I made a speech to the group of people present, he said. The speech of my
life. That is how much it meant to me. Afterwards, a young man came up to him. All of my loved ones were shot here, he said with tears in his eyes. I
had
made up my mind to kill with my own hands the first German I met. Now I
understand that there are two kinds of Germans.
If one is to learn to know the true nature of a country, it is necessary to go to the lower classes, as the way of life of the rich is very much the same
everywhere.
-Jean
Jacques Rousseau
A
vacation is a terribly expensive way of finding out that there's no place like
home.
-Jill
Cooper
Fair is the hillside, as fair as I have never seen it before - yellow fields and mowed gardens - and I will ride back home again and go nowhere.
-Gunnar from Lidarende, Iceland
It is a strong, heavy people, digging their way through life with pondering and toil, working the soil and studying the Scripture, wringing grain
from the gritty soil and hope from their dreams, believing in the farthing and consoling themselves in God.
-Arne Garborg on people from Jæren, Norway
To all Norwegians abroad of my generation, J.C. Hambro stood out as a giant in the political and cultural history of Norway. A Norwegian heart
could swell with pride at the mention of the name Hambro.
-An American born
in Norway on Carl Joachim Hambro by his death Dec 1964
These are troubled times and we are part of the world, but from a country apart from others, one that no lord has ever really gotten the better of, so
we do not bow as low as our neighbours do; it was too steep here.
-Rolf
Jacobsen, Norwegian poet
It is a long one, this country apart from the others. Northward, endlessly northward. The skerries go on and on, hazily, towards the ocean. We
cram together where there is soil and a living to be made. Densely built in narrow valleys. But above them, lonelinesses loom, - The Tibet of
Europe,
high sky, quiet and nearly endless, like thought.
-Rolf
Jacobsen, Norwegian poet
During the heated EEC debate in Norway in 1972, a journalist from The Observer were surprised by the fact that he did not notice as strong an
anti-German
atmosphere here as he did in England, even though Norway had been invaded by
Germany.
Trygve Bratteli: May be for that very reason. Once you have spend a few years in a German concentration camp, like I have, you do not so easily
give
way to emotions like that any more.
The
English nobility will become extinct like the dinosaurs of the past, for it has
too much spine and too little brains.
-H.G.
Wells
When the first white people visited the Inuit people in the Arctic regions in the early 19th century, the Inuit believed that the visitors came from
the
moon, because they believed themselves to be the only people in the world.
-Illustrated
Scientics
Why
would I count the years? They run, and I cannot hold them back. No, I want to
know how many dogs I own, because they are not to run away.
-Qilerniq,
seal hunter from Greenland
If Hambro is conservative, then we hardly dare contemplate
what the radicals are like in Norway.
-Surprised fellow representatives in the League of Nations upon hearing that Carl
Joachim Hambro was leader of the right.
You know the world's gone mad when the best rapper is a white
guy, the best golfer is a black guy, the Swiss hold the America's Cup, France is
accusing
the USA of arrogance and the Germans don't want to go to war.
-From Trine Pilskog's HP
F.D.Roosevelt: It takes three things to win a war: people, money and time.
Churchill: Then we are going to win, Soviet has the people, you Americans have the money, and we - the British - have lots of time.
-Meeting in Teheran 1943
They told about hogh tragedies and sad destenies, and about glorious deeds given the fatherland by Norwegian youths in its darkest hours. And
more than anything their testemony told about loyalty, - on the faithful understanding that it akes effort and sacrifice to live in a free country.
-On prosecutor John Lyng's impression of the witness proofs against the Rinnan gang
(Henry Oliver Rinnan is, after Quisling, the most infamous Norwegian traitor of the Second World War. He lead an efficient and brutal group of
infiltrators and provocateurs working for the Gestapo.)
Chapter 23 On lies and humbug - crimes and punishment(211004)
The liar stumbles more often than the limping one.
-Spanish proverb
It's a good thing that lies exist - imagine that everything you heard was truth.
-Albert Engstrøm, Swedish humorist
Nobody becomes white through making his fellowman black.
-Norwegian proverb
I hate to pass on gossip, but what else can one do with it.
-Shirley MacLaine
You can get to the end of the world on a lie - but you can't return.
-Russian proverb
If lie was latin, there would be many learned people.
-Unknown
The one who means that white lies are OK, will soon be colorblind.
-Austin O'Malley
It is better to suffer in name the truth than being rewarded for lying.
-Proverb
-The only dangerous liars are those who often speak the truth.
-George Bernard Shaw
There are people so addicted to exaggeration, that they can't tell the truth without lying.
-Josh Billings
The most horrible liars are those who come closest to the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
Most truths are so naked that people feel sorry for them, and try to cover them up.
-H.Walters
It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you to the heart: the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you.
-Mark Twain
The one who destroys my good reputation will not become rich, but he will make me poor.
-William Shakespeare
Borrow a mask, and you can scare its owner.
-Chinese proverb
Everyone is innocent until it is proved that he is broke.
-Cato Schiøtz, Norwegian lawyer
You can capture he who speaks the truth, but not the truth.
-Ignazio Silone
One may sometimes tell a lie, but the grimace that accompanies it tells the truth.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
It is always the best policy to tell the truth, unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar.
-Jerome K. Jerome
Take the life-lie away from the average man and straight away you take away his happiness.
-Henrik Ibsen
Beware of a half-truth - you may have gotten the wrong half.
-Unknown
A liar should have a good memory.
-Quintilian
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.
-Sir Winston Churchill
One of the striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.
-George Bernard Shaw
Never lend books, for no one ever returns them. The only books I have in my library are books that other folks leant me.
-Anatole France
If one had to learn all the laws, there would be no time left to break them.
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A shabby foreigner has been detained by the police. He exposed himself in a public toilet and indicated planning to urinate.
The police suspect that he may attempt to repeat the offense.
-From Not the Nine o'clock News
A suspicious looking man was arrested recently. Without permission from the police he was staying in a public square, wearing a loud, many
colored shirt after the nightfall.
-From Not the Nine o'clock News
We have found that morals are not, like bacon, to be cured by hanging; nor, like wine, to be improved by sea voyages; nor, like
honey, to be preserved in cells.
-William Cooke Taylor
We don't seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business.
-Will Rogers
About Richard Nixon: He told us he was going to take crime out of the streets. He did. He took it into the damn White House.
-Unknown
A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.
-Theodore Roosevelt
Be you ever so high, the law is above you.
-Thomas Fuller
A jury consists of twelve people who determine which client has the best lawyer.
-Robert Frost
The most anxious man in a prison is the warden.
-George Bernard Shaw
Well, gentlemen, you are about to see a baked Appel.
-Last words of George Appel, executed by electric chair
Hurrah for anarchy! This is the happiest moment of my life.
-George Engel (hung for bombing in Chicago 1886)
Nothing is more unpleasant than being hanged in silence.
-Voltaire
That can't be accomplished before I'm there.
-Last triumph of a sentenced dead man who was told people were waiting for him
I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it.
-Ashleigh Brilliant
You can get more done with a kind word and a gun, than with a kind word alone.
-Al Capone
It is no secret that organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year. This is quite a profitable sum, especially when one
considers that the Mafia spends very little for office supplies.
-Woody Allen
Amnesty is the state's magnanimity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish.
-Ambrose Bierce
Books have their own pride too - when they are lent out they don't return..
-Theodor Fontane
Honesty last longest, because it is so infrequently used.
-Unknown
Honesty may pay, but the pay is too low to tempt many people.
-Kim
Hubbard
Laws
cannot improve people's morale, but the better people's morale is, the better
laws they make.
-Nancy
Astor
Justice is always on the side of the victors.
-Voltaire
Not
surprisingly, there are not a lot of escape routes from a prison.
-Hans Riise, Oslo Fire Dep.
The Moroccan and the Kosovo Albanian who hold the Norwegian record of heroin smuggling have decided to leave the country. Evidently, these
criminals have more sense than the entire judicial system of Norway, the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration and the government put together.
-Inge
A.Alver, Norwegian journalist
He
recieved his sentence for having used hashish and for bying 75 liters of
moonshine from the judges of Senja
Magistrates Court.
-From Norwegian newspaper Nordlys
This
evening's lecture: How to avoid being robbed by police sergeant Larsen
-From
Denmark
You
can always know a state by the kind of people imprisoned.
-Unknown
One
pair of boots has not been sufficiently polished, an occasion to be celebrated
with 25 knee-bendings.
-Olav Brunvand as World War 2 prisoner
They do not become this way in one day or over night. It takes years behind bars to put out every spark. But the process begins on the first day
the prisoner sets foot in the prison. Then it is straight to solitary confinement, locked up day and night with his own sad thoughts.
-Olav
Brunvand on ordinary German criminals during the nazi period
Hypocrite: A man who kills both his parents and asks for a reduced sentence because he is an orphan.
-Abraham
Lincoln
The
judge: You are hereby sentenced to paying £100 in damages to your neighbour for
having called him a bull. Do you accept the sentence?
I suppose I will, considering how much the price of beef has risen lately.
-Joke
My
father invented the burglar alarm. It was stolen from him.
-Victor
Borge
After a somewhat too lively follow-on party - including chandelier-kicking - with other law students, a huge bill arrived for breakage. An expert
from Glassmagasinet, a department store specialising in goods like exclusive glass articles, calculated the value of the damage to one tenth of the
amount demanded by the restaurant owner. JL triumphantly pointed to § 295 of the Norwegian Penal Code:
Whoever seeks to exploit somebody's frivolousness or weakness of mind for unlawful gain, has committed an act of usury.
They
never heard from the restaurant owner again.
Upon discovering that the German Chief Constable of the police in Trondheim had sent agents to Sweden to kill him just after he had moved to
London in 1944, John Lyng's comment was: My activities really were not enough to earn me that kind of special care. But of course, I did
appreciate
the attention.
He
was not a warped genius, nor was he a misguided talent. He was a superficial
phenomena, a brutal and deft deceiver.
-John Lyng on Henry Rinnan
(Henry Oliver Rinnan is, after Quisling, the most infamous Norwegian traitor of the Second World War. He lead an efficient and brutal group of
infiltrators
and provocateurs working for the Gestapo.)
Suspicion and distrust poisoned their own lives. How could they trust anyof their fellow workers? They knew that each and every one of them
lived by lying and cheating, as they did themselves. It is the fate of treachery, the traitor`s first impulse is always the fear of being betrayed
himself.
-John
Lyng on the Rinnan group
Torture is an exhausting and revolting kind of manual work, which I personally tried to keep away from.
-Henry Rinnan to the police 1945
As he stands there Rinnan seems to enjoy being a dead man. He does not know fear. He would not recognize it even if he met it under gun barrels
in a couple of months...
-Åke Hall, Sweden, covering the tribunal after World War 2 in Norway
The most false masks are made of genuin skin.
-Harwey Cox
An incompetent lawyer can delay a trial for months or years. A competent lawyer can delay one even longer.
-Evelle Younger
Chapter 24 On the weather, the seasons, the sun and the stars(080504)
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
-Oscar Wilde
Is it not true! In his fight, in his longing high up in his dream heaven man must have glimpse of a star.
-Nils Collett Vogt, Norwegian poet
The sun that melts the wox is the same that hardens the mud.
-Unknown
If you cry because the sun has gone out of your life, your tears will prevent you from seeing the stars.
-Unknown
Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one's own sunshine.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
The seasons are good friends: they always tidy up after each other.
-Arild Nyquist, Norwegian poet
Your life lies before you like freshly fallen snow. Be careful where you step, for every step will show.
-Unknown
Indoors or out, no one relaxes in March, that month of wind and taxes, the wind will presently disappear, the taxes last us all the year.
-Ogden Nash
Springtime is beautiful for those who've had a long winter.
-Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
Of course it hurts when buds burst. Otherwise why would spring hesitate?
-Karin Boye, Swedish poet
The spring evening's shimmering light, gleaming everywhere, gave warning that his great visions and hope would be realized.
-Boris Pasternak
The spring - its impatience and madness and joyfulness; but autumn! It tuned with fear of darkness and evening prayer, one
became clairvoyant and heard warnings.
-Knut Hamsun
Your
first grass is more valuable to me than an emerald/ I call your anemones the
ornament of spring/ although I know the roses will soon bloom.
Bear
witness, swallow, that I laid out a feast for you like for a/ prodigal child
returned, because you were the messenger of spring.
Bear witness, old tree, which I have worshipped like a god/ whose buds I have every spring counted more eagerly than pearls.
-Henrik Wergeland, Norway, in free translation
If the icy snow carries you at midsummer, then we can expect a late spring.
-Norwegian proverb
In a landscape, new and without a past, a blossoming apple tree stands, shimmering.
The tree smells of summer renewed. Time has never been here. It is coming.
-Inger Hagerup, Norwegian writer
In the summertime I have experienced that shadows have hidden under the soles of my shoes to get out from under the sun;
but sometimes during the autumn, the wind blows so hard that we've seen barn gables come flying over the sea in a V-shape.
-Arthur Klæboe
August is really the softest of all, this trembeling cord between summer and fall, this dew of farewell in my hands.
-Einar Skjæråsen, Norwegian poet
I think nature has its most pleasant life, when it fades away. Nothing die as beautiful as leaves. They put on the warmest, most
wonderful colors the earth has.
-Sigbjørn Obstfelder, Norwegian poet
Autumn walk the earth, and everything is long gone too lat and too early.
-Erling Christie, Norway
There are seven different kind of weather in one autumn night.
-Scandinavian proverb
Coming next we have these months whose names sounds like treats, November and December...
-Sven Elvestad, Norwegian crime writer
All Christmas cards for Svalbard must be sent in linened envelopes, as it's supposed to be very cold up there at this time of the year.
-Joke in weekly magazine
The man is as good as the day is long - in Longyearbyen (at Svalbard) at Christman eve.
-Kristian Rakvåg
It takes a hard winter for dog to eat dog.
-Danish proverb (Originally:wolf to eat wolf)
The Norwegian winter should be spent by the Mediterranean sea.
-Jens Bjørneboe, writer
The winter, my hideous guest, is sitting at my table. My fingers are blue from his friendly handshake.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
Rain without thunder is like word without action.
-Proverb from Burma/Myanmar
Many felt alienated after the modernizing of the weather forcast, but one thing is for sure: the weather became much better.
-Herbjørn Sørebø, NRK-TV 1985
When it rains on the priest, it snows on the bellringer.
-Proverb from Western Norway, caused by big local temperature differences
In Norway we have more weather than we can use.
-Herodes Falsk, comedian
Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.
-Mark Twain
You can’t reach the rainbow until you go through the rain.
-Unknown
Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? or hast thou seen the treasures of the hail, Which I have reserved against the time of
trouble, against the day of battle and war? By what way is the light parted, which scattereth the east wind upon the earth? Who hath divided a
watercourse for the overflowing of waters, or a way for the lightning of thunder; To cause it to rain on the earth, where no man is; on the
wilderness, wherein there is no man; To satisfy the desolate and waste ground; and to cause the bud of the tender herb to spring forth? Hath the
rain a father? or who hath begotten the drops of dew? Out of whose womb came the ice? and the hoary frost of heaven, who hath gendered it?
The waters are hid as with a stone, and the face of the deep is frozen. Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of
Orion?
-Jobs book, 38, 22-31.
We`re going to the moon. That is not very far. Man has so much farther to go within himself.
-Anais Nin
Ideals are like stars: you will not succeed in touching them with your hands, but like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose
them as your guides, and following them you reach your destiny.
-Carl Schurz
My father won a sun dial but hedidn't get it activated. I carried it out into the sunshine, and that was a success.
-Salhusvinskvetten
Every one stands alone on the hearth of the earth - illuminated by a ray of sunshine, and then suddenly it is evening.
-S. Quasimodo
Most of the shadows of life come from your own self blocking the sun.
-James Pickett
Is there really some places on earth where rain and snow fall upwards? It is the sort of silly ideas that comes as result from claiming
that the earth is round.
-Firmianus Lactantius, private teacher for Constantin the great in the fourth century
Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip around the Sun.
-Unknown
There are more between heaven and earth than most other places.
-Harald Heide Steen Jr., Norwegian comedian
There is life on the planet Mars. Especially on Saturday nights.
-From Vi Menn, Norwegian magazine
I believe in the new moon. But it's actually just the old one.
-Olav H. Hauge, Norwegian poet
The moon gives us light at night when we need it but the sun gives us light only in the day time when we don't need it.
-Unknown
Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss it you will land among the stars.
-Les Brown
The stars which shone over Babylon and the stable in Bethlehem still shine as brightly over the Empire State Building and your
front yard today. They perform their cycles with the same mathematical precision, and they will continue to affect each thing on
earth, including man, as long as the earth exists.
-Linda Goodman
Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a
universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.
-Carl Sagan
From the perspective og eternity, even the stars have a life span of fireflies.
-Stein Mehren, Norwegian poet
The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage.
-Mark Russel
One should not desire the stars, one should just take pleasure in their beauty.
-Goethe
Ideals are like stars. We never reach them but, like the mariners on the sea, we chart our course by them.
-Carl Schurz
Me in bad mood, Morgenblad? All I need to burst out in loud laughter is a glimpse of the sun.
-Henrik Wergeland, Norwegian poet
There are relationship between the soul and the stars.
-Henrik Wergeland
Don't complain, standing under the stars, about lack of bright spots in your life.
-Henrik Wergeland
He doesn't turn around who is following a star.
-Leonardo da Vinci
Through Bergen by night, a city where September had scratched its first signs of cold to come on the sky, and the stars - which seemed to have
been
gone through the long, bright summer - were back, bigger and brighter than ever.
-Gunnar
Staalesen, Norway
I
hereby unconditionally acclaim spring as the only effective remedy for snow.
-Andre
Bjercke, Norway
If
only the wind would turn before I go home, said the woman rowing against the
wind.
-Norwegian
proverb
I
go outside on a rainy day. The drops are coming straight at me, as if the sky
has overturned.
-From
The Half Brother by Lars Saabye Christensen
A
star-speckled sky is the truest and best friend in the world.
-Fridtjof
Nansen
Many times, Gunnhild has thought about the night she was lying out in the open in the winter mountains with her father, dreaming that the angels
lit
a star every time she was happy. Now, evening sky has drawn over Gunnhild's life.
There are many stars in it.
-Dagfinn
Grønoset, Norway,
final words in one
of his books
Chapter 25 On friendship and solidarity(upd.221104)
Mother Teresa was - for many people - a shining lead star through a life in social darkness, but like most other stars even she needed the
darkness to shine.
-Kristian Rakvåg
We can do no great things - only small things with great love.
-Mother Teresa
Love is a fruit that can be reaped within all seasons of the year, and which always is within everybody's reach.
-Mother Teresa
Love conquers everything, let's therefore surrender to love.
-Vergil
There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.
-Mahatma Gandhi
There are people so poor that the only thing they have is money.
-Unknown
Humanity advances only as it becomes more humane.
-Frank Crane
A man said to the stones: be humane!
And the stones answered: we are not hard enough.
-Erich Fried, Austrian poet
When I gave food to the poor, they called me a saint. When I asked why the poor
have nothing to eat, they called me a communist.
-Don Helder Camara
Man is a social animal that detests his equals.
-Delacroix Eugene
Every man is guilty of all the good he didn't do.
-Voltaire
Big hearts and big oceans never get frozen.
-Unknown
Be nice to people on the way up, because you'll meet them on your way down.
-Wilson Mizner
Do not do unto others as you would they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.
-George Bernard Shaw
Shared joy is double joy. Shared grief is half grief.
-C.A.Tiedge
A joy not shared is like an unlit candle.
-Spanish proverb
Our charity begins at home. And mostly ends where it begins.
-Horace Smith
Who is a powerful person - one who makes an enemy a friend.
-Talmud
-Martin Luther King Jr.
Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never
decreases by being shared.
-The Buddha
Money is like muck, best when it is spread out.
-Francis Bacon
Nobody knows everything. Everybody knows something. Together we can manage more.
-Carl Scharnberg, Danish working class writer
When I'm dead nobody will weep for me, and no earth will cover me as I am the very wind of freedom.
-Ernesto Guevara
The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.
-Elie Wiesel
If you think the world's problems have nothing to do with you, you are one of them.
-Unknown
He who has a good friend, needs no mirror.
-Indian proverb
A debt of gratitude is the only debt that enriches.
-F.G.Gade
A friend is someone who reaches for your hand, but touches your heart.
-Unknown
If you know the sorrow of a friend, claim it as your own.
-Håvamål
How many a hasty word wouldn't one buy back in gold to have it unsaid.
-Kongespegelen, Norwegian book on good customs from approx. year 1100
A smile is a cheap commodity. We give it away to anybody. Tears are more precious. We keep them to ourselves.
-Peter Egge
Tears represent the melting of an icy heart.
-Hermann Hesse
The tears I hide, are much more bitter than the ones I show.
-Victor Hugo
You can forget the one you shared your laughter with, but never the one you shared your tears with.
-Proverb
We build the Good within us when we do the good around us.
-Arne Garborg, Norwegian writer
Goodness makes a person beautiful.
-Olav Duun, Norwegian writer
What is great isn't always good, but what is good is always great.
-N. Bonnevie, Norway
With your wealth you can lead yourself astray, but what you have given, no one can take away.
-Arnulf Øverland, Norwegian poet
The smile in the eye is the candle in the window telling that the heart is at home.
-Unknown
Are you hoping for forgiveness from the ones above you, than forgive those who are under you.
-Proverb from Arabia
He who wants to do good knocks at the gate; he who loves finds the gate open.
-Tagore
Gratitude is the memory of the heart.
-Jean Baptiste Massieu
Your good actions follow you as an invisible army, until you start talking about them. Then they vanish like dew before the sun.
-French proverb
Write insults in the dust and carve goodness in marble.
-Plato
The joy of forgiving is sweeter than the pleasure of revange.
-The Quran
The service you do for others is the rent you pay for the time you spend on earth.
-Muhammed Ali
Lonelyness is not to be alone. It is be have nobody to long for.
-Barbra Ring
I asked God for a flower - He gave me a garden.
I asked God for a tree - He gave me a forest.
I asked God for a friend - He gave me YOU.
-Unknown
Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It's not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of
friendship, you really haven't learned anything.
-Muhammed Ali
Men kick friendship around like a football, but it doesn't seem to crack. Women treat it like glass and it goes to pieces.
-Unknown
A friend is someone who knows all about you and still likes you.
-Unknown
Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.
-Oprah Winfrey
I have no trouble with my enemies. I can take care of my enemies all right. But my damn friends....They're the ones that keep me walking the
floor nights!
-Warren G. Harding
The anger of a friend is better than the kiss of an enemy.
-Alexander Barclay
Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.
-Salomo's Proverbs 16:24
After all, there is no point in hurting somebody who does not mean anything to you.
-Bitter Moon
True friendship comes when silence between two people is comfortable.
-Dave Tyson Gentry
We are here on earth to do good for others. What the others are here for, I don't know.
-W. H. Auden
Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.
-Oscar Wilde
Love thy neighbour as yourself, but choose your neighbourhood.
-Louise Beal
Always be a little kinder than necessary.
-James M. Barrie
If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.
-Richard M. Nixon, on equality for the black people in USA
The Negro needs the white man to free him from his fears. The white man needs the Negro to free him from his guilt
-Martin Luther King Jr..
The surest way to be happy is to seek happiness for others.
-Martin Luther King Jr.
I have a dream that one day... the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
-Martin Luther King Jr.
We have flown the air like birds and swum the sea like fishes, but have yet to learn the simple act of walking the earth like brothers.
-Martin Luther King Jr.
If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.
-Martin Luther King Jr.
A man can't ride on your back unless it's bent.
-Martin Luther King Jr.
We are prone to judge success by the index of our salaries or the size of our automobile rather than by the quality of our service and relationship
to mankind.
-Martin Luther King Jr.
I'm not going to sit at your table and watch you eat, with nothing on my plate, and call myself a diner. Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner.
Being here in America doesn't make you an American.
-Malcom X
They came for the communists, and I did not speak up because I wasn't a communist;
They came for the socialists, and I did not speak up because I was not a socialist;
They came for the union leaders, and I did not speak up because I wasn't a union leader;
They came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak up for me.
-Martin Niemoller, 1892-1984
We are born to be each others angels.
-Unknown
To give is more blissful than to receive - the motto of the mercyful and the boxers.
-Harold Pinter
Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.
-Paul Boese
Forgiveness is the perfume with witch the trampled down flower may exuberate the boot that has broken its neck.
-Unknown
Never look down on anybody unless you're helping him up.
-Jesse Jackson
It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!
-Emiliano Zapata
Remember the poors - it costs nothing.
-Josh Billings
Being
rich is not about owning a lot yourself, but about always having something to
spare for others.
-Anita Bjørk
When she had been is Siberia for four years a letter arrived from Sweden, informing her that her father was seriously ill. But Elsa could not go home.
There are thousands who need me here, and only a single person who needs me at home, she said. But that single person was her father, her best
friend, the person who was closest to her. It was hard for her to remain at her post then. Elsa Brändstrøm stayed in Siberia.
She
received her reward two years later back in Sweden in her father's words: You
would not have been my child if you had acted differently.
-Anna Hagerup Nielsen on Sibiria's angel, Swedish Elsa Brändstrøm
She followed the behest of her heart, and bravely went into battle for the weak and the needy. Victoriously, she defended humanity's rights against
violence.
She built bridges between peoples and between people. It was a bridge much
stronger than any that could be built by law.
-From a speech when Elsa Brändstrøm became a Honorary Doctor in Tuerbingen
When reading his own words about the impression it made upon him to enter the poor cottages of the fishermen of Møre on the Northwestern
coast as well as the loggers from Stor-Elvdal in the woods of Eastern Norway, we understand that a warm heart was beating under his waistcoat.
And
Martin Tranemæl heard that heart beating.
-Haakon Lie on Axel Sømme
He
is helpless who has nobody to help, nobody to be good to. Like a tree in which
the sap is no longer flowing, he withers.
-Jan-Magnus
Bruheim, Norway
Do be careful, Miss Zassenhausen. We promised upon our honour not to give anyting to the prisoners. This could jeopardise our opportunity to
visit
them, and you could lose your head, said the priest.
Carefulness
is not my virtue, and I would rather lose my head than my heart, Hiltgunt
replied.
Like
insect bites in the oyster, insults breed only pearls in my heart. In time, they
should adorn the tiara of my spirit.
-Henrik
Wergeland, Norwegian poet
My
enemy is not the one who does evil to me, but the one who makes me evil.
-Unknown
There were more girls than boys, and those who were left sitting lonely and abandoned, the less attractive, the ugly, the fat and stupid, bent their
heads even lower in shame and dispair, and pulled their dresses tighter around themselves as if that could help them; no, nothing could help them
now,
they were open wounds, they were the dead wallflowers, the first casualties in
the bloody battle of the dancing school.
-From The Half brother written by Lars Saabye Christensen, Norway
Correct your friend under four eyes, but praise him in front of others.
-Leonardo
da Vinci
From
the hand of a friend, a rock is like an apple.
-Proverb
from Arabia
It
pays
to be nice to people on your way up. You'll meet them again on your way down.
-Harry
S. Truman
I
have always enjoyed having guests. Either I enjoy their coming, or I enjoy their
leaving.
-Sir Winston Churchill
Today
you can live in such a way, that tonight someone will appreciate that you exist.
-George
Brandes, Denmark
If you hear anybody call for the big
and strong men, it is time to gather the strength of the weak again.
-Carl
Scharnberg
There are people who are so poor that
the only thing they own is money.
-Unknown
An insult doesn`t matter that much,
if you don`t suspect it to be true.
-Carl
Segerståhl
My enemy isn`t the one who harms me,
but the one who makes me evil.
-Unknown
A true friend means more to our
happiness than a thousand enemies to our misery.
-Marie
von Ebner-Eshenbach
My friend isn`t perfect – not more
than me – that`s why we go together so well.
-Alexander
Pope
A false friend is like a shadow. In
sunshine you can never get rid of him, on a grey day he has vanished without a
trace.
-Proverb
Many of the rich get
nothing from their riches except the fear of losing it.
-Vi menn, Norwegian weekly magazine
The poor man lives in
hope, the rich in fear.
-Finnish proverb
Being friends
with a friends foeis not appropriate for decent people.
-Håvamål, 1000 years old Icelandic poetry
There can be no doubt that the ladies of the mission societies, with their knitting and bazaars, have done more to help the poor in
underdeloped countries than all the Theater Cafe radicals toasting the coming revolution have done.
-Politician from the Norwegian Labour Party
He
was almost no one among people, only one.
-Knut
Hamsun
He that falls in love with himself will have no rivals.
-Benjamin
Franklin
An offer of friendship to a friend's foe is unbecoming an honourable man
-Håvamål
Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming upon you.
-The new Testament, James 5:1
See, the pay of the workmen that mowed your fields, which you have withheld from them, is crying out, and the cries of the reapers have
entered the ears of the Lord of Hosts. You have been living an easy life on the earth; you have given yourselves up to pleasures; you have
fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned, you have murdered the upright without his resisting you.
- The new Testament, James 5:4-6
Pius Christians squirm when confronted with this quote from the Bible. Their reaction is much the same as when fanatical teetotalers,
reminded of the story where Jesus turned water into wine, replay:
We are aware of what he did, but we thoroughly disapprove!
Welfare is not sufficient. Matters must be considered as a small part of greater whole. But justice ought to be accomplished by peaceful
means.