Literary Birthday – 8 December – Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson was born 8 December 1832 and died 26 April 1910.

Five Quotes

1. Do not complain beneath the stars about the lack of bright spots in your life.
2. A meaningful life – this is what we look for in art, in its smallest dewdrops as in its unleashing of the tempest. We are at peace when we have found it and uneasy when we have not.
3. A people numerically large may attain to ways of thought and enterprise that no political censure can reduce to a minimum; but under narrower conditions, it may easily come about that the whole people will fall asleep.
4. The greater the burden a man takes upon his shoulders, the stronger he must be to carry it. No words are unmentionable, no action or horror beyond powers of description, if one is equal to them.
5. Watch over your child, as it struggles for breath on the outermost verge of life, or see your wife follow the child to that outermost verge, beside herself for anxiety and sleeplessness, – then love will teach you that life comes first.

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson was a Norwegian writer who received the 1903 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is the author of Synnøve Solbakken and A Happy Boy.

Image

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portrett_av_Bj%C3%B8rnstjerne_Bj%C3%B8rnson,_1909_-_no-nb_digifoto_20150129_00043_bldsa_BB0791_-_Restoration_(cropped).jpg

Norsk bokmål: Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, 1909.

 by Amanda Patterson

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