7 Quotes by Henrik Pontoppidan

Without the original human urge to develop, without the self-generated power that expresses itself as a passion (wether it be directed toward the real world or the world of thoughts or dreams) and without that strong, even bold courage to will to be oneself in all our divine nakedness, no one reaches real freedom.

Every man’s soul is an independent universe, his death the extinction of the universe in miniature.

There is only one thing that can conquer suffering: the Passion.

My father, Dines Pontoppidan, belonged to an old family of clergymen and was himself a minister.

After a summer trip to Switzerland, which was rich in experiences, I started writing. In the beginning, I aimed at descriptions of nature and folk life until, as the years passed, the description of man became my chief interest.

I turned to the novel, an artistic form which had in former days been neglected and had thus acquired a bad reputation, but which during the nineteenth century had developed and elevated itself to the ranks occupied by drama and the ancient epic.

One of the middle ones in the flock, I was born on July 24, 1857, in the small Jutland town of Fredericia. In 1863, my father was transferred to Randers, another Jutland town, where a year later, at the age of six, I experienced the invasion of the allied Prussian and Austrian armies.