334 Quotes by Jostein Gaarder

You can never know if a person forgives you when you wrong them. Therefore it is existentially important to you. It is a question you are intensely concerned with. Neither can you know whether a person loves you. It’s something you just have to believe or hope. But these things are more important to you than the fact that the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180 degrees. You don't think about the law of cause and effect or about modes of perception when you are in the middle of your first kiss.

The universe is a great mystery.

I'm not just some butterfly for you to catch.

For nature is good, an man is 'by nature' good; it is civilization which ruins him

the very best that can happen is to have energetic opponents. The more extreme they become, the more powerful the reaction they will have to face.

Ladies and Gentlemen...we are floating in Space!

Yes, we too are stardust.

A Russian cosmonaut and a Russian brain surgeon were once discussing Christianity. The brain surgeon was a Christian, but the cosmonaut wasn’t. ‘I have been in outer space many times,’ bragged the cosmonaut, ‘but I have never seen any angels.’ The brain surgeon stared in amazement, but then he said, ‘And I have operated on many intelligent brains, but I have never seen a single thought.

The soul yearns to fly home on the wings of love to the world of ideas. It longs to be freed from the chains of the body.