Top 80 Sigrid Undset Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “You must have known it yourself, Erlend- a thicket of briers and thorns and nettles had you sowed around you- how could you draw a young maid in to your side and she not be torn and wounded and bleeding-“ –p. 93.”

— Sigrid Undset

52. “But man proposes, God disposes.”

— Sigrid Undset

53. “Help me, Gunnulf,” begged Kristin. She was white to the very edge of her lips. “I don’t know my own will.” “Then say: Thy will be done,” replied the priest softly.”

— Sigrid Undset

54. “But these events had touched her so little – like the echo of thunder from the mountains after a storm had passed over the countryside and was far away.”

— Sigrid Undset

55. “I saw not till now what sin brings with it – that we must tread others underfoot.”

— Sigrid Undset

56. “I rolled myself up into a tight ball of resistance and it was thus that I went through my school years.”

— Sigrid Undset

57. “She walked as if through a forest. The pillars were furrowed like ancient trees, and into the woods the light seeped, colorful and as clear as song, through the stained-glass windows. High overhead animals and people frolicked in the stone foliage, and angels played their instruments. At an even higher, more dizzying height, the vaults of the ceiling arched upward, lifting the church toward God... The song cut through her like a blinding light. Now she saw how deep in the dust she lay.”

— Sigrid Undset

58. “Her heart felt as if it were breaking in her breast, bleeding and bleeding, young and fierce. From grief over the warm and ardent love which she had lost and still secretly mourned; from anguished joy over the pale, luminous love which drew her to the farthest boundaries of life on this earth. Through the great darkness that would come, she saw the gleam of another, gentler sun, and she sensed the fragrance of the herbs in the garden at world’s end.”

— Sigrid Undset

59. “His heart sang in his breast; his soul felt like a bride in the arms of the bridegroom. He realized full well that this would not last. No man could live on earth in this manner for long. And he had received each hour of that bright springtime like a pledge – a merciful promise that would strengthen his endurance when the skies darkened over him and the road led down into a dark ravine, through roaring rivers and cold snowdrifts.”

— Sigrid Undset

60. “Because no one is good without God. And we can do nothing good without Him. So it’s futile to regret a good deed, Ulf, for the good you have done cannot be taken back; even if all the mountains should fall, it would still stand.”

— Sigrid Undset

61. “Christ, you who were crucified! Now I have given up everything that could bind me. And I have placed myself in your hands, if you would find my life worthy enough to be freed from its servitude to Satan. Take me so that I may feel that I am your slave, for then I will possess you in return.”

— Sigrid Undset

62. “We are all bound to work in the vineyard where God is the husbandman. We have all been given our little vineyard, but the way in which we cultivate it is of great importance for the prosperity of our neighbour’s vineyard... In fact all our vineyards are a part of the Lord’s great vineyard, the Holy Church, and we are all bound to work here too.”

— Sigrid Undset

63. “Many different thoughts rise up in the darkness – like those gossamer plants that grow in the lake, oddly bewitching and pretty as they bob and sway; but enticing and sinister, they exert a dark pull as long as they’re growing in the living, trickling mire. ANd yet as long as they’re nothing but slimey brown clumps when the children pull them in to the boat. So many strange thoughts, both terrifying and enticing, grow in the night.”

— Sigrid Undset

64. “All fires burn out sooner or later.”

— Sigrid Undset

65. “Good days can last a long time if one tends to things with care and caution; all sensible people know that. That’s why I think that sensible people have to be satisfied with the good days – for the grandest of days are costly indeed.”

— Sigrid Undset

66. “Don’t you remember, my sister, when the Devil tried to tempt Saint Martin? Then the Fiend asked Saint Martin whether he dared believe it when he promised God’s mercy to all the sinners whose confessions he heard. And the bishop answered, ‘Even to you I promise God’s forgiveness at the very instant you ask for it – if only you will give up your pride and believe that His love is greater than your hatred.”

— Sigrid Undset

67. “Good days are granted to sensible people, but the grandest of days are enjoyed by those who dare to act unwisely.”

— Sigrid Undset

68. “Just as we are conceived and born from the lives of others, we must sustain our daily lives with what we receive from others. And we must pay for it by giving of ourselves every single day.”

— Sigrid Undset

69. “A man’s heart is the first thing to quicken in his mother’s womb, and the last to grow still in him. But in him now it sure must soon some to rest.”

— Sigrid Undset

70. “Afterward they would go to the guild hall, which stood near Hofvin Hospice; there they would drink for five days.”

— Sigrid Undset

71. “God help you... You want nothing more from all your prayers and fassting than to force your will on God. Does it surprise you, then, that it has accomplished so little good?”

— Sigrid Undset

72. “Love had always been behind her toil with earthly matters. Erlend had never given her much thanks for that; it was not the way he wanted to be loved. But she couldn’t help it; it was her nature to love with great toil and care.”

— Sigrid Undset

73. “He loved the holy mass and prayers spoken in Latin, and he regarded the church as the place where he felt the most joy.”

— Sigrid Undset

74. “Overwhelmed, Erlend felt tears fill his eyes. He hadn’t realized himself how much these years of idleness had tormented him.”

— Sigrid Undset

75. “It would be unmanly to complain against the faith I had chosen.”

— Sigrid Undset

76. “They who have loved one another with the fieriest desire come in the end to be as two vipers biting each other’s tails.”

— Sigrid Undset

77. “Overcome and sobbing, the young woman sank down before the cross at the side of the road, where thousands of pilgrims had lain and thanked God because helping hands were extended to them on their journey through the perilous and beautiful world.”

— Sigrid Undset

78. “No, God had not forsaken her. In His mercy, He had heard her cries for help when she called on him as she sank more and more into her misery. – even when she called without believing she could be heard It felt as if the black sea were rushing over her; now the waves lifted her toward a bliss so strange and so sweet that she knew it would carry her out of life.”

— Sigrid Undset

79. “One year, thought Kristin, and she could hardly remember when she had last given Arne a thought. It gave her a fright – maybe she was a loose, vile woman. A year since she had seen him lying on the bier in the death chamber, when she thought she would never be happy again. She whimpered silently in fear at the inconstancy of her own heart and at the transitory nature of all things. Erlend, Erlend – would he forget her? But worse yet was that she might ever forget him.”

— Sigrid Undset

80. “It’s a sin to brood over and dwell on the sins we have confessed to the priest and repented before God, reviving his forgiveness through the hand and the words of the priest.”

— Sigrid Undset

81. “Kristin held the child while the young mother went to get a drink of local ale.”

— Sigrid Undset

82. “I never thought,” she went on, “that it would be so easy for me to lie. But what must be done can be done.”

— Sigrid Undset

83. “He had been so married to her that he had grown pius himself, because he had believed in her piety.”

— Sigrid Undset

84. “Kristin. You cannot settle for anything less than the love that is between God and the soul.”

— Sigrid Undset

85. “And I don’t believe any maiden of good family and with an honorable and Christian upbringing would part so easily with her honor, or her life. No, this is the kind of thing people write ballads about. I think when a man or a maiden is tempted to do something like that, they make up a ballad about it, which helps them, but they refrain from actually doing it.”

— Sigrid Undset

86. “In her soul, sin continued to exist, like roots of a weed intertwined in the soil. It no longer blossomed or flared up or smelled fragrant, but it was still there in the soil.”

— Sigrid Undset