Top 150 Tove Jansson Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “I don’t want friends who are kind without really liking me and I don’t want anybody who is kind just so as not to be unpleasant.”

— Tove Jansson

102. “Well, things can’t get much worse – that’s one consolation,” the Muskrat groaned. He had hidden himself in a forest of bracken in the bathroom, and had wrapped his head in a handkerchief so that nothing should grow into his ears.”

— Tove Jansson

103. “People carry their loved ones with them. They are forever present, and life is full of easily grasped opportunities to show them one’s affection. It costs so little and achieves so much.”

— Tove Jansson

104. “I believe it’s a bore to be famous,” said the Joxter. “Perhaps it’s fun at first, but then I suppose you get used to it, and soon you’re sick of it. Like on a merry-go-round.”

— Tove Jansson

105. “She had picked the spot the day before and carried out a stool low enough to sit on and still have her paintbox and her water cup within reach. Anna didn’t use an easel. Easels seemed to her an altogether too assertive aid, too obvious. She liked to work as unobtrusively as possible, the paper spread on a board in her lap, close to her hand.”

— Tove Jansson

106. “Commonplace things can be fascinating.”

— Tove Jansson

107. “Making a whole is very important. Most people paint things and forget the whole.”

— Tove Jansson

108. “It can be sad having a friend you’ve admired too much and seen too rarely and told too many things that you should have kept to yourself.”

— Tove Jansson

109. “And that night he couldn’t sleep, but lay looking out at the light June night which was full of lonely whisperings and rustlings and the pattering of feet. The air was sweet with the smell of flowers.”

— Tove Jansson

110. “There was so much to talk about that nothing was said. It was warm sitting there on the steps. Everything seemed to be so right.”

— Tove Jansson

111. “I, who see the end of the world every day, and still I’m going on putting my clothes, and taking them off again, and eating and washing-uo the dishes and receiving visits, just as if nothing ever happened!”

— Tove Jansson

112. “Grandmother had had to be frugal all her life, and so she had a weakness for extravagance. She watched the basin and the barrels and every crevice in the granite fill with water and overflow. She looked at the mattresses out being aired and the dishes that were washing themselves. She sighed contentedly, and, absorbed in thought, she filled a coffee cup with precious drinking water and poured it over a daisy.”

— Tove Jansson

113. “Dear Gaffsie, believe me, we are so very small and insignificant, and so are our tea cakes and carpets and all those things, you know, and still they’re so important, but always they’re threatened by mercilessness.”

— Tove Jansson

114. “She put on a white dress and went around all day with roses in her hair and sang hymns.”

— Tove Jansson

115. “Grandmother walked up over the bare granite and thought about birds in general. It seemed to her no other creature had the same dramatic capacity to underline and perfect events – the shifts in the seasons and the weather, the changes that run through people themselves.”

— Tove Jansson

116. “There are empty spaces that must be respected – those often long periods when a person can’t see the pictures or find the words and needs to be left alone.”

— Tove Jansson

117. “Om je heen komt alles tot rust, elk van ons gaat zijn eigen weg, maar we ontmoetten elkaar weer aan zee bij een kalme zonsondergang.”

— Tove Jansson

118. “But he thought all the strange words were beautiful, and he had never had a book of his own before.”

— Tove Jansson

119. “Neither one of the two friends felt any great need of talking. As yet. They had time; summer lay before them, long and full of promises.”

— Tove Jansson

120. “I’ll wind all the clocks,’ he thought. ‘Perhaps that makes the spring come a tiny bit earlier. And someone might wake up if I happen to break some big thing.”

— Tove Jansson

121. “Sniff looked at them and noticed that they were much smaller than he was, so he felt kinder and said, condescendingly. “Hullo. Nice to see you.”

— Tove Jansson

122. “Only farmers and summer guests walk on the moss. What they don’t know – and it cannot be repeated too often – is that moss is terribly frail. Step on it once and it rises the next time it rains. The second time, it doesn’t rise back up. And the third time you step on moss, it dies.”

— Tove Jansson

123. “Because we’re going to stay here a little while and calm down until I’ve learned your names. Light my pipe, someone!”

— Tove Jansson

124. “The Dweller Under the Sink had still not come out to eat but was probably living a secret and important life by himself.”

— Tove Jansson

125. “Do you know the difference between the first love and the last? It’s this: you always think the first love is the last and the last the first...”

— Tove Jansson

126. “There is nothing sentimental about this world. Like the weather, this world asks only to be acknowledged. There is nothing comforting about it, and yet if you are afraid to see it in its own terms and look to it for comfort, for solace, you will be left worse off than you were before.”

— Tove Jansson

127. “I’m going to sleep outside. I don’t want a bed. Beds are stupid.”

— Tove Jansson

128. “The wind had risen. It pressed snow against the windows with a powerful whispering that had followed the people of the village for a long, long time. Between squalls there was silence.”

— Tove Jansson

129. “You see, I love you as if bewitched, yet at the same time with profound calm, and I’m not afraid of anything life has in store for us.”

— Tove Jansson

130. “It is autumn in Moomin Valley, for how else can spring come back again?”

— Tove Jansson

131. “Strange that it will all just go on, we will paint, travel, love, grieve, collect money, buy things, grow old... whether we want to or not.”

— Tove Jansson

132. “One evening, Sophia wrote a letter and stuck it under the door. It said, “I hate you. With warm personal wishes, Sophia.”

— Tove Jansson

133. “The caretaker liked the evenings and the nights. He didn’t need much sleep and often sat by himself in the peace and quiet of the lake shore for hours. He didn’t remember, he didn’t worry, he just was.”

— Tove Jansson

134. “Love and kisses to those too old and too young to come to the party.”

— Tove Jansson

135. “To the final landscape of our old age, as summer fades... Silence settles around us, each of us wanders his own way, and yet we all meet by the sea in the peaceful sunset.”

— Tove Jansson

136. “It’s a pity that exciting things always stop happening when you’re not afraid of them anymore and would like to have a little fun.”

— Tove Jansson

137. “I don’t belong here any more,’ Moomintroll thought. ‘Nor there. I don’t even know what’s waking and what’s a dream.’ And then in an instant he was asleep, and summer lilacs covered him in their friendly green shadow.”

— Tove Jansson

138. “Repeat after me,′ said Moomintroll, “may the ground swallow me up may old hags rattle my dry bones, and may I never more eat ice-cream if I don’t guard this secret with my life.” Go on now.”

— Tove Jansson

139. “Tonight I’m alone with my tune, and tonight isn’t tomorrow.”

— Tove Jansson

140. “I’m not a lion... I like small adventures. Just the right size.”

— Tove Jansson

141. “That’s not true, not grammar, and it doesn’t even rhyme properly,′ said Snufkin, and the subject was dropped.”

— Tove Jansson

142. “You believe it’s cold, but if you build yourself a snowhouse it’s warm. You think it’s white, but at times it looks pink, and another time it’s blue. It can be softer than anything, and then again harder than stone. Nothing is certain.”

— Tove Jansson

143. “You’re too small to be told everything.”

— Tove Jansson

144. “Anyone can lose his temper and fly off the handle. But it’s better than being mean.”

— Tove Jansson

145. “When you were small you wanted to know. Now you want to become. I want to do.”

— Tove Jansson

146. “It’s the unexpressed that interests me, he thought. I’ve been drawing too explicitly; it’s a mistake to clarify everything.”

— Tove Jansson

147. “Sophia,” she said, “this is really not something to argue about. You can see for yourself that life is hard enough without being punished for it afterwards. We get comfort when we die, that’s the whole idea.”

— Tove Jansson

148. “In my opinion, one should always make the most out of an awful situation.”

— Tove Jansson

149. “Why aren’t people afraid of their dogs? How long can what was once a wild animal deny its wildness?”

— Tove Jansson

150. “Oh, Anna Aemelin, the only thing you care about is your own conscience. That’s what you cherish. You’re a charming little liar.”

— Tove Jansson