Danish Quotes

Many foreigners have asked me how we made the Danish style. And I've answered that it...was rather a continuous process of purification, and for me of simplification, to cut down to the simplest possible elements of four legs, a seat and combined top rail and arm rest.

I want my words to survive translation. I know when I write a book now I will have to go and spend three days being intensely interrogated by journalists in Denmark or wherever. That fact, I believe, informs the way I write - with those Danish journalists leaning over my shoulder.

In 'A Royal Affair' I had to learn to act like a queen and learned Danish. It's so much different to act in another language. It's the nuances in the words.

Denmark (also called Norway) is best known as the original home of the prune Danish as well as the Vikings, who wore hats with horns sticking out of them, and for a very good reason: they were insane.

I always say I have a Danish passport, but I am a New Yorker at heart.

Many young Danish theologians went to Wittenberg starting in 1517, listened to Luther's theses and, in 1536, brought the Reformation to our country. This is why the Danes, unlike the people of many countries in Eastern and Central Europe, became Lutherans and not Calvinists.

Luther exerted a strong influence on Denmark. Suddenly Danish theologians were preaching in Danish and translating the Bible into Danish.

The Reformation was immensely important for all of Danish culture.

Under the constitution, as the Danish queen I am bound to the Lutheran faith, but that does not exclude people of other faiths.

I'm not a great fan of monarchy in general, but I have to say the Danish monarchy is closer to the people; it's not as stuffy as the English one.

I believe that adulterers should be stoned to death. I believe that we should cut the hands off of thieves. I believe the Sharia should be implemented in Denmark. Maybe we should change the Christiansborg Palace [the Danish Parliament building] to Muslimsborg to have the flag of Islam flying over the parliament in Denmark. I think this would be very nice.

I think that Danish people may be thought off as the happiest people, but honestly...I love America.

A flute without holes, is not a flute. A donut without a hole, is a Danish.

Danish film is spreading in a fantastic way.

I have good genes. My father is Danish and my mother is Irish and Native American. They both have good skin.

He who does not understand a joke, he does not understand Danish.

Furniture manufacturing in plastics requires very costly machinery, which the Danish market is not big enough to justify. Or so they say. But show me a plastics manufacturer who dares to take on the experiment

Scandinavian-Danish cuisine was something quite rustic, mostly known for pastries and smorgasbord cuisine, which in itself has become a joke.

I have also been saddened, though hardly surprised, by the weakness of the EU's reaction to the criminal attack on the Danish embassy in Syria, which seems to have been permitted, if not actively encouraged, by the Syrian regime.

My wife is Danish and we go to Denmark a couple of times a year.

In that memorable year, 1822: Oersted, a Danish physicist, held in his hands a piece of copper wire, joined by its extremities to the two poles of a Volta pile. On his table was a magnetized needle on its pivot, and he suddenly saw (by chance you will say, but chance only favours the mind which is prepared) the needle move and take up a position quite different from the one assigned to it by terrestrial magnetism. A wire carrying an electric current deviates a magnetized needle from its position. That, gentlemen, was the birth of the modern telegraph.

My father is from Copenhagen and he lived there until he was in his late 20s. We always grew up with a lot of Danish culture at home. My mother is Jewish but we always celebrated Christmas because we loved the traditions of Danish Christmas.

Consensus and dialogue have always played a significant role, especially in Danish society. Of course there are basic values that must be respected, but within this framework, we are a liberal and tolerant country where everyone can live as they desire and according to their tradition. That is the Danish way.

At one point [Cardew] taught himself to play guitar simply in order to take part in the performance in a composition by Boulez, which is a little like saying he learned Danish to read Kiekegaard.

This is the first time Denmark has ever reached the World Cup finals, so this is the most significant moment in Danish history.

Did you ever notice, when you are sitting at a red light, that when the person in front of you pulls up a couple of inches, you are compelled to move up too? Do we really think we are making progress toward our destination? "Whew, I thought we would be late, but now that I am nine inches closer, I can stop for coffee and a danish!"

People don't think of their office as a workplace anymore. They think of it as a stationary store with Danish. You want to get your pastry, your envelopes, your supplies, your toilet paper, six cups of coffee, and you go home.

I represent all people who are citizens of the Danish nation.

I've been a Danish prince, a Texas slave-dealer, an Arab sheik, a Cheyenne Dog Soldier, and a Yankee navy lieutenant in my time, among other things, and none of 'em was as hard to sustain as my lifetime's impersonation of a British officer and gentleman.

A play is basically a long, formalistic polemic. You can write it without the poetry, and if you do, you may have a pretty good play. We know this because we see plays in translation. Not many people speak Norwegian or Danish or whatever guys like Ibsen spoke, or Russian - yet we understand Chekhov and the others.

The Danish glee: the national version of cheerfulness.

What kind of a god is it that's upset by a cartoon in Danish?

The cartoonists treated Islam the same way they treat Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and other religions. And by treating Muslims in Denmark as equals they made a point: we are integrating you into the Danish tradition of satire because you are part of our society, not strangers. The cartoons are including, rather than excluding, Muslims.

It’s the opening of Manderlay in Cannes, and I’m sitting next to this guy who’s writing for a tiny fictitious French paper called ‘On the Sunny Side,’ and he’s writing a review on the film, and he’s obviously bored. Then he tells me about all the cars he owns, and how rich he is, and all these things... So, at a certain point, he says, "So what do you do?" Then I take out this very strange hammer we have in the Danish building business, and I say, "I kill." And then I kill him. It is as stupid as it sounds.

With millions of family wage manufacturing jobs lost since 2001, we need an energy bill that takes bold action to tap into American ingenuity in order to lead the world in new clean energy technology, rather than playing catch-up to the Japanese, Danish, and Germans.

Even thought this is a remarkable story [The danish Girl] and these are two fascinating people in their own right, Lili's story had been in the public domain but this had somehow slipped out of sight. It seemed bizarre then but I couldn't have imagined releasing the film in a climate like today around trans issues and the comfort people have about it in the public eye.

She probably gave up and started playing Minesweeper." [...] We reached the cafe and found Sydney bent over her laptop, with a barely eaten Danish and what was probably her fourth cup of coffee. We slid into seats beside her. "How's it—hey! You ARE playing Minesweeper!

If a Danish politician would go up and say he believes in God, people would be a little bit taken aback by that because it's slightly different there than in the U.S. Most of Europe is not that faith based, especially in terms of the politics, and politicians don't use that there.

Beer is the Danish national drink, and the Danish national weakness is another beer.

To know only one thing well is to have a barbaric mind: civilization implies the graceful relation of all varieties of experience to a central humane system of thought. The present age is peculiarly barbaric: introduce, say, a Hebrew scholar to an ichthyologist or an authority on Danish place names and the pair of them would have no single topic in common but the weather or the war (if there happened to be a war in progress, which is usual in this barbaric age).

We have been in recess since July, and during that time there has been a fuel crisis, a Danish no vote, the collapse of the euro and a war in the middle east, but what is our business tomorrow? The Insolvency Bill [Lords]. It ought to be called the Bankruptcy Bill [Commons], because we play no role.

I think people couldn't really put me in [one race]. I wasn't Mexican, I wasn't white, I wasn't black, I wasn't Asian... I wasn't anything, and I didn't really fit into anybody's group. My dad is Mexican, and my mom is French and Danish.

I'd come to believe there was no food more depressing than Danish, a pastry that seemed stale upon arrival

If one takes pleasure in calling the gold standard a "barbarous relic," one cannot object to the application of the same term to every historically determined institution. Then the fact that the British speak English - and not Danish, German, or French - is a barbarous relic too, and every Briton who opposes the substitution of Esperanto for English is no less dogmatic and orthodox than those who do not wax rapturous about the plans for a managed currency.

Wind power, if not properly planned and sited, can harm birds and bats (although Danish studies of 10,000 bird kills revealed that almost all died in collisions with buildings, cars and wires; only 10 were killed by windmills). Alternative energy sources are absolutely necessary. Global warming will kill birds and bats, as well as other species, in much greater numbers than wind power.

In the past, people couldn't place me. They thought that I was Danish or English or French. They never got that I am Italian. I'm not typical, maybe because my visual education was very mixed. There was a lot of London in my aesthetic: The Face, i-D, British music, and a lot of British fashion . . . But I really enjoy this contrast.

Every day of my adult life, I have worn at least one piece of jewelry from my maternal grandmother's collection, all of which were manufactured by famed Danish silversmith Georg Jensen. To the naked eye, I am either a Jensen loyalist or a grandmother loyalist. Really I am just a Pretty Things loyalist.

A dash derives from "to dash," to shatter, strike violently, to throw suddenly or violently, hence to throw carelessly in or on, hence to write carelessly or suddenly, to add or insert suddenly or carelessly to or in the page. "To dash" comes from Middle English daschen, itself probably from Scandinavian-compare Danish daske, to beat, to strike. Ultimately the word is-rather obviously-echoic.

Life can only be understood backwards.

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.