Karen Blixen Quotes Page 2

“It is impossible that a town will not play a part in your life, it does not even make much difference whether you have more good or bad things to say of it, it draws your mind to it, by a mental law of gravitation.”

“Natives dislike speed, as we dislike noise, it is to them, at the best, hard to bear. They are also on friendly terms with time, and the plan of beguiling or killing it does not come into their heads.

In fact the more time you can give them, the happier they are, and if you commission a Kikuyu to hold your horse while you make a visit, you can see by his face that he hopes you will be a long, long time about it.

He does not try to pass the time then, but sits down and lives.”

“No domestic animal can be as still as a wild animal. The civilized people have lost the aptitude of stillness, and must take lessons in silence from the wild before they are accepted by it.”

“People who dream when they sleep at night know of a special kind of happiness which the world of the day holds not, a placid ecstasy, and ease of heart, that are like honey on the tongue.

They also know that the real glory of dreams lies in their atmosphere of unlimited freedom. It is not the freedom of the dictator, who enforces his own will on the world, but the freedom of the artist, who has no will, who is free of will.

The pleasure of the true dreamer does not lie in the substance of the dream, but in this: that there things happen without any interference from his side, and altogether outside his control. Great landscapes create themselves, long splendid views, rich and delicate colours, roads, houses, which he has never seen or heard of...”

“Perhaps he knew, as I did not, that the Earth was made round so that we would not see too far down the road.”

“The barbarian loves his own pride, and hates, or disbelieves in, the pride of others. I will be a civilized being, I will love the pride of my adversaries, of my servants, and my lover; and my house shall be, in all humility, in the wilderness a civilized place.”

“The Kikuyu, when left to themselves, do not bury their dead, but leave them above ground for the hyenas and vultures to deal with.

The custom had always appealed to me, I thought that it would be pleasant thing to be laid out to the sun and the stars, and to be so promptly, neatly, and openly picked and cleansed; to be made one with Nature and become a common component of a landscape.”

“The views were immensely wide. Everything that you saw made for greatness and freedom, and unequealled nobility.”

“The young Somali women were very inquisitive as to European customs, and listened attentively to descriptions of the manners, education, and clothes of white ladies, as if out to complete their strategic education with the knowledge of how the males of an alien race were conquered and subdued.”

“There are things which cannot be carried through even with the good will of everybody concerned.”

“There is a particular hapiness in giving a man whom you like very much, good food that you have cooked yourself.”

“When in the end, the day came on which I was going away, I learned the strange learning that things can happen which we ourselves cannot possibly imagine, either beforehand, or at the time when they are taking place, or afterwards when we look back on them.”

“When the gods want to punish us, they grant our wishes.”

“When you have caught the rhythm of Africa, you find out that it is the same in all her music.”

“You know you are truly alive when you’re living among lions.”

“For really, dreaming is the well-mannered people's way of committing suicide.”

“The cure for anything is salt water: tears, sweat or the sea.”

“The real difference between God and human beings, he thought, was that God cannot stand continuance. No sooner has he created a season of a year, or a time of the day, than he wishes for something quite different, and sweeps it all away.

No sooner was one a young man, and happy at that, than the nature of things would rush one into marriage, martyrdom or old age. And human beings cleave to the existing state of things.

All their lives they are striving to hold the moment fast. Their art itself is nothing but the attempt to catch by all means the one particular moment, one light, the momentary beauty of one woman or one flower, and make it everlasting.”

“Truth, like time, is an idea arising from, and dependent upon, human intercourse.”