Isak Dinesen · 462 pages
Rating: (9K votes)
“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.”
― Isak Dinesen, quote from Out of Africa / Shadows on the Grass
“Circumstances can have a motive force by which they bring about events without aid of human imagination or apprehension. On such occasions you yourself keep in touch with what is going on by attentively following it from moment to moment, like a blind person who is being led, and who places one foot in front of the other cautiously but unwittingly. Things are happening to you, and you feel them happening, but except for this one fact, you have no connection with them, and no key to the cause or meaning of them. [...] - a passage outside the range of imagination, but within the range of experience.”
― Isak Dinesen, quote from Out of Africa / Shadows on the Grass
“If I know a song of Africa,—I thought,—of the Giraffe, and the African new moon lying on her back, of the ploughs in the fields, and the sweaty faces of the coffee-pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Would the air over the plain quiver with a colour that I had had on, or the children invent a game in which my name was, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or would the eagles of Ngong look out for me? I”
― Isak Dinesen, quote from Out of Africa / Shadows on the Grass
“When I heard this I became very sad, but I thought that now I would indeed have to take him with me so that the Virgin herself could enlighten him.”
― Isak Dinesen, quote from Out of Africa / Shadows on the Grass
“And I had by now become used to the idea of witchcraft, it seemed a reasonable thing, so many things are about, at night, in Africa.”
― Isak Dinesen, quote from Out of Africa / Shadows on the Grass
“I have read or been told that in a book of etiquette of the seventeenth century the very first rule forbids you to tell your dreams to other people, since they cannot possibly be of interest to them.”
― Isak Dinesen, quote from Out of Africa / Shadows on the Grass
Isak Dinesen
Born place: in Rungsted, Denmark
Born date April 17, 1885
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“It’s too late,” I tell him, even as my heart is shattering inside my chest at the idea of not seeing him again. “It’s never too late, Eva, I promise. I’ll wait for you, baby, please, just let me explain.” I’m shaking my head at him as a truck passes in front of us and the last thing I hear is, “Evie, I love you, remember that please.” And then the truck has gone and so has Ben. Well, I have.”
― Natalie Ward, quote from Losing Me Finding You
“It was my mother, my frequent co-conspirator in the kitchen and my conduit to our past, who suggested the means to convey this epic disjunction, this unruly collision of collectivist myths and personal antimyths. We would reconstruct every decade of Soviet history - from the prequel 1910s to the postscript present day - through the prism of food. Together, we'd embark on a yearlong journey unlike any other: eating and cooking our way through decade after decade of Soviet life, using her kitchen and dining room as a time machine and an incubator of memories. Memories of wartime rationing cards and grotesque shared kitchens in communal apartments. Of Lenin's bloody grain requisitioning and Stalin's table manners. Of Khrushchev's kitchen debates and Gorbachev's disastrous antialcohol policies. Of food as the focal point of our everyday lives, and - despite all the deprivations and shortages - of compulsive hospitality and poignant, improbable feasts.”
― Anya von Bremzen, quote from Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing
“أوقعتني الشجاعة في مأزق لم أنجو منه إلا بمزيد من هذه الشجاعة”
― quote from The Secret Life of Saeed: The Pessoptimist
“Whenever we look around the world, we see smart leaders – in politics, in business, in media – making terrible decisions. What they're lacking is not IQ, but wisdom. Which is no surprise; it has never been harder to tap into our inner wisdom, because in order to do so, we have to disconnect from all our omnipresent devices – our gadgets, our screens, our social media – and reconnect with ourselves.”
― Arianna Huffington, quote from Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder
“«Si todo parece ir según el plan, intenta encontrar algo que hayas pasado por alto y que podría mandarlo todo al garete».”
― Jack Campbell, quote from Valiant
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