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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“We all have the capacity to find the will to do what must be done - even when that which we must do terrifies us most. Remember this.”
― Jessica Shirvington, quote from Enticed
“All she heard next of the strange conversation behind the sofa was Mrs. Pendragon saying something about sending Twinkle (or was his name Howl?) to bed without supper and Twinkle daring her to 'jutht TRY it.”
― Diana Wynne Jones, quote from House of Many Ways
“And so they parted, she to the east, and he to the west.
The test they had agreed upon, however, was utterly unnecessary. They should never have undertaken it, because they really and truly were each other's 100% perfect lovers, and it was a miracle that they had ever met. But it was impossible for them to know this, young as they were. The cold, indifferent waves of fate proceeded to toss them unmercifully.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from The Elephant Vanishes
“I am no longer surprised by anything and I feel no distress at seeing my complete helplessness. On the contrary, I glory in it and every day I expect to discover fresh flaws in myself. In fact, this revelation of my nothingness does me much more good than being enlightened on matters of faith.”
― Thérèse de Lisieux, quote from Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux
“[T]he experience of mystery comes not from expecting it but through yielding all your programs, because your programs are based on fear and desire. Drop them and the radiance comes. (16)”
― Joseph Campbell, quote from Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor
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