Karen Blixen quotes - page 3

I had time after time watched the progression across the plain of the giraffe, in their queer, inimitable, vegetative gracefulness as if it were not a herd of animals but a family of rare, long stemmed spackled gigantic flowers slowly advancing. It was, in giant size, the border of a very old, infinitely precious Persian carpet in the dyes of green, yellow and black-brown. (Karen Blixen)
It was Africa distilled up through six thousand feet like the strong and refined essence of a continent... The views were immensely wide - everything that you saw made for greatness and freedom, and unequalled nobility. View quote
Karen Blixen
Isak Dinesen is also known for this quote. View quote
Karen Blixen
A fashion always has some meaning. The fashion, or style, of renunciation really meant something then. It was inspired by the war, or it ran parallel to the war, and could not have been conceived without the war... It stood for the will to sacrifice - if the unlimited will to throw away can be called the will to sacrifice. It was arrogant and elegantly cynical - because it is arrogant and elegantly cynical when the symbol of the élite becomes hunger. The superfluous here threw away the necessary quite simply. In its inner essence it was the disdain of death. View quote
Karen Blixen
You can't change the past, but you can ruin the present by worrying about the future. View quote
Karen Blixen
You know you are truly alive when you're living among lions. View quote
Karen Blixen
Up in this air you breathed easily, drawing in a vital assurance and lightness of heart. In the highlands you woke up in the morning and thought: Here I am, where I ought to be. View quote
Karen Blixen
When soon I sail from here, I may again run into such a storm as the one in Kvasefjord. But this time I shall clearly understand that it is not a play in the theatre, but it is death. and it seems too that then, in the last moment before we go down, I can in in all truth be yours... View quote
Karen Blixen
The Cicada sing an endless song in the long grass, smells run along the earth and falling stars run over the sky, like tears over a cheek. You are the privileged person to whom everything is taken. The Kings of Tarshish shall bring gifts. View quote
Karen Blixen
I start with a tingle, a kind of feeling of the story I will write. Then come the characters, and they take over, they make the story. View quote
Karen Blixen
A visitor is a friend, he brings news, good or bad, which is bread to the hungry minds in lonely places. A real friend who comes to the house is a heavenly messenger, who brings the panis angelorum. (Karen Blixen)
Through all the world there goes one long cry from the heart of the artist: Give me a chance to do my best. View quote
Karen Blixen
If I know a song of Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back, of the plows in the fields and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me? View quote
Karen Blixen
I know of a cure for everything: salt water... in one way or the other. Sweat, or tears, or the salt sea. View quote
Karen Blixen
Perhaps he knew, as I did not, that the Earth was made round so that we would not see too far down the road. View quote
Karen Blixen
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. View quote
Karen Blixen
Let physicians and confectioners and servants in the great houses be judged by what they have done, and even by what they have meant to do; the great people themselves are judged by what they are. View quote
Karen Blixen
Taciturn old people received the gift of tongues; ears that for years had been almost deaf were opened to it. Time itself had merged into eternity. Long after midnight the windows of the house shone like gold, and golden song flowed out into the winter air. View quote
Karen Blixen
The true aristocracy and the true proletariat of the world are both in understanding with tragedy. To them it is the fundamental principle of God, and the key, the minor key, to existence. View quote
Karen Blixen
The vain illusions of this earth had dissolved before their eyes like smoke, and they had seen the universe as it really is. They had been given one hour of the millennium. View quote
Karen Blixen
I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills. The Equator runs across these highlands, a hundred miles to the North, and the farm lay at an altitude of over six thousand feet. In the day-time you felt that you had got high up, near to the sun, but the early mornings and evenings were limpid and restful, and the nights were cold. (Karen Blixen)
The consolations of the vulgar are bitter in the royal ear. Let physicians and confectioners and servants in the great houses be judged by what they have done, and even by what they have meant to do; the great people themselves are judged by what they are. I have been told that lions, trapped and shut up in cages, grieve from shame more than from hunger. View quote
Karen Blixen
The lime trees were in bloom. But in the early morning only a faint fragrance drifted through the garden, an airy message, an aromatic echo of the dreams during the short summer night. View quote
Karen Blixen
You must not think that I feel, in spite of it having ended in such defeat, that my 'life has been wasted' here, or that I would exchange it with that of anyone I know. View quote
Karen Blixen
The true aristocracy and the true proletariat of the world are both in understanding with tragedy. To them it is the fundamental principle of God, and the key, the minor key, to existence. They differ in this way from the bourgeoisie of all classes, who deny tragedy, who will not tolerate it, and to whom the word tragedy means in itself unpleasantness. View quote
Karen Blixen