West with the Night

by Beryl Markham

Boredom, like hookworm, is endemic.

is really this that makes death so hard — curiosity unsatisfied.

‘A domesticated lion is only an unnatural lion — and whatever is unnatural is untrustworthy.’

horse-breeders are realists and every farmer is a midwife. There is no time for mystery. There is only time for patience and care, and hope that what is born is worthy and good.

‘God makes fat birds and small birds, trees that are wide and trees that are thin, like wattle. He makes big kernels and little kernels. I am a big kernel. One does not argue with God.’

have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesterdays are buried deep — leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance. The cloud clears as you enter it. I have learned this, but like everyone, I learned it late.

After that, work and hope. But never hope more than you work.’

I am incapable of a profound remark on the workings of Destiny. It seems to get up early and go to bed very late, and it acts most generously toward the people who nudge it off the road whenever they meet it.

If a man has any greatness in him, it comes to light, not in one flamboyant hour, but in the ledger of his daily work.

Life had a different shape; it had new branches and some of the old branches were dead. It had followed the constant pattern of discard and growth that all lives follow. Things had passed, new things had come.

The essence of elephant-hunting is discomfort in such lavish proportions that only the wealthy can afford it.

“Life is life and fun is fun, but it’s all so quiet when the goldfish die.” ’

had never realized before how quickly men deteriorate without razors and clean shirts. They are like potted plants that go to weed unless they are pruned and tended daily.

‘I suppose if I ask what happens if I don’t manage, you’ll tell me how quiet it gets when the goldfish die?’ Blix grinned. ‘Terribly quiet,’ he said, ‘but so peaceful.’

‘A wise man is not more than a woman — unless he is also brave.’

It is no good telling yourself that one day you will wish you had never made that change; it is no good anticipating regrets. Every tomorrow ought not to resemble every yesterday. Still, I look at my yesterdays for months past, and find them as good a lot of yesterdays as anybody might want.

The scheme of things was a shabby scheme.

Africa is never the same to anyone who leaves it and returns again. It is not a land of change, but it is a land of moods and its moods are numberless. It is not fickle, but because it has mothered not only men, but races, and cradled not only cities, but civilizations — and seen them die, and seen new ones born again — Africa can be dispassionate, indifferent, warm, or cynical, replete with the weariness of too much wisdom.

And still it was gone. Seeing it again could not be living it again. You can always rediscover an old path and wander over it, but the best you can do then is to say, ‘Ah, yes, I know this turning!’ — or remind yourself that, while you remember that unforgettable valley, the valley no longer remembers you.

You can live a lifetime and, at the end of it, know more about other people than you know about yourself.