Ananya > Ananya's Quotes

“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.”
― Karen Blixen, Out of Africa

“Camping-places fix themselves in your mind as if you had spent long periods of your life in them. You will remember the curve of your waggon track in the grass of the plain, like the features of a friend.”
― Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa

“I turned to the animal world from the world of men; my heart was heavy with the tragedy of the night.”
― Karen Blixen, Out of Africa

“Come now and let us go and risk our lives unnecessarily. For if they have got any value at all it is this that they gave got none. Frei lebt wer sterben kann.”
― Karen Blixen, Out of Africa

“Within this enclosed women's world, so to say, behind the walls and fortifications of it, I felt the presence of a great ideal, without which the garrison would not have carried on so gallantly; the idea of a Millennium when women were to reign supreme in the world. The old mother at such times would take on a new shape, and sit enthroned as a massive dark symbol of that mighty female deity who had existed in old ages, before the time of the prophet's God. Of her they never lost sight, but they were, before all, practical people with an eye on the needs of the moment and with infinite readiness of resource.”
― Karen Blixen, Out of Africa

“After being told that the Professor “found it possible to believe for a moment in the existence of God,” Isak thought, “Has it been possible to God, at Mount Elgon, to believe for a moment in the existence of Professor Landgreen?”
― Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa

“It is more than their land that you take away from the people, whose Native land you take. It is their past as well, their roots and their identity. If you take away the things that they have been used to see, and will be expecting to see, you may, in a way, as well take their eyes. This applies in a higher degree to the primitive people than to the civilized, and animals again will wander back a long way, and go through danger and sufferings, to recover their lost identity, in the surroundings that they know.”
― Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa

“The plan which I had formed in the beginning, to give in in all minor matters, so as to keep what was of vital importance to me, had turned out to be a failure. I had consented to give away my possessions one by one, as a kind of ransom for my own life, but by the time that I had nothing left, I myself was the lightest thing of all, for fate to get rid of.”
― Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa

“Eros colpisce come il fabbro con il martello
sprizzando scintille dalla sfida.
Hai spento il mio cuore tra lacrime e lamenti,
come si spegne un fuoco incandescente del ruscello.”
― Karen Blixen, Out of Africa

“Why the Kikuyu, who personally have so little fear of death, should be so terrified to touch a corpse, while the white people, who are afraid to die, handle the dead easily, I do not know. Here once more you feel their reality to be different from our realities.”
― Karen Blixen, Out of Africa

“[Natives] 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.”
― Karen Blixen, Out of Africa

“Therefore does the world love the Swedes, because in the midst of their woes they can draw it all to their bosom and be so galant that they shine a long way away.”
― Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa

“hornbill was another visitor to the farm, and came there to”
― Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa

“Iš visų civilizacijos išradimų čiabuviai daugiausia vertina degtukus, dviratį ir šautuvą, jei jais žavisi, tačiau ir jų nedvejodami atsisakys, jei tik užeis kalba apie karvę.”
― Karen Blixen, Out of Africa

“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 color that I have 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?”
― Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa

“Когда вы забираете у людей землю, вы лишаете их не только родной земли. Вы отнимаете у них прошлое, обрубаете корни, лишаете их лица. Отнимая у них то, что они привыкли видеть, то, что они ожидают увидеть, вы могли бы заодно, образно говоря, отнять у них и глаза. Это в большей степени относится к примитивням народам, чем к цивилизованным, ведь даже животные стремятся обратно в знакомые места, преодолевая громадные расстояния, пренебрегая опасностями и страданиями, только бы вернуть себе потерянное самосознание, свое лицо.”
― Karen Blixen, Out of Africa

“The thing which in the waking world comes nearest to a dream is night in a big town, where nobody knows one, or the African night. There too is infinite freedom: it is there that things are going on, destinies are made round you, there is activity to all sides, and it is none of your concern.”
― Karen Blixen, Out of Africa

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

“You know you are truly alive when you’re living among lions.”
― Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa

“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...”
― Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa

“I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills.”
― Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa

“There is a particular hapiness in giving a man whom you like very much, good food that you have cooked yourself.”
― Karen Blixen, Out of Africa

“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.”
― Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa

“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.”
― Karen Blixen, Out of Africa

“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.”
― Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa

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

“Here I am, where I ought to be.”
― Isak Dinesen ( Karen Blixen ), Out of Africa

“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.”
― Karen Blixen, Out of Africa

“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.”
― Karen Blixen, Out of Africa

“In a world of fools, I was, I think, to him one of the greater fools.”
― Karen Blixen, Out of Africa