Deborah Tubb > Deborah's Quotes

“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? Will the air over the plain quiver with a color that I have had on, or the children invent a game in which my name is, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or will the eagles of the Ngong Hills look out for me?”
― Isak Dinesen

“All sorrows can be borne if you can put them into a story.”
― Isak Dinesen

“Difficult times have helped me to understand better than before how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way, and that so many things that one goes worrying about are of no importance whatsoever.”
― Isak Dinesen

“God made the world round so we would never be able to see too far down the road.”
― Isak Dinesen

“Of all the idiots I have met in my life, and the Lord knows they have not been few or little, I think that I have been the biggest.”
― Isak Dinesen

“It's an odd feeling-farewell-there is some envy in it. Men go off to be tested for courage and if we're tested at all, it's for patience, for doing without, for how well we can endure loneliness.”
― Isak Dinesen

“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

“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

“our longing is our pledge, and blessed are the homesick, for they shall come home.”
― Isak Dinesen, Babette's Feast and Other Anecdotes of Destiny

“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, Out of Africa / Shadows on the Grass

“It is difficult to restrain admirers of Shakespeare once they have begun to speak of him.”
― Karen Blixen

“Much which is unworthy in human life might be avoided if people would only accustom themselves to talking in verse”
― Isak Dinesen, Babette's Feast and Other Anecdotes of Destiny

“The barbarian loves his own pride, and hates, or disbelieves in, the pride of others. I will be a civilized being, I will love the pride of my adversaries, of my servants, and my lover; and my house shall be, in all humility, in the wilderness a civilized place.”
― Karen Blixen, Out of Africa

“Quando gli dei vogliono punirci, avverano i nostri desideri.”
― Karen Blixen, Out of Africa

“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

“Dr Sass…maintained that in paradise, until the time of the fall, the whole world was flat, the back-curtain of the Lord, and that it was the devil who invented a third dimension. Thus are the words ‘straight’, ‘square’, and ‘flat’ the words of noblemen, but the apple was an orb, and the sin of our first parents, the attempt at getting around God. I myself much prefer the art of painting to sculpture”
― Isak Dinesen

“Para ser feliz, hace falta coraje.”
― Isak Dinesen

“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”
― Karen Blixen, Out of Africa: and Shadows on the Grass

“Msabu's bleeding. She does not have this ox. This lion is hungry. He does not have this ox. This wagon is heavy. It doesn't have this ox. God is happy, msabu. He plays with us.”
― Karen Blixen