And were my faith so strong that it could move mountains, that is the mountain that I would make come to me. Isak Dinesen More Quotes by Isak Dinesen More Quotes From Isak Dinesen 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. Isak Dinesen housegrievingpeople To be a person is to have a story to tell. Isak Dinesen public-speakingstorytellingstories Coffee, according to the women of Denmark, is to the body what the Word of the Lord is to the soul. Isak Dinesen coffeebodysoul Write a little every day, without hope, without despair. Isak Dinesen despairwritinglittles 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 farewelllonelinessmen What is life when you come to think upon it, but a most excellent, accurately set, infinitely complicated machine for turning fat playful puppies into old mangy blind dogs, and proud war horses into skinny nags, and succulent young boys, to whom the world holds great delights and terrors, into old weak men, with running eyes, who drink ground rhino-horn? Isak Dinesen horsedogrunning I think all sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them. Isak Dinesen bearablesufferingstories It is a sad hardship and slavery to people who live in towns, that in their movements they know of one dimension only; they walk along the line as if they were led on a string. The transition from the line to the plane into the two dimensions, when you wander across a field or through a wood, is a splendid liberation to the slaves, like the French Revolution. But in the air you are taken into the full freedom of the three dimensions; after long ages of exile and dreams the homesick heart throws itself into the arms of space. Isak Dinesen takendreamheart I had seen a herd of Buffalo, one hundred and twenty-nine of them, come out of the morning mist under a copper sky, one by one, as if the dark and massive, iron-like animals with the mighty horizontally swung horns were not approaching, but were being created before my eyes and sent out as they were finished. Isak Dinesen eyedarkmorning One does not travel by plane. One is merely sent, like a parcel. Isak Dinesen parcelplanesdoe Man reaches the highest point of lovableness at 12 to 17 - to get it back, in a second flowering, at the age of 70 to 90 Isak Dinesen floweringteenagemen A poet's mission is to make others confound fiction and reality in order to render them, for an hour, mysteriously happy. Isak Dinesen orderrealityfiction I have before seen other countries, in the same manner, give themselves to you when you are about to leave them. Isak Dinesen other-countriesgivingcountry There is a particular hapiness in giving a man whom you like very much, good food that you have cooked yourself. Isak Dinesen good-foodgivingmen Truth is for tailors and shoemakers. I, on the contrary, have always held that the Lord has a penchant for masquerades. Isak Dinesen tailorstruth-islord There is hardly any other sphere in which prejudice and superstition of the most horrific kind have been retained so long as in that of women, and just as it must have been an inexpressable relief for humanity when it shook off the burden of religious prejudice and superstition, I think it will be truly glorious when women become real people and have the whole world open before them. Isak Dinesen realreligiousthinking As we grow old we slowly come to believe that everything will turn out badly for us, and that failure is in the nature of things; but then we do not much mind what happens to us one way or the other. Isak Dinesen mindbelieveway We invent the past and remember the future. Isak Dinesen imaginationrememberpast A great artist is never poor. Isak Dinesen great-artistpoorartist I do not think that I could ever really love a woman who had not, at one time or another, been up on a broomstick. Isak Dinesen broomsticksone-timethinking
