If your hunch proves a good one, you were inspired; if it proves bad, you are guilty of yielding to thoughtless impulse. Beryl Markham More Quotes by Beryl Markham More Quotes From Beryl Markham Denys (Finch-Hatton) has been written about before and he will be written about again. If someone has not already said it, someone will say that he was a great man who never achieved greatness, and this will not only be trite, but wrong; he was a great man who never achieved arrogance. Beryl Markham greatness arrogance men A map says to you. Read me carefully, follow me closely, doubt me not... I am the earth in the palm of your hand. Beryl Markham maps doubt hands 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. Beryl Markham distance clouds years But the soul of Africa, its integrity, the slow inexorable pulse of its life, is its own and of such singular rhythm that no outsider, unless steeped from childhood in its endless, even beat, can ever hope to experience it, except only as a bystander might experience a Masai war dance knowing nothing of its music nor the meaning of its steps. Beryl Markham knowing-nothing integrity war I suppose if there were a part of the world in which mastodon still lived, somebody would design a new gun, and men, in their eternal impudence, would hunt mastodon as they now hunt elephant. Impudence seems to be the word. At least David and Goliath were of the same species, but, to an elephant, a man can only be a midge with a deathly sting. Beryl Markham elephants gun men Roots of the weed sucked first life from the genesis of earth and hold the essence of it still. Always the weed returns; the cultured plant retreats before it. Beryl Markham weed essence roots Conformation ... but not much else. Breeding, but too small a heart. You saw it everywhere - in men, in horses, and in women. Beryl Markham horse heart men That's what makes death so hard--unsatisfied curiosity Beryl Markham unsatisfied hard curiosity In Africa people learn to serve each other. They live on credit balances of little favors that they give and may, one day, ask to have returned. Beryl Markham balance giving people In the family of continents, Africa is the silent, the brooding sister, courted for centuries by knight-errant empires - rejecting them one by one and severally, because she is too sage and a little bored with the importunity of it all. Beryl Markham bored knights littles We fly, but we have not 'conquered' the air. Nature presides in all her dignity, permitting us the study and the use of such of her forces as we may understand. It is when we presume to intimacy, having been granted only tolerance, that the harsh stick fall across our impudent knuckles and we rub the pain, staring upward, startled by our ignorance. Beryl Markham pain nature fall There are all kinds of silences and each of them means a different thing Beryl Markham different silence mean The way to find a needle in a haystack is to sit down. Beryl Markham needle-in-a-haystack needles way One day the stars will be as familiar to each man as the landmarks, the curves, and the hills on the road that leads to his door, and one day that will be an airborne life. Beryl Markham future stars men You can live a lifetime and at the end of it, know more about other people than you know about yourself. Beryl Markham lifetime people knowledge To an eagle or to an owl or to a rabbit, man must seem a masterful and yet a forlorn animal; he has but two friends. In his almost universal unpopularity he points out, with pride, that these two are the dog and the horse. He believes, with an innocence peculiar to himself, that they are equally proud of this alleged confraternity. He says, 'Look at my two noble friends -- they are dumb, but they are loyal.' I have for years suspected that they are only tolerant. Beryl Markham horse dog believe What a child does not know and does not want to know of race and colour and class, he learns soon enough as he grows to see each man flipped inexorably into some predestined groove like a penny or a sovereign in a banker's rack. Kibii, the Nandi boy, was my good friend. Arab Ruta (the same boy grown to manhood), wo sits before me, is my good friend, but the handclasp will be shorter, the smile will not be so eager on his lips, and though the path is for a while the same, he will walk behind me now, when once, in the simplicity of our nonage, we walked together. Beryl Markham good-friend boys children The abhorrence of loneliness is as natural as wanting to live at all. Beryl Markham deck-of-cards loneliness natural It is absurd for a man to kill an elephant. It is not brutal, it is not heroic, and certainly it is not easy; it is just one of those preposterous things that men do like putting a dam across a great river, one tenth of whose volume could engulf the whole of mankind without disturbing the domestic life of a single catfish. Beryl Markham elephants animal men What a child does not know and does not want to know of race and color and class, he learns soon enough as he grows to see each man flipped inexorably into some predestined groove like a penny or a sovereign in a banker's rack. Beryl Markham race men children
