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. Isak Dinesen More Quotes by Isak Dinesen More Quotes From Isak Dinesen I have a feeling that wherever I may be in the future, I will be wondering whether there is rain at Ngong. Isak Dinesen rain feelings may If there were one more thing I could do, it would be to go on safari once again. Isak Dinesen safari would-be goes-on There is something about Safari life that makes you forget all your sorrows Isak Dinesen safari sorrow forget There is something about safari life that makes you forget all your sorrows and feel as if you had drunk half a bottle of champagne - bubbling over with heartfelt gratitude for being alive. One only feels really free when one can go in whatever direction one pleases over the plains, to get to the river at sundown and pitch one's camp, with the knowledge that one can fall asleep beneath other trees, with another view before one, the next night. Isak Dinesen gratitude night fall The best of my nature reveals itself in play, and play is sacred. Isak Dinesen sacred play There was a place in the Hills, on the first ridge in the Game Reserve, that I myself at the time when I thought that I was to live and die in Africa, had pointed out to Denys as my future burial-place. In the evening, while we sat and looked at the hills from my house, he remarked that then he would like to be buried there himself as well. Since then, sometimes when we drove out in the hills, Denys had said: "Let us drive as far as our graves. Isak Dinesen games house firsts The flamingoes are the most delicately colored of all the African birds, pink and red like a flying twig of an oleander bush. They have incredibly long legs and bizarre and recherché curves of their necks and bodies, as if from some exquisite traditional prudery they were making all attitudes and movements in life as difficult as possible. Isak Dinesen curves attitude long 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. Isak Dinesen dream sides lying The lime trees were in bloom. But in the early morning only a faint fragrance drifted through the garden, an airy message, an aromatic echo of the dreams during the short summer night. Isak Dinesen summer dream morning Then Martine said: "So yuo will be poor now all your life, Babette?" Poor?" said Babette. She smiled as if to herself. "No, I shall never be poor. I told you that I am a great artist. A great artist, Mesdames, is never poor.We have something, Mesdames, of which other people know nothing. Isak Dinesen poor artist people During the first quarter of the last century, seaside resorts became the fashion, even in those countries of Northern Europe within the minds of whose people the sea had hitherto held the role of the devil, the cold and voracious hereditary foe of humanity. Isak Dinesen fashion country book To me, the explanation of life seems to be its melody, its pattern. And I feel in life such an infinite, truly inconceivable fantasy. Isak Dinesen patterns fantasy infinite 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 left fate I have read true piety defined as: loving one’s destiny unconditionally – and there is something in it. That is to say: I think that in a way this sort of “religiousness” is the condition for real happiness. Isak Dinesen destiny real thinking Now, looking back on my life in Africa, I feel that it might altogether be described as the existence of a person who had come from a rushed and noisy world, into a still country. Isak Dinesen might country world It is not the visions but the activity which makes you happy, and the joy and glory of the flier is the flight itself. Isak Dinesen aviation vision joy In Africa, when you pick up a book worth reading, out of the deadly consignments which good ships are always being made to carry out all the way from Europe, you read it as an author would like his book to be read, praying to God that he may have it in him to go on as beautifully as he has begun. Your mind runs, transported, upon a fresh deep green track. Isak Dinesen reading running book If only I could so live and so serve the world that after me there should never again be birds in cages. Isak Dinesen cages animal bird Do you know...what I think is a great pity? It is this: that we have all become such skeptics that we hardly believe what our pious grandmothers told us. Isak Dinesen grandmother believe thinking It is when people are told their own thoughts that they think they are being insulted. Isak Dinesen truth people thinking
