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 Your own self, your personality and existence are reflected within the mind of each of the people whom you meet, ... into a likeness, a caricature of yourself, which still lives on and appears to be, in some way, the truth about you. Even a flattering picture is... a lie. Isak Dinesen self lying people Here and there, in some older houses, old faded daguerreotypes still hang on the walls... They seem to us to be very simple... compared with the artistic and skillful portraits made in later days... Here was a photograph that at one time had been the last word, a very modern portrait... Today it is just a part of cultural history. The small yellowed surface has acquired depth, an admonishing perspective. We hold in our hand a symbol of the structure and ideology of an epoch. Isak Dinesen wall simple hands the true art of the gods is the comic. The comic is a condescension of the divine to the world of man; it is the sublime vision, which cannot be studied, but must ever be celestially granted. In the comic the gods see their own being reflected as in a mirror, and while the tragic poet is bound by strict laws, they will allow the comic artist a freedom as unlimited as their own. Isak Dinesen law men art our longing is our pledge, and blessed are the homesick, for they shall come home. Isak Dinesen longing blessed home death - a passage outside the range of imagination, but within the range of experience. Isak Dinesen range passages imagination I arrived at the conviction that we should, more easily and more thoroughly than we now do or ever have done, understand the nature and the laws of the Cosmos if we would from the beginning recognize its originator and upholder as being of the female sex. Isak Dinesen god law sex through the loveliness and power of her dream world she was now, in her old frock and botched shoes, very likely the loveliest, mightiest and most dangerous person on earth Isak Dinesen shoes dream world There is something strangely determinate and fatal about a single shot in the night. It is as if someone had cried a message to you in one word, and would not repeat it. Isak Dinesen messages sound night It is not a bad thing in a tale that you understand only half of it. Isak Dinesen tales half stories some travelers are drawn forward by a goal lying before them in the way iron is drawn to the magnet. Others are driven on by a force lying behind them. In such a way the bowstring makes the arrow fly. Isak Dinesen iron lying travel Truth, like time, is an idea arising from, and dependent upon, human intercourse. Isak Dinesen intercourse truth ideas And I had by now become used to the idea of witchcraft, it seemed a reasonable thing, so many things are about, at night, in Africa. Isak Dinesen used night ideas Some people have an unconquerable love of riddles. They may have the chance of listening to plain sense, or to such wisdom that explains life; but no, they must go and work their brains over a riddle, just because they do not understand what it means. Isak Dinesen brain mean people I belong to an ancient, idle, wild and useless tribe, perhaps I am even one of the last members of it, who for many thousands of years, in all countries and parts of the world, has, now and again, stayed for a time among the hard-working honest people in real life, and sometimes has thus been fortunate enough to create another sort of reality for them, which in some way or another, has satisfied them. I am a storyteller. Isak Dinesen hard-work real country I will not let thee go, except thou bless me. Isak Dinesen prevailing-prayer bless thee Love won't be tampered with, love won't go away. Push it to one side and it creeps to the other. Isak Dinesen I think these 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 around worrying about are of no importance whatsoever. Isak Dinesen
