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 More Quotes by Isak Dinesen More Quotes From Isak Dinesen Be unswervingly and eternally loyal to the story. Isak Dinesen loyal loyalty stories Up in this air you breathed easily, drawing in a vital assurance and lightness of heart. In the highlands you woke up in the morning and thought: Here I am, where I ought to be. Isak Dinesen air heart morning 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 silence animal people I had seen a herd of Elephant travelling through dense native forest ... pacing along as if they had an appointment at the end of the world. Isak Dinesen end-of-the-world elephants forests The present is always unsettled, no one has had time to contemplate it in tranquillity . I was a painter before I was a writer and a painter never wants the subject right under his nose; he wants to stand back and study a landscape with half-closed eyes. Isak Dinesen eye half noses Through all the world there goes one long cry from the heart of the artist: Give me a chance to do my best. Isak Dinesen artist heart long It is more than their land that you take away from the people, whose native land you take. It is their past as well, their roots and their identity. If you take away the things that they have been used to see and will be expecting to see, you may, in a way, as well take their eyes. Isak Dinesen land eye past I start with a tingle, a kind of feeling of the story I will write. Then come the characters, and they take over, they make the story. Isak Dinesen feelings writing character When we are young the idea of death or failure is intolerable to us; even the possibility of ridicule we cannot bear. But we have also an unconquerable faith in our own stars, and in the impossibility of anything venturing to go against us. 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. In this way a balance is obtained. Isak Dinesen stars believe ideas I do not know if you remember the tale of the girl who saves the ship under mutiny by sitting on the powder barrel with her lighted torch... and all the time knowing that it is empty? This has seemed to me a charming image of the women of my time. There they were, keeping the world in order... by sitting on the mystery of life, and knowing themselves that there was no mystery. Isak Dinesen girl knowing order I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills. Isak Dinesen hills farms feet To set sail somewhere is more important than life itself. Isak Dinesen sail important You must not think that I feel, in spite of it having ended in such defeat, that my "life has been wasted" here, or that I would exchange it with that of anyone I know. Isak Dinesen defeat life thinking Man and woman are two locked caskets, of which each contains the key to the other. Isak Dinesen keys men two What is man, when you come to think upon him, but a minutely set, ingenious machine for turning with infinite artfulness, the red wine of Shiraz into urine? Isak Dinesen wine men thinking There are many ways to the recognition of truth, and Burgundy is one of them. Isak Dinesen recognition wine way The air was cold to the lungs, the long grass dripping wet, and the herbs on it gave out their spiced astringent scent. In a little while on all sides the Cicada would begin to sing. The grass was me , and the air, the distant invisible mountains were me, the tired oxen were me. I breathed with the slight night-wind in the thorn trees. Isak Dinesen long-grass tired night The Cicada sing an endless song in the long grass, smells run along the earth and falling stars run over the sky, like tears over a cheek. You are the privileged person to whom everything is taken. The Kings of Tarshish shall bring gifts. Isak Dinesen kings running song And were my faith so strong that it could move mountains, that is the mountain that I would make come to me. Isak Dinesen mountain strong moving Where the storyteller is loyal, eternally and unswervingly loyal to the story, there, in the end, silence will speak. Where the story has been betrayed, silence is but emptiness. But we, the faithful, when we have spoken our last word, will hear the voice of silence. Isak Dinesen faithful voice silence
