Beryl Quotes & Sayings

Spite
If we can't quite live beyond our bodies,
we should, as a matter of spite, live beyond our income. — Beryl Dov

Nothing is so sad as the injustices of old age. — Beryl Bainbridge

Simple Pleasures
Life is all about the simple pleasures
so I passed on the multilingual GPS option
on the my Bentley Continental GTZ Zagato
and felt the better man for it. — Beryl Dov

No one had experiences any more, only traumas. — Beryl Bainbridge

Mrs MacFarley called the valley the Glen. She called the light at early evening the gloaming. She liked to go Roaming in the Gloaming in the Glen. — Beryl Bainbridge

Let us follow Ezekiel's eyewitness account a little further: Now as I beheld the living creatures, behold one wheel upon the earth by the living creatures, with his four faces. The appearance of the wheels and their work was like unto the color of a beryl: and they four had one likeness: and their appearance and their work was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel. When they went they went upon their four sides: and they turned not as they went. As for their rings, they were so high that they were dreadful; and their rings were full of eyes round about them four. And when the living creatures went, the wheels went by them: and when the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up. — Erich Von Daniken

The mechanistic age impended over an horizon not hostile, but silently indifferent. — Beryl Markham

Mary Lovell's Straight On Till Morning: The Life of Beryl Markham was the first biography to bring Beryl to light, in 1987, and her pioneering efforts and careful research have been crucial to my own and other writers' abilities to imagine Beryl's life. Mary Lovell also compiled Beryl Markham's stories in The Splendid Outcast, a collection that wouldn't have been available otherwise, and for that — Paula McLain

Indra Haiku
Diddling Ahala,
Indra, the Thousand-Eyed God,
flecked with vaginas. — Beryl Dov

Georgia State Motto
Wisdom, justice, and moderation.
If the heat don't kill you the stupidity will. — Beryl Dov

Good Egg [10w]
Picking up the pieces is the responsibilty of the egg. — Beryl Dov

All the science of flying has been captured in the breadth of an instrument board, but not the religion of it. — Beryl Markham

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

Some people find it comfortable to go through life on their knees, and good luck to them, but I prefer to keep my spine in the position nature intended. — Beryl Bainbridge

Each humid, tropic day is stillborn, and does not breathe, however lustily pregnant the night that gave it birth. — Beryl Markham

I'm not a rock star, I'm not Seane Corne or Shiva Rea or Rodney Yee or Baron (Baptiste) or John Friend, and thank God, because there's just too much risk of getting hit by flying tomatoes if you stick out that much. — Beryl Bender Birch

How is it possible to bring order out of memory? — Beryl Markham

If a man has any greatness in him, it comes to light, not in one flamboyant hour, but in the ledger of his daily work. — Beryl Markham

An experience can be as startling as the first awareness of a stranger walking by your side at night. You are the stranger. — Beryl Markham

Pussies [10w]
Pussies are like parachutes ~
they work best when wide open. — Beryl Dov

The Reader [10w]
A poem cannot be greater than the mind examining it. — Beryl Dov

Show Up [10w]
I've waited for you all my life ~
show up already! — Beryl Dov

The only cities were of ice, bergs with cores of beryl, blue gems within white gems, that some said gave off an odor of almonds. — Annie Proulx

[The lion] began to contemplate me with a kind of quiet premeditation, like that of a slow-witted man fondling an unaccustomed thought. — Beryl Markham

I always tell people, I can't teach you yoga. Nobody can teach you yoga. I can't teach you to teach yoga. All I can do is teach you a set of instructions and if you follow these instructions, hopefully it will lead you to the experience of yoga. — Beryl Bender Birch

The Real Skinny behind the Big 3 Conspiracy Theories — Beryl Dov

Hey, Wait a Minute!
The best way to control a people is to create
a fascist system of government
that goes through the motions of democracy.
Hey, wait a minute!
That's called America. — Beryl Dov

You never possess a cat; you are allowed to be in a cat's life, which, of course, is a privilege. — Beryl Reid

Life's Tragedy
Making a living and making a life
are at odds. — Beryl Dov

THE ADVENTURE OF THE BERYL CORONET — Arthur Conan Doyle

She vs. Sex [10w]
"She knows everything about sex
except how to enjoy it. — Beryl Dov

finding the time to practice takes a little effort and thought. For many of us, already feeling maxed out in terms of time constraints, being told that we need to set aside more time five days a week to do something else is in itself stressful. As you make your wellness and wholeness a priority, you will find it becomes easier to protect your practice by creating a special place and time in which to work on yourself. — Beryl Bender Birch

Conformation ... but not much else. Breeding, but too small a heart. You saw it everywhere - in men, in horses, and in women. — Beryl Markham

Miss Beryl: Doesn't it bother you that you haven't done more with the life God gave you?
Sully: Not often. Now and then. — Richard Russo

Everything else you grow out of, but you never recover from childhood. — Beryl Bainbridge

Hey Diddle Diddle
You can diddle with mystery or jerk off in the unknown,
but when you're screwing with hard facts,
one of you are going to get fucked. — Beryl Dov

Silence is never so impenetrable as when the whisper of steel on paper strives to pierce it. — Beryl Markham

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

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

Religion is Existential GPS
The mind needs religious myths to navigate the world,
or it gets lost in its own sterility. — Beryl Dov

And still it was gone. Seeing it again could not be living it again. You can always rediscover an old path and wander over it, but the best yo an do then is say, 'Ah, yes, know this turning!'
or remind yourself that, while you remember that unforgettable valley, the valley no longer remembers you. — Beryl Markham

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

It seems characteristic of the mind of man that the repression of what is natural to humans must be abhorred, but that what is natural to an infinitely more natural animal must be confined within the bounds of a reason peculiar only to men
more peculiar sometimes than seems reasonable at all. — Beryl Markham

Between the Murmurs of My Heart
I kneel in awe at the altar of myself,
resonating in the realization
between the murmurs of my heart, that
'I
am
the
miracle
of
life. — Beryl Dov

We swung over the hills and over the town and back again, and I saw how a man can be master of a craft, and how a craft can be master of an element. I saw the alchemy of perspective reduce my world, and all my other life, to grains in a cup. I learned to watch, to put my trust in other hands than mine. And I learned to wander. I learned what every dreaming child needs to know
that no horizon is so far that you cannot get above it or beyond it. — Beryl Markham

Just put the stone in your pocket, then leave me in an empty room so I can gaze out at all the Edgleys and laugh. Or maybe I'll pretend to be a ghost and haunt Beryl - Echo-Gordon (Skulduggery Pleasant: Playing With Fire) — Derek Landy

To her all things are poignantly lacking - but she is incapable of desiring anything. — Beryl Markham

THE MOON was but a chin of gold
A night or two ago,
And now she turns her perfect face
Upon the world below.
Her forehead is of amplest blond;
Her cheek like beryl stone;
Her eye unto the summer dew
The likest I have known.
Her lips of amber never part;
But what must be the smile
Upon her friend she could bestow
Were such her silver will!
And what a privilege to be
But the remotest star!
For certainly her way might pass
Beside your twinkling door.
Her bonnet is the firmament,
The universe her shoe,
The stars the trinkets at her belt,
Her dimities of blue. — Emily Dickinson

Proper learning isn't just useful in society, Beryl. It can be wonderfully yours, a thing to have and keep just for you. — Paula McLain

Look at a seed in the palm of a farmer's hand. It can be blown away with a puff of breath and that is the end of it. But it holds three lives - its own, that of the man who may feed on its increase, and that of the man who lives by its culture. If the seed die, these men will not, but they may not live as they always had. They may be affected because the seed is dead; — Beryl Markham

Cold coiled through me, lacing each breath with clouded wisps of frost. There was not so much as a candle lit within the small, single room of my cottage, and delicate crystals of alabaster and beryl rimed my meagre possessions and the barren fireplace. I did not care. — Hazel Butler

Frivolous Gossip and Poetry
It's just so much frivolous gossip to dwell upon the moral merits of a poet;
what should only concern the reader is the merit of his words.
Leave moral judgments to the preachers and aesthetic judgments to the critical readers. — Beryl Dov

A man can be riddled with malaria for years on end, with its chills and its fevers and its nightmares, but if one day he sees that the water from his kidneys is black, he knows he will not leave that place again, wherever he is, or wherever he hoped to be. — Beryl Markham

I think it's really important to create spiritual revolutionaries. — Beryl Bender Birch

Acetylene
Scythe spinning slowly over your hospital bed,
Catching lashes of light with each turn,
You're slowly disappearing, lost from my sight,
As AIDs consumes you, stem to stern.

Jaw slackened, mouth open in comical pose,
Like Einstein's poster with the lolling tongue.
Gravitas gone, morphine has softened your throes,
Your opera's more Falstaff than Gotterdammerung.

I shave you, trim your overgrown nails,
I read your favorite poet, Stephen Crane.
'A rip-tooth of the sky's acetylene,'
You nod off, hearing only the rain. — Beryl Dov

FBI vs. CIA
When a person works for the FBI for 20 years and retires,
he gets a watch.
When a person works for the CIA for 20 years and retires,
he gets watched.
I know this not because I'm in law enforcement or with the NSA ~

I know this because I have HBO. — Beryl Dov

Raise Your Hand [10w]
Raise your hand to answer questions,
not to hit children. — Beryl Dov

The Dead Should Not Go Uncuddled
"Should you die and I persist,
I insist I be buried in an empty coffin
next to yours,
so you can keep it warm for me. — Beryl Dov

Rules [10w]
There are no rules
is the hardest rule to follow. — Beryl Dov

Like night, the desert is boundless, comfortless and infinite. Like night, it intrigues the mind and leads it to futility. When you have flown halfway across a desert, you experience the desperation of a sleepless man waiting for dawn which only comes when the importance of it's coming is lost. You fly forever, weary with an invariable scene, and when you are at last released from its monotony, you remember nothing of it because there was nothing there. — Beryl Markham

Why Your Penis is a Gift
Think of the past as your left pocket,
the future as your right pocket ~
which leaves your penis as the present. — Beryl Dov

Toombo. Look at the roundness of your belly. Look at the heaviness of your legs!' Toombo looks. 'God makes fat birds and small birds, trees that are wide and trees that are thin, like wattle. He makes big kernels and little kernels. I am a big kernel. One does not argue with God.' The theosophism defeats Otieno; — Beryl Markham

I wanted to be a war reporter - scrabbling around, exposing things. I didn't want to go to university, I wanted to get a job, but Auntie Beryl said I should go to Oxford. — Nina Bawden

It is the generation of the unemphatic. Steal, kill, lie, fornicate, but beware of indulging with conviction. — Beryl Bainbridge

Pearl II [10w]
If the world's your pearl then you're an empty shell. — Beryl Dov

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), who 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

If your hunch proves a good one, you were inspired; if it proves bad, you are guilty of yielding to thoughtless impulse. — Beryl Markham

When is a Beryl not a Beryl? 'When it's a Claudia,' he said. — Stephen King

The abhorrence of loneliness is as natural as wanting to live at all. — Beryl Markham

Rules
Rules,
like hearts,
were meant to be broken — Beryl Dov

Regret [10w]
Regret's like a microwave
cooking you from the inside out. — Beryl Dov

All this, and discontent too! Otherwise, why am I sitting here dreaming of England? Why am I gazing at this campfire like a lost should seeking a hope when all that I love is at my wingtips? Because I am curious. Because I am incorrigibly, now, a wanderer. — Beryl Markham

Soulmate My Ass [10w]
Aspire to marry the person
the least wrong for you. — Beryl Dov

The Kiss
Begin with words formed upon the lips
move to lips informed by lover's lips
pressing lips upon each others lips
inducing hips to thrust upon one's hips
while moving lips from lips to hips
and back to lips impressed by lips. — Beryl Dov

I had never realized before how quickly men deteriorate without razors and clean shirts. They are like potted plants that go to weed unless they are pruned and tended daily. A single day's growth beard makes a man look careless; two days', derelict; and four days', polluted. Blix and Weston hadn't shaved for three. — Beryl Markham

It meant good-bye to London and to Churchill, whose company Harriman thoroughly enjoyed, and to Pamela, whose bed he enjoyed (the lovers' hiatus lasted almost three decades, until 1971, when Pamela Beryl Digby Churchill Hayward became the third Mrs. Harriman). — William Manchester

Weltanschaung as Ennui [10w]
When world-view turns to world-weariness,
we see staleness in everything. — Beryl Dov

Probably horse doo had a name in french also, but that didn't mean god intended for you to eat it. — Richard Russo

A lovely horse is always an experience ... It is an emotional experience of the kind that is spoiled by words. — Beryl Markham

Forgotten [10w]
There's no greater slur of memory than to be forgotten. — Beryl Dov

Idiots vs. Fools [10w]
Idiots listen to other's bullshit;
fools listen to their own. — Beryl Dov

The Old Days, the Lost Days
in the half-closed eyes of memory (and in fact) they never marched across a calendar; they huddled round a burning log, leaned on a certain table, or listened to those certain songs. — Beryl Markham

Memory is a drug. Memory can hold you against your strength and against your will ... — Beryl Markham

As it turned out, one of the hostel's crewmembers was more than a little bit off center. You know the type. They seem to enjoy being miserable themselves and just can't help but share the feeling. Miss Beryl was something of a Wicked Witch of the West. Unfortunately, everyone else was sensitive to it. They not only let it affect them but also reacted to it. This is never a productive route to take. We've all seen this kind of thing — Doug "Ten" Rose

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

If you are not living on the edge you are taking up too much space! — Beryl Broekman

Two Obligations [10w]
We've got two obligations in this world:
Love and Poetry. — Beryl Dov

A life has to move or it stagnates. — Beryl Markham

I started teaching yoga in 1974 in Colorado, I was living in Winter Park, and I started teaching skiers. At that point I was teaching more of the Sivananda system and just pushing it up a little bit to make it a little more rajasic a little more active, a little more physical. People would come, and feel great, and by the time I left Colorado in 1980 I'd taught pretty much everyone in town - the ski patrol, ski instructors, the bar owners. — Beryl Bender Birch

Primer of Love [Lesson 14]
I think the best thing I can do is to be a distraction.
A husband lives and breathes his work all day long.
If he comes home to more table thumping,
how can the poor man ever relax?
- Jackie Kennedy

Lesson 14) Learn to nip lover's quarrels in the bud
by distraction and humor -- without raising your voice.

This does not include mastering that passive aggressive ploy called the silent treatment which is much louder and destructive than outright screaming. Nipping techniques include distraction, humor, rough sex and counting backwards from MCLV in Latin.Once you've mastered this technique, you'll spend the night neatly tucked in each other's arms -- though her ass will be a little sore. No argument about that. — Beryl Dov

I must be losing patience with my fellow humans," Miss Beryl went on. "Anymore I'm all for executing people who are mean to children. I used to favor just cutting off their feet. Now I want to rid the world of them completely. If this keeps up I'll be voting Republican soon. — Richard Russo

The sun burnt on, drugging everything with warmth. — Beryl Bainbridge

Love's Kiss of Death [10w]
Love's kiss of death is taking each another for granted. — Beryl Dov

When I got a telly we had no aerial, but I discovered that if I or one of the children stood by it you could get a picture. So I had to make a statue that could stand by the telly. — Beryl Bainbridge

Maori, Te'mutunga'ke'mai'o'te'rori'o'te'tangata
That uncontrollable laughter that causes milk to shoot through a Maori's nose when he sees a picture of Mike Tyson's face tattoo. Literally, 'What a fucking loser'. — Beryl Dov

Success breeds confidence. — Beryl Markham

What treasures they left behind! A gorgeous set of yellow topaz crystals on a gray matrix. A great pink hunk of beryl like a crystallized brain. A violet column of tourmaline from Madagascar that looks so rich he cannot resist the urge to stroke it. Bournonite; apatite on muscovite; natural zircon in a spray of colors; dozens more minerals he cannot name. — Anthony Doerr

Humble Wishes [10w]
"God, all I simply ask is that I become perfect. — Beryl Dov

For all professional pilots there exists a kind of guild, without charter and without by-laws. it demands no requirements for inclusion save an understanding of the wind, the compass, the rudder, and fair fellowship. — Beryl Markham

Wisdom is Awakening
The wise man wakes up and takes nothing for granted ~
even waking up. — Beryl Dov