Best Karen Blixen Quotes & Sayings

If I know a song of Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back, of the plows in the fields and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Will the air over the plain quiver with a color that I have had on, or the children invent a game in which my name is, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or will the eagles of the Ngong Hills look out for me? — Karen Blixen

When you have caught the rhythm of Africa, you find out that it is the same in all her music. — Karen Blixen

When I heard this I became very sad, but I thought that now I would indeed have to take him with me so that the Virgin herself could enlighten him. — Karen Blixen

The relation between the white and black races in Africa in many ways resembles the relation between the two sexes.
If the one of the two sexes were told that they did not play any greater part in the life of the other sex than this other sex plays within their own existence, they would be shocked and hurt.
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If they (white people) had been told that they played no more important part in the lives of the Natives than the Natives played in their own lives, they would have been highly indignant and ill at ease.
If you had told the Natives that they played no greater part in the life of the white people than the white people played in their lives, they would never have believed you, but would have laughed at you. Probably in Natives circles, stories are passing about, and being repeated, which prove the all-absorbing interest of the white people in the Kikuyu or Kavirondo, and their complete dependence upon them. — Karen Blixen

Between the river in the mellow English landscape and the African mountain ridge, ran the path of this life ... The bowstring was released on the bridge at Eton, the arrow described its orbit, and hit the obelisk in the Ngong Hills. — Karen Blixen

If I know a song of Africa, - I thought, - of the Giraffe, and the African new moon lying on her back, of the ploughs in the fields, and the sweaty faces of the coffee-pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Would the air over the plain quiver with a colour that I had had on, or the children invent a game in which my name was, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or would the eagles of Ngong look out for me? I — Karen Blixen

God made the world round so we would never be able to see too far down the road. — Karen Blixen

Come now and let us go and risk our lives unnecessarily. For if they have got any value at all it is this that they gave got none. Frei lebt wer sterben kann. — Karen Blixen

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. — Karen Blixen

We must leave our mark on life while we have it in our power. — Karen Blixen

To die for the one you loved was an effort too sweet for words. — Karen Blixen

Of all the idiots I have met in my life, and the Lord knows they have not been few or little, I think that I have been the biggest. — Karen Blixen

When in the end, the day came on which I was going away, I learned the strange learning that things can happen which we ourselves cannot possibly imagine, either beforehand, or at the time when they are taking place, or afterwards when we look back on them. — Karen Blixen

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. — Karen Blixen

Perhaps he knew, as I did not, that the Earth was made round so that we would not see too far down the road. — Karen Blixen

There are things which cannot be carried through even with the good will of everybody concerned — Karen Blixen

Our longing is our pledge, and blessed are the homesick, for they shall come home. — Karen Blixen

A great artist is never poor. — Karen Blixen

Much which is unworthy in human life might be avoided if people would only accustom themselves to talking in verse — Karen Blixen

I turned to the animal world from the world of men; my heart was heavy with the tragedy of the night. — Karen Blixen

The young (Somali) women were very inquisitive as to European customs, and listened attentively to descriptions of the manners, education, and clothes of white ladies, as if out to complete their strategic education with the knowledge of how the males of an alien race were conquered and subdued. — Karen Blixen

Within this enclosed women's world, so to say, behind the walls and fortifications of it, I felt the presence of a great ideal, without which the garrison would not have carried on so gallantly; the idea of a Millennium when women were to reign supreme in the world. The old mother at such times would take on a new shape, and sit enthroned as a massive dark symbol of that mighty female deity who had existed in old ages, before the time of the prophet's God. Of her they never lost sight, but they were, before all, practical people with an eye on the needs of the moment and with infinite readiness of resource. — Karen Blixen

I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills. — Karen Blixen

A visitor is a friend, he brings news, good or bad, which is bread to the hungry minds in lonely places. A real friend who comes to the house is a heavenly messenger, who brings the panis angelorum. — Karen Blixen

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 — Karen Blixen

Still, we often talked on the farm of the Safaris that we had been on. Camping places fix themselves in your mind as if you had spent long periods of your life in them. You will remember a curve of your wagon track in the grass of the plain, like the features of a friend. — Karen Blixen

No," he said after a pause, "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. They do not even withhold their own existence from his sports. Jove may favor Lucianos of Samosata. As long as your mockery is in true godly taste you may mock at the gods and still remain a sound devotee. But in pitying, or condoling with your god, you deny and annihilate him, and such is the most horrible of atheisms. — Karen Blixen

There is a particular hapiness in giving a man whom you like very much, good food that you have cooked yourself. — Karen Blixen

Through all the world there goes one long cry from the heart of the artist: Give me a chance to do my best. — Karen Blixen

I know of a cure for everything: salt water ... in one way or the other. Sweat, or tears, or the salt sea. — Karen Blixen

The cure for anything is salt water - sweat, tears, or the salt sea. — Karen Blixen

It is when one begins to lose the consciousness of freedom, and when the idea of necessity enters the world at all, when there is any hurry or strain anywhere, a letter to be written or a train to catch, when you have got to work, to make the horses of the dream gallop, or to make the rifles go off, that the dream is declining, and turning into the nightmare, which belongs to the poorest and most vulgar class of dreams. — Karen Blixen