Blixen Out Of Africa Quotes & Sayings

We can only go to the limits of ourselves. Anything more and we give too much away. Then we're not good for anyone. — Paula McLain

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

There is no way reality can be prevented from flowing the way it
flows. It is our vain attempts to force it to flow in the service
of our imaginary needs which sets us in painful conflict with our-
selves and nature. You are not separate from the flowing reality;
you are that flowing reality. See this and you will not see any-
thing else which conflicts with it. You will be what you see. — Vernon Howard

Don't put too much trust on your education level, girlfriend, boyfriend, wife, husband, bank account, because they will fail you. Only put your 100% trust on God, you will succeed ! — Werley Nortreus

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.
[ ... ]
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

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

OUT TODAY - THE NEW POCKET BOOK THAT MAY REVOLUTIONIZE AMERICA'S READING HABITS' (from a 1939 Pocket Book advertisement) — Woody Haut

Directors are our teachers, and I'm always craving to work with a great director. They're pretty much the first thing that interests me about a project. — Naomi Watts

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

I was tortured fifteen times, that's total submission. They did that with shutting off your blood circulation with ropes, giving you claustrophobia and pain at the same time, bending you double. — James Stockdale

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. — Karen Blixen

The ideas of justice of Europe and Africa are not the same and those of the one world are unbearable to the other. To the African there is but one way of counter-balancing the catastrophes of existence, it shall be done by replacement; he does not look for the motive of an action. Whether you lie in wait for your enemy and cut his throat in the dark; or you fell a tree, and a thoughtless stranger passes by and is killed; so far as punishment goes, to the Native mind, it is the same thing. A loss has been brought upon the community and must be made up for, somewhere, by somebody. The Native will not give time or thought to the weighing of guilt or desert; either he fears that this may lead him too far, or he reasons that such things are no concerns of his. But he will devote himself, in endless speculations, to the method by which crime or disaster shall be weighed up in sheep and goats - time does not count to him; he leads you solemnly into a sacred maze of sophistry. — Karen Blixen

There is something to be said for government by a great aristocracy which has furnished leaders to the nation in peace and war for generations; even a Democrat like myself must admit this. — Theodore Roosevelt

Far from being the basis of the good society, the family, with its narrow privacy and tawdry secrets, is the source of all our discontents. — Edmund Leach

People speak because they are afraid of silence. They speak mechanically whether aloud or to themselves. They are intoxicated by this vocal gruel that ensnares every object and every being. They talk about rain and fine weather; they talk about money, about love, about nothing. And even when they are talking about their most exalted love, they use words uttered a hundred times, threadbare phrases. — Andrei Makine