Markham Quotes & Sayings

Successful leaders see the opportunities in every difficulty rather than the difficulty in every opportunity — Reed Markham

But, for a little while, this is the place for us
a good place too
a place of good omen, a place of beginning things
and of ending things I never thought would end. — Beryl Markham

Three were the fates. Poverty that chains; gray drudgery that grinds the hope away, and gaping ignorance that starves the soul. — Edwin Markham

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

He drew a circle that shut me out-
Heretic , rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle and took him In !
From the poem Outwitted — Edwin Markham

A fine job of work and a fine colt. Shall I reward you or Coquette - or both? — Beryl Markham

We are all blind until we see That in the human plan Nothing is worth the making If it does not make the man. Why build these cities glorious If man unbuilded goes? We build the world in vain Unless the builders also grow. — Edwin Markham

This side of the Kingdom of God upon Earth, it is a melancholy human fact that those who beat their swords into plowshares end up doing the plowing for those who kept their swords. — Markham Shaw Pyle

The way the two of them look at each other is like touching. — Ally Condie

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

History's like that. There are wars, and unfortunately, in the end, who wins and who loses is more important than who's right or wrong. — Richelle Mead

The sequoias belong to the silences of the milleniums. Many of them have seen a hundred human generations rise, give off their little clamors and perish. They seem indeed to be forms of immortality standing here amoing the transitory shapes of time. — Edwin Markham

I fear the vermin that shall undermineSenate and citadel and school and shrine. — Edwin Markham

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

What happens when she's not my memory anymore? What happens when she's not around to tell me about his belt leaving scars across my two-year-old brother's face or when he whacked her so hard that she lost her hearing for a week? Who'll be my memory?"
Santangelo doesn't miss a beat. "I will. Ring me."
"Same," Raffy says.
I look at him. I can't even speak because if I do I know I'll cry but I smile and he knows what I'm thinking. — Melina Marchetta

Because being part of him isn't just anything. It's kind of everything. — Melina Marchetta

In view of this and other things, I demand forgiveness for being so obviously impressed with my own parents. — Beryl Markham

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

There's an old adage," he said, "translated from the ancient Coptic, that contains all the wisdom of the ages
"Life is life and fun is fun, but it's all so quiet when the goldfish die. — Beryl Markham

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

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

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

And then you came along and you spoke to me and nobody had looked me in the eye for years. ( ... ) But I remember you that day and you looked at peace with yourself and it made me reconsider everything I had planned to do. Because I thought to myself, you can't do this to her, not after the Hermit thing."
"Do what to me? I don't think leaving me on that platform would have changed my life, Griggs," I lie.
"You being on that platform changed mine. — Melina Marchetta

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

And last," Ms. Baginski carried on. "My most precious possession, the thing I treasure above anything else in this world, that being my granddaughter, Josephine Diana Malone, I hereby bequeath to James Markham Spear. — Kristen Ashley

Markham even had our banners ready. The polite NON AD CAPITAGIUM (No to the poll tax), the hopeful MAGIS STIPENDIUM HISTORICI (More money for historians) and the always accurate POLICITI NOSTRAE OMNEC WANKERS SUNT (Most politicians are not very good). — Jodi Taylor

At the heart of the cyclone
tearing the sky
And flinging the clouds
and the towers by
Is a place of central calm;
So here in the roar of mortal things,
I have a place where my spirit sings,
In the hollow of God's palm. — Edwin 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

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

The next night he asked Jonah if he could take $9.49 out of Jonah's secret stash that only Danny and his mum and Jack knew about. Jonah kept it in his sock drawer next to a photograph of Jonah and a girl with sad eyes, taken in one of those railway station photo booths. — Melina Marchetta

Sorrows come to stretch out places in the heart for joy. — Edwin Markham

Roots of the weed sucked first life from the genesis of earth and hold the essence of it still. Always the weed returns; the cultured plant retreats before it. — Beryl Markham

A map in the hands of a pilot is a testimony of a man's faith in other men; it is a symbol of confidence and trust. It is not like a printed page that bears mere words, ambiguous and artful, and whose most believing reader - even whose author, perhaps - must allow in his mind a recess for doubt. A map says to you, 'Read me carefully, follow me closely, doubt me not.' It says, 'I am the earth in the palm of your hand. Without me, you are alone and lost. — Beryl Markham

A domesticated lion is only an unnatural lion - and whatever is unnatural is untrustworthy. — Beryl Markham

For four centuries now, the American people have resigned themselves to natural disasters and acts of God: floods, prairie fires, blizzards, tornados, hurricanes, dust bowls, epidemics, academics, lawyers, and politicians. — Markham Shaw Pyle

But the soul of Africa, its integrity, the slow inexorable pulse of its life, is its own and of such singular rhythm that no outsider, unless steeped from childhood in its endless, even beat, can ever hope to experience it, except only as a bystander might experience a Masai war dance knowing nothing of its music nor the meaning of its steps. — Beryl Markham

Tame him? You can't tame a Tower rat
they're flea-bitten and vicious."
"So are most men!" The girl smiled and stretched her cramped limbs. "Shall I tame one of them instead? They too make diverting pets, you know."
Markham laughed nervously. "Wouldn't you rather have a dog, madam?"
"Ah no
too loyal! They present no challenge." Behind the girl's steady eyes a shadow stirred. "My mother had a dog once. She used to make it jump through a burning hoop to prove its devotion to her, until she found my father did it better. He jumped through that hoop for over six years. When he finally got tired of performing for her amusement he killed her. And that's what makes men such interesting pets, Markham
you never know when they're going to turn and bite. — Susan Kay

The two of us hold each other's gazes for a long, unembarrassed moment and I feel that Ky knows. I'm not sure what he knows - whether he knows me, or just something about me. — Ally Condie

No human pursuit achieves dignity until it can be called work, and when you can experience a physical loneliness for the tools of your trade, — Beryl Markham

In vain we build the city if we do not first build the man. — Edwin Markham

The rain feeds the seed, and the seed the mill. When the rain stops, the mill wheels stop - or, if they continue to turn, they grind despair for the man who owns them. My father owned them. — Beryl Markham

If I'm talking to patients who can't answer, why not talk to the port, too? (Xander Markham) — Ally Condie

There is no true liberty for the individual except as he finds it in the liberty of all. There is no true security for the individual except as he finds it in the security for all. — Edwin Markham

It was left to the Progressive movement in America (as to the Fabians in Britain) to promote eugenics, Prohibition, dietary fads, the compulsory sterilisation of those they deemed 'unfit', and preferential treatment in immigration law of 'Nordic' (and preferably Protestant) immigrants. — Markham Shaw Pyle

What do you think would happen if we kissed right here, right now?" he asks, digging his hands into the pockets of his khaki pants, grinning right back at me.
"I think it would cause a riot."
"Well, you know me," he says, lowering his head towards me. "Causing a riot is what I do best."
Santangelo approaches before Griggs gets any closer and pulls him away. "Are you guys insane?" he says, irritated.
"It's called peaceful coexistence, Santangelo. You should try it and if it works we may sell the idea to the Israelis and Palestinians," I say, throwing his own words back at him. — Melina Marchetta

...our hostess backed out of the room, grinning vapidly. She had long since forgotten the meaning of a smile, but the physical ability to make the gesture remained. I felt that the grin...would shatter if it were touched and fall to the floor in pieces. — Beryl Markham

Mr Markham, the box marked "Sex" is not an invitation. Please amend the details and apologise to Mrs Partridge. — Jodi Taylor

This dress makes me look fat," I told Jasmine as we stood near the back of the crowd and watched the last minute preperations fall into place.
She glanced over at me and my efforts to rearrange the folds of my long, gauzy dress.
"Your pregnant," she stated. "Everything's supposed to make you look fat."
I Scowled. "I think the correct reponse was 'No it doesn't. — Richelle Mead

If the power to tax is the power to destroy, the power to regulate is no less so. — Markham Shaw Pyle

Good-byes are like this. You can't always mark them well at the moment of separation - no matter how deep they cut. (Ky Markham) — Ally Condie

Harmony comes gradually to a pilot and his plane. The wing does not want so much to fly true as to tug at the hands that guide it; the ship would rather hunt the wind than lay her nose to the horizon far ahead. She has a derelict quality in her character; she toys with freedom and hints at liberation, — Beryl Markham

But that's the thing about East Texas. Red dirt never quite washes out, and pine pollen is tenacious as original sin. You can leave East Texas, for Houston, for the Metroplex, for the Commonwealth, for New York, or Bonn or Tokyo or Kowloon; but you can never quite leave it behind. — Markham Shaw Pyle

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

Success breeds confidence. — Beryl Markham

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

Justice can readily do her job blindfolded; she cannot function gagged and deafened, least of all when the means of gagging and deafening her are not remarked. — Markham Shaw Pyle

They drew a line that shut me out,
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout!
But love and I had the wit to win
We drew a circle and brought them in. — Edwin Markham

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

Yes, take a little time to play And look at life the other way. God rested when the world was made: Rest now, old friend; be not afraid. But think not that your work is over, That you are now a foot-free rover, A rambler upon idle ways, Whittling away the golden days. For in the road climb to the goal There's no long furlough for a soul. There's no long pause: on every height Another summit swims in sight. The long road rises, scene by scene, With little restings in between. — Edwin Markham

What time is it?"
"Time?"
"Time."
"Oh," She said. "A quarter to four. Mr. Markham, something terrible has happened."
She didn't have to tell me that. Something perfectly dreadful had happened, by God. Someone had called me in the middle of the bloody night. — Lawrence Block

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

Now that I think about it, maybe he is a werewolf. I can picture him lunging over the moors in hot pursuit of his prey, and I'm certain that he wouldn't think twice about eating an innocent bystander. I'll watch him closely at the next full moon. He's asked me to go dancing tomorrow
perhaps I should wear a high collar. Oh, that's vampires, isn't it? I think I am a little giddy. (After meeting Mr. Markham V. Reynolds, Jr.) — Mary Ann Shaffer

No, you love to confuse me and drive me crazy. You don't really love me. You don't know what love is."
"Yeah, I think I do." His brows lowered, and he took a step toward her. "I have loved you my whole life, Delaney. I can't remember a day when I didn't love you. I loved you the day I practically knocked you out with a snowball. I loved you when I flattened the tires on your bike so I could walk you home. I loved you when I saw you hiding behind the sunglasses at the Value Rite, and I loved you when you loved that loser son of a bitch Tommy Markham. I never forgot the smell of your hair or the texture of your skin the night I laid you on the hood of my car at Angel Beach. So don't tell me I don't love you. Don't tell me
" His voice shook and he pointed a finger at her. "Just don't tell me that. — Rachel Gibson

I admit at the beginning that 'popular religion,' 'demotic religion,' the pieties of the common folk, tends to sink to the lowest common denominator, be it in syncretizing saints with old, half-forgotten pagan godlings, or in preferring the nasal whine and the revivalist shoutin' to solid sense and learning, regarding intellect as positively inimical to the workings of the Holy Ghost. But it is in American religious life, especially Protestant American religious life, that things bottom out completely. — Markham Shaw Pyle

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

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

Choices are the hinges of destiny — Edwin Markham

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

We have committed the Golden Rule to memory; let us now commit it to life. — Edwin Markham

Neither of us moves for a moment, locked instead in each other's eyes and in the branches of this Hill we might never finish climbing. — Ally Condie

Petermann's staunchest enemy in Great Britain was Clements R. Markham of the Royal Geographical Society. Markham had come to regard Petermann as a charlatan and a windbag. — Hampton Sides

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

Public life in this country is too damn dominated by people who'd read more if only their lips didn't get so tired. — Markham Shaw Pyle

Wine's terrible for babies." Dorian swept into the sitting room to join me, elegantly arranging himself on a love seat that displayed his purple velvet robes to best effect.
"Well of course it is. I'd never dream of giving wine to an infant! What do you take me for, a barbarian? But for you ... well, it might go a long way to make you a little less jumpy. You've been positively unbearable to live around.
"I can't have it either. It affects the babies in utero. — Richelle Mead

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

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

The future life is where we will go on helping to bring the universe to perfection, which is God's grand ultimate aim. [The purpose of life] is to help God run the universe. Everyone in that better land will be busy all the time, and the environment will be perfect all the time for doing the work which God assigns to all. — Edwin Markham

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

[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

No matter where you go in East Texas, 'Deep' East Texas is always about twenty miles further in than wherever you are. — Markham Shaw Pyle

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

Recent fads in history and biography have increasingly exalted the aridity of chronology and fact, and have, with some valid reason, rejected romanticizing and the presumption of guessing at the inner thoughts of historical figures. Unfortunately, the result has largely been not to demythologize the past, but merely to dehumanize and depersonalize it. As Roger Mudd has pointed out, 'Too many of today's historians [and biographers] ... seem to have forgotten that the writing of history is a literary art. — Markham Shaw Pyle

Chili is one of those marvelous-simple, elemental, all-important, and fundamental concepts that has been elaborated out of all recognition: rather like justice, or objective reality, or 'being' (ens) in Aquinas. Lean closer and I will whisper to you a horrific, soul-shattering secret: there are actually people so lost to any sense of decency that they put beans in chili. (I hope you sent the children of tender years out of the room before we discussed that horror, lest they be warped for life). — Markham Shaw Pyle

Later, I would ask Shaya to help me compose a formal response to Katrice's letter, something a long the lines of I am the Thorn Queen. F*** Off. — Richelle Mead

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

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

I want to tell him that deep down each time Hannah looked at him she was grateful it was him because Jude did something that the others didn't. He came back for her. — Melina Marchetta

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

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

After all, Christmastide is the time of year for warming brandies, for assertive burgundies and meaty Medoc wines, and for gladsome whiskies. And an Islay malt: well, this is the octave of St Andrew, and you will doubtless recall that he is not only the patron saint of Alba, of Scotland, but was also a fisherman. How better to toast my favorite apostle (he being all the things I personally am not, starting with humble and self-effacing) than with the sea-salty dram of an Islay whisky? — Markham Shaw Pyle

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

Earth Is Enough. We men of Earth have here the stuff Of Paradise - we have enough! We need no other stones to build The Temple of the Unfulfilled - No other ivory for the doors - No other marble for the floors - No other cedar for the beam And dome of man's immortal dream. Here on the paths of every-day - Here on the common human way Is all the stuff the gods would take To build a Heaven, to mold and make New Edens. Ours is the stuff sublime To build Eternity in time! — Edwin Markham

Ah, great it is to believe the dream as we stand in youth by the starry stream; but a greater thing is to fight life through and say at the end, the dream is true! — Edwin Markham

Do not go gentle into that good night. — Ally Condie

In the past few years, genetics have confirmed that the hunter-gatherers were not overwhelmed by the new wave of sedentary farmers, and that the first agricultural revolution spread well in advance of its first users, by contact and trade in ideas. Nice to see science catching up with economics and military history. Any economist could tell you technology spreads beyond its first adopters, even if they stay at home. And any military historian could tell you that, in a contest between people who hunt and kill aurochs and farmers armed with hoes, the smart money is on the hunters. — Markham Shaw Pyle