Isak Dinesen > Quotes

“The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea.”
― Isak Dinesen, Seven Gothic Tales

“All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them.”
― Isak Dinesen

“It is a good thing to be a great sinner. Or should human beings allow Christ to have died on the Cross for the sake of our petty lies and our paltry whorings”
― Isak Dinesen

“All the sorrows of life are bearable if only
we can convert them into a story.”
― Isak Dinesen

“Grace, my friends, demands nothing from us but that we shall await it with confidence and acknowledge it in gratitude. Grace, brothers, makes no conditions and singles out none of us in particular; grace takes us all to its bosom and proclaims general amnesty. See! That which we have chosen is given us, and that which we have refused is, also and at the same time, granted us. Ay, that which we have rejected is poured upon us abundantly. For mercy and truth have met together, and righteousness and bliss have kissed one another!”
― Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen), Babette's Feast and Other Anecdotes of Destiny

“Life and death are like two locked caskets, each of which contains the key to the other.”
― Isak Dinesen

“Camping-places fix themselves in your mind as if you had spent long periods of your life in them. You will remember the curve of your waggon track in the grass of the plain, like the features of a friend.”
― Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa

“After a little while you became aware of how still it was out here. Now, looking back on my life in Africa, I feel like it might altogether be described as the existence of a person who had come from a rushed and noisy world, into a still country.”
― Isak Dinesen

“Natives dislike speed, as we dislike noise, it is to them, at the best, hard to bear. They are also on friendly terms with time, and the plan of beguiling or killing it does not come into their heads. In fact the more time you can give them, the happier they are, and if you commission a Kikuyu to hold your horse while you make a visit, you can see by his face that he hopes you will be a long, long time about it. He does not try to pass the time then, but sits down and lives.”
― Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa

“I have been with you every day of my life. You know, do you not, that is has been so? And, I shall be with you every day that is left to me. Every evening I shall sit down, if not in flesh, which means nothing, in spirit, which is all, to dine with you, just like tonight. For tonight I have learned that in this world anything is possible.”
― Isak Dinesen, Babette’s Feast

“Truth, like time, is an idea arising from, and dependent upon, human intercourse.”
― Isak Dinesen, Seven Gothic Tales

“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. This applies in a higher degree to the primitive people than to the civilized, and animals again will wander back a long way, and go through danger and sufferings, to recover their lost identity, in the surroundings that they know.”
― Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa

“After being told that the Professor “found it possible to believe for a moment in the existence of God,” Isak thought, “Has it been possible to God, at Mount Elgon, to believe for a moment in the existence of Professor Landgreen?”
― Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa

“But by the time I had nothing left, I myself was the lightest thing of all for fate to get rid of.”
― Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen)

“Women, when they are old enough to have done with the business of being women, and can let loose their strength, must be the most powerful creatures in the whole world.”
― Isak Dinesen, Seven Gothic Tales

“The old lady continued, "We women, my child, are often very simple. But that any female would lack reason to such a degree that she would start reasoning with a man--that is beyond my comprehension! She has lost the battle, my dear child, she has lost the battle before it began! No, if a woman will have her way with a man she must look him square in the eye and say something of which it is impossible for him to make any sense whatsoever and to which he is at a loss to reply. He is defeated at once.”
― Isak Dinesen, Daguerreotypes and Other Essays

“Coffee, according to the women of Denmark, is to the body what the word of the Lord is to the soul.”
― Isak Dinesen, Seven Gothic Tales

“From my journeys in southern Europe I have gained the impression that in our time the Virgin Mary is the only heavenly creature who is really beloved by millions. But I believe these millions would be uncomprehending and perhaps even offended if I were to tell them that the Virgin Mary had made a significant discovery, solved difficult mathematical problems, or masterfully organized and administered an association of housewives in Nazareth.”
― Isak Dinesen, Daguerreotypes and Other Essays

“The plan which I had formed in the beginning, to give in in all minor matters, so as to keep what was of vital importance to me, had turned out to be a failure. I had consented to give away my possessions one by one, as a kind of ransom for my own life, but by the time that I had nothing left, I myself was the lightest thing of all, for fate to get rid of.”
― Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa

“People work much in order to secure the future; I gave my mind much work and trouble, trying to secure the past.”
― Isak Dinesen, Shadows on the Grass

“It is when people are told their own thoughts that they think they are being insulted. But why should not their own thoughts be good enough for other people to tell them?”
― Isak Dinesen, Anecdotes of Destiny and Ehrengard

“If a man can devote himself undisturbed to the work which is on his mind, he can, as far I have observed, completely ignore his surroundings--they disappear for him; he can sit in filth and disorder, draught and cold, and be completely happy. For most women it is insufferable to sit in a room if the color scheme displeases them.”
― Isak Dinesen, Daguerreotypes and Other Essays

“Truth, like time, is an idea arising from, and dependent upon, human intercourse.
— The Roads Round Pisa”
― Isak Dinesen

“Very old families will sometimes feel upon them the shadow of annihilation.”
― Isak Dinesen, Ehrengard

“I have read or been told that in a book of etiquette of the seventeenth century the very first rule forbids you to tell your dreams to other people, since they cannot possibly be of interest to them.”
― Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa: and Shadows on the Grass

“The true aristocracy and the true proletariat of the world are both in understanding with tragedy. To them it is the fundamental principle of God, and the key,—the minor key,—to existence. They differ in this way from the bourgeoisie of all classes, who deny tragedy, who will not tolerate it, and to whom the word of tragedy means in itself unpleasantness.”
― Isak Dinesen

“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 color that I have 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?”
― Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa

“The tight place, the dark pit in which I am now lying, of what bird is it the talon? When the design of my life is completed, shall I, shall other people see a stork?”
― Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa

“It is an alarming experience to be, in your person, representing Christianity to the natives.”
― Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa

“Truth is for tailors and shoemakers. ... I, on the contrary, have always held that the Lord has a penchant for masquerades.”
― Isak Dinesen, Seven Gothic Tales