Karen Blixen Quotes

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 sky was rarely more than pale blue or violet, with a profusion of mighty, weightless, ever-changing clouds towering up and sailing on it, but it has blue vigour in it, and at a short distance it painted the ranges of hills and the woods a fresh deep blue. ~ Karen Blixen

I was young, and by instinct of self-preservation I had to collect my energy on something, if I were not to be whirled away with the dusk on the farm-roads, or the smoke on the plain. I begun in the evenings to write stories, fairy-tales, and romances, that would take my mind a long way off, to other countries and times. ~ 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

Circumstances can have a motive force by which they bring about events without aid of human imagination or apprehension. On such occasions you yourself keep in touch with what is going on by attentively following it from moment to moment, like a blind person who is being led, and who places one foot in front of the other cautiously but unwittingly. Things are happening to you, and you feel them happening, but except for this one fact, you have no connection with them, and no key to the cause or meaning of them. [ ... ] - a passage outside the range of imagination, but within the range of experience. ~ Karen Blixen

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

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

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

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

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

Difficult times have helped me to understand better than before how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way, and that so many things that one goes worrying about are of no importance whatsoever. ~ Karen Blixen

The Kikuyu, when left to themselves, do not bury their dead, but leave them above ground for the hyenas and vultures to deal with. The custom had always appealed to me, I thought that it would be pleasant thing to be laid out to the sun and the stars, and to be so promptly, neatly, and openly picked and cleansed; to be made one with Nature and become a common component of a landscape. ~ Karen Blixen

It is difficult to restrain admirers of Shakespeare once they have begun to speak of 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.
[ ... ]
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

The author Karen Blixen once said, 'All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them.' But what if a person can't tell a story about his sorrows? What if his story tells him? ~ Stephen Grosz

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

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

Write a little every day, without hope, without despair. ~ 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

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

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

The table was prettily decorated with camellias from the orangery, and upon the snow-white tablecloth, amongst the clear crystal glasses, the old green wineglasses threw delicate little shadows, like the spirit of a pine forest in summer. The Prioress had on a grey taffeta frock with a very rare lace, a white lace cap with streamers, and her old diamond eardrops and brooches. The heroic strength of soul of old women, Boris thought, who with great taste and trouble make themselves beautiful - more beautiful, perhaps, than they have ever been as young women - and who still can hold no hope of awakening any desire in the hearts of men, is like a righteous man working at his good deeds even after he has abandoned his faith in a heavenly reward. ~ Karen Blixen

I have read true piety defined as: loving one's destiny unconditionally – and there is something in it. That is to say: I think that in a way this sort of "religiousness" is the condition for real happiness. ~ 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

All sorrows can be borne if you can put them into a story. ~ Karen Blixen

There is hardly any other sphere in which prejudice and superstition of the most horrific kind have been retained so long as in that of women, and just as it must have been an inexpressable relief for humanity when it shook off the burden of religious prejudice and superstition, I think it will be truly glorious when women become real people and have the whole world open before them. ~ Karen Blixen

We fish rest quietly, on all sides supported, within an element which all the time accurately and unfailingly evens itself out. An element which may be said to have taken over our personal experience, in as much as, regardless of individual shape and whether we be flat fish or round fish, our weight and body and calculated according to the quantity of our surroundings which we displace ... We run no risks. For our changing of place in existence never creates, or leaves after it, what man calls a way, upon which phenomenon - in reality no phenomenon but an illusion - he will waste inexplicable passionate deliberation. Man, in the end, is alarmed by the idea of time, and unbalanced by incessant wanderings between past and future. ~ 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

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

Where, My Lord, is music bred - upon the instrument or within the ear that listens? The loveliness of woman is created in the eye of man. ~ Karen Blixen

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

Up in this air you breathed easily, drawing in a vital assurance and lightness of heart. In the highlands you woke up in the morning and thought: Here I am, where I ought to be. ~ Karen Blixen

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

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 out their eyes. ~ Karen Blixen

Then Martine said: "So yuo will be poor now all your life, Babette?"
Poor?" said Babette. She smiled as if to herself. "No, I shall never be poor. I told you that I am a great artist. A great artist, Mesdames, is never poor.We have something, Mesdames, of which other people know nothing. ~ Karen Blixen

The real difference between God and human beings, he thought, was that God cannot stand continuance. No sooner has he created a season of a year, or a time of the day, than he wishes for something quite different, and sweeps it all away. No sooner was one a young man, and happy at that, than the nature of things would rush one into marriage, martyrdom or old age. And human beings cleave to the existing state of things. All their lives they are striving to hold the moment fast ... Their art itself is nothing but the attempt to catch by all means the one particular moment, one light, the momentary beauty of one woman or one flower, and make it everlasting. ~ Karen Blixen

Why the Kikuyu, who personally have so little fear of death, should be so terrified to touch a corpse, while the white people, who are afraid to die, handle the dead easily, I do not know. Here once more you feel their reality to be different from our realities. ~ Karen Blixen

It is a sad hardship and slavery to people who live in towns, that in their movements they know of one dimension only; they walk along the line as if they were led on a string. The transition from the line to the plane into the two dimensions, when you wander across a field or through a wood, is a splendid liberation to the slaves, like the French Revolution. But in the air you are taken into the full freedom of the three dimensions; after long ages of exile and dreams the homesick heart throws itself into the arms of space. ~ Karen Blixen

We of the present day, who love our machines, cannot quite imagine how people in the old days could live without them. But we could not make the Athanasian Creed, or the technique of the Mass, or of a five-act tragedy, and perhaps not even of a sonnet. And if we had not found them there ready for our use, we should have had to do without them. Still we must imagine, since they have been made at all, that there was a time when the hearts of humanity cried out for those things, and when a deeply felt want was relieved when they were made. ~ Karen Blixen

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

The views were immensely wide. Everything that you saw made for greatness and freedom, and unequealled nobility. ~ Karen Blixen

Perhaps to them the first condition for anything having real charm was this: that it must not really exist. ~ Karen Blixen

A great artist is never poor. ~ 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

The barbarian loves his own pride, and hates, or disbelieves in, the pride of others. I will be a civilized being, I will love the pride of my adversaries, of my servants, and my lover; and my house shall be, in all humility, in the wilderness a civilized place. ~ Karen Blixen

Love the pride of the conquered nations, and leave them to honour their father and their mother. ~ Karen Blixen

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

Moral maturity and freedom require more than mere adherence to the law; they require an understanding of the why and wherefore of its rules and regulations- the principles that make it worthy of their allegiance. ~ Karen Bohlin

What bug crawled up your ass?" I demanded.
"If you mean, why I am upset? I should think that would be obvious!"
It took me a second, but I got it. "Oh, come on. You're not still pissed about–you did the same damn thing to me!"
He had the utter gall to look offended. "I did nothing of the sort–"
I stared at him. "And just how do you figure that? You stripped me butt naked, diddled me over a desk and stole my duffel bag. And my clothes!"
Somebody made a choking sound. I glanced up to find the door to the study open, and the old vamp looking scandalized. "Diddled?" Anthony asked, apparently delighted. Mircea closed his eyes. ~ Karen Chance

I know that I'm here until this is over. Until either they're dead or I am. Alina's death will be avenged. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Pray don't hold back," Robert said politely. "You can tell me what you really think of my valet." Stewart broke in to a reluctant grin."Sorry fer bein' so forward, sir, but that valet o' yers is nothin' but a Frenchified piece o' lace. ~ Karen Hawkins

... all I can say is that you could have no better or more trustworthy companion than your own unconscious. ... ~ Karen Hamaker-Zondag

Dude, the bush is ready. Why you still beating around it?"
"I've lived a long time, kid, and I've never heard anyone mutilate the English language quite like you. ~ Karen Marie Moning

I always think of it you know building a business, building a brand, a friend of mine gave me a metaphor for it which I think is really true it's like building coral, you don't see it happening it's just little little little and when you step back you think wow. ~ Karen Walker

Christian : You two gonna stand there fucking each other with your eyes all night, or can we get on with it ? ~ Karen Marie Moning

I'm not going anywhere until you're safe," Christian says to me, real quiet.
"Isn't that quaint. The chivalrous Unseelie prince with the dick of death," Ryodan mocks. ~ Karen Marie Moning

As you probably know, half of the people who work in this country work for small businesses. And it's more than that, because two out of every three net new jobs come from small business. So we mean it when we talk about small business being the engine for the economy. ~ Karen Mills

Boundaries were necessary for a successful relationship. Most relationships aborted in the boundary-defining stage. Not because people demanded what they needed. But because they didn't, then got resentful about it ~ Karen Marie Moning

If I couldn't be pretty, I decided I would be smart. ~ Karen Horney

I looked up details about the human heart. They are all about the same size and beat approximately 100,000 times per day. It didn't say they beat faster or grew heavier for biological children than for adopted children. Love for a child weighs the same in any heart. ~ Karen Henry Clark

Damn it's good to be me Adam Black on being Adam Black. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Sawtooth slumps into his deck chair and stares up at the sky. It's a drunken sky, the stars hiccupping light. Great gusty clouds go spinning past the moon. The bright planets feel like pinpricks to Sawtooth's old eyes. ~ Karen Russell

Furthermore, I refuse to be affected by these cheap theatrics!" She gestured to the boiling sky.
"Gor!" Shelton covered his eyes with one hand.
Dougal instantly went from mad to furious, and the clouds rumbled to life. Yet in that instant, he realized that this tiny little bit of a woman had just reduced centuries of a dramatic and secretive curse to "cheap theatrics." He didn't know whether to rage or laugh, but somehow, looking up into her amazing blue eyes, laughter was beginning to win.
"Furthermore," she continued in high dudgeon, "I won't be cowed by a few damned drops of rain!"
Shelton groaned loudly. "Law,here it comes now."
But it didn't. Instead, a chuckle rippled through Dougal.
Sophia appeared outraged. "Are you laughing at me?"
"No,sweetheart. I'm laughing at us. We cannot even ride from the field to the house without racing. We're doomed to challenge each other forever,and if we don't have a care, my temper will try the two of us like sausages over a spit."
Her lips quivered in response. "I don't particularly care for that image."
"I haven't time for elegance, my love. It is getting ready to rain, so sausages are all you'll get. ~ Karen Hawkins

It's so hard to watch the person you love be in pain. It's a natural impulse to want to fix it, and not being able to is uncomfortable. Remaining in that state of discomfort over time is even harder. Being in a relationship with someone in chronic pain is like a chronic pain condition in and of itself. ~ Karen Havelin

Barrons cut her a hard look. "Some of us are more useful and important than others."
"My ass, you are," Christian growled.
Barrons folded his arms. "Who let the Unseelie in here? ~ Karen Marie Moning

He called it The Bridge because that was how felt about books. They connected the past and the present, the present and the future. Books brought people together and gave them a path to worlds they would not otherwise experience. ~ Karen Kingsbury

Louis-Cesare. It's good to finally have you in hand. ~ Karen Chance

On a perfect day in your perfect little world (and it's always perfect) there is breakfast time, playtime, lunchtime, nap time, snack time, dinnertime, bath time, story time, and bedtime. There is time for everything when you are the timekeeper. ~ Karen Maezen Miller

Seven major settings are particularly relevant to contemporary health education: schools, communities, worksites, health care settings, homes, the consumer marketplace, and the communications environment. ~ Karen Glanz

...how much quieter that ending would be, a whole world drowned in sleep, than all the other ways we have to fail. ~ Karen Thompson Walker

He's assuming. And as the man once told me himself: assume makes an ass out of u and me. ~ Karen Marie Moning

The earth makes creatures well again. When you are sick you are put to bed, and when you are very sick, you are put into the earth to make you well. ~ Karen Maitland

Girls do what their mothers tell them. Ladies do what society tells them. Women make up their own minds. ~ Karen Kijewski

I believe I met my mother there, in the final instant. Not her ghost but some vaster portion of her, her self boundlessly recharged beneath the water. Her courage. In the cave I think she must have lent me some of it, because the strength I felt then was as huge as the sun. The yellow inside you that makes you want to live. I believe that she was the pulse and bloom that forced me toward the surface. ~ Karen Russell

The secret to a good life," he told me once, "is to bring your A game to everything you do. Even if all you're doing is taking out the garbage, you do that with excellence. ~ Karen Joy Fowler

Some people simply bury their heads in the sand and refuse to think about the sorrow of the world, but this is an unwise course, because, if we are entirely unprepared, the tragedy of life can be devastating. ~ Karen Armstrong

Heaven would be a comfy armchair ... .You'd get a great, private phonograph, and all of eternity to listen to your life's melody. You could isolate your one life out of the cacophonous galaxy - the a cappella version - or you could play it back with its accompaniment, embedded in the brass and strings of mothers, fathers, sisters, windfalls and failures, percussion cities of strangers. You could play it forward or backward, back and back, and listen to the future of your past. You could lift the needle at whim, defeating Time. ~ Karen Russell

Who knew making a gal smile could leave a man feeling so accomplished? ~ Karen Witemeyer

I'd simplified and objectified our relationship into one of lust and boundaries, and while both were necessary for a good relationship, it took a lot more than that to make it an epic one. Things we had, like respect and trust, but also freely expressed desires and accountability to whatever degree it took to make both people happy. It took work, a willingness to fight passionately and fairly - out of bed, not just in it - commitment and honesty. It took waking up and saying each day, I hold this man sacred and always will. He's my sun, moon, and stars. It took letting the other person in; a thing I'd stopped doing. It took being unafraid to ask for what you wanted, to put yourself on the line, to risk it all for love. We ~ Karen Marie Moning

The ideas can come from anywhere; the energy just comes from loving what I do. ~ Karen Walker

Karen makes her way back into the living room. ~ Colleen Hoover

When you stop relying on aversive controls such as threats, intimidation, and punishment, and when you know how to use reinforcement to get not just the same but better results, your perception of the world undergoes a shift. You don't have to become a wimp. You don't have to give up being in charge. You lose nothing of yourself. You just see things you didn't see before. ~ Karen Pryor

Your wish, my command, MacKayla." He smiled. "Shall we spend tomorrow at the beach together?"
Barrons moved beside me. "She's busy tomorrow."
"Are you busy tomorrow, MacKayla?"
"She's working on old texts with me."
V'lane gave me a pitying look. "Ah. Old texts. A banner day at the bookstore."
"We're translating the Kama Sutra," Barrons said, "with interactive aids."
I almost choked. "You're never around during the day."
"Why is that?" V'lane was the picture of innocence.
"I'll be around tomorrow," Barrons said.
"All day?" I asked.
"The entire day."
"She will be naked on a beach with me."
"She's never been naked in a bed with you. When she comes, she roars."
"I know what she sounds like when she comes. I have given her multiple orgasms merely by kissing her."
"I've given her multiple orgasms by fucking her. For months, fairy. ~ Karen Marie Moning

The Al Saud believe they have an asset more powerful than the ballot box: they have Allah. ~ Karen Elliott House