Authors
Topics
Lists
Pictures
Resources
More about Karen Blixen
Karen Blixen Quotes
110 Sourced Quotes
Source
Report...
Human talk is a centrifugal function, ever in flight outwards from what is on the talker's mind.
Karen Blixen
Source
Report...
I had time after time watched the progression across the plain of the giraffe, in their queer, inimitable, vegetative gracefulness as if it were not a herd of animals but a family of rare, long stemmed spackled gigantic flowers slowly advancing. It was, in giant size, the border of a very old, infinitely precious Persian carpet in the dyes of green, yellow and black-brown
Karen Blixen
Source
Report...
You and I, the rich and the poor of this world, are two locked caskets, of which each contains the key to the other.
Karen Blixen
Source
Report...
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.
Karen Blixen
Source
Report...
There was a place in the Hills, on the first ridge in the Game Reserve, that I myself at the time when I thought that I was to live and die in Africa, had pointed out to Denys as my future burial-place. In the evening, while we sat and looked at the hills from my house, he remarked that then he would like to be buried there himself as well. Since then, sometimes when we drove out in the hills, Denys had said: "Let us drive as far as our graves.
Karen Blixen
Source
Report...
When later in life they thought of this evening it never occurred to any of them that they might have been exalted by their own merit. They realized that the infinite grace of which General Loewenhielm had spoken had been allotted to them, and they did not even wonder at the fact, for it had been but the fulfillment of an ever-present hope. The vain illusions of this earth had dissolved before their eyes like smoke, and they had seen the universe as it really is. They had been given one hour of the millennium.
Karen Blixen
Source
Report...
Coffee, according to the women of Denmark, is to the body what the word of the Lord is to the soul.
Karen Blixen
Source
Report...
It is often the case with a new idea that when it comes knocking on society's door with modesty and the best premises for its existence, there is a tremendous outcry from inside.
Karen Blixen
Source
Report...
When you have a great and difficult task, something perhaps almost impossible, if you only work a little at a time, every day a little, suddenly the work will finish itself.
Karen Blixen
Source
Report...
What is man, when you come to think upon him, but a minutely set, ingenious machine for turning, with infinite artfulness, the red wine of Shiraz into urine?
Karen Blixen
Source
Report...
In a foreign country and with foreign species of life one should take measures to find out whether things will be keeping their value when dead. To settlers I give this advice: "For the sake of your eyes and hearts, shoot not the Iguana."
Karen Blixen
Source
Report...
There is something about safari life that makes you forget all your sorrows and feel as if you had drunk half a bottle of champagne — bubbling over with heartfelt gratitude for being alive.
Karen Blixen
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
There is something strangely determinate and fatal about a single shot in the night. It is as if someone had cried a message to you in one word, and would not repeat it.
Karen Blixen
Source
Report...
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 tragedy means in itself unpleasantness.
Karen Blixen
Source
Report...
Life and Death are two locked caskets, each of which contains the key to the other.
Karen Blixen
Source
Report...
The air was cold to the lungs, the long grass dripping wet, and the herbs on it gave out their spiced astringent scent. In a little while on all sides the Cicada would begin to sing. The grass was me, and the air, the distant invisible mountains were me, the tired oxen were me. I breathed with the slight night-wind in the thorn trees.
Karen Blixen
Source
Report...
I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills. The Equator runs across these highlands, a hundred miles to the North, and the farm lay at an altitude of over six thousand feet. In the day-time you felt that you had got high up, near to the sun, but the early mornings and evenings were limpid and restful, and the nights were cold.
Karen Blixen
Source
Report...
One may take many liberties with God which one cannot take with men.
Karen Blixen
Source
Report...
"Do you know a cure for me?" "Why yes," he said, "I know a cure for everything. Salt water." "Salt water?" I asked him. "Yes," he said, "in one way or the other. Sweat, or tears, or the salt sea."
Karen Blixen
Source
Report...
The Cicada sing an endless song in the long grass, smells run along the earth and falling stars run over the sky, like tears over a cheek. You are the privileged person to whom everything is taken. The Kings of Tarshish shall bring gifts.
Karen Blixen
Source
Report...
I belong to an ancient, idle, wild, and useless tribe... I am a storyteller.
Karen Blixen
Source
Report...
In Africa, when you pick up a book worth reading, out of the deadly consignments which good ships are always being made to carry out all the way from Europe, you read it as an author would like his book to be read, praying to God that he may have it in him to go on as beautifully as he has begun. Your mind runs, transported, upon a fresh deep green track.
Karen Blixen
Source
Report...
Upon the library shelves tall tomes, with their backs to the world, preserved the ponderous knowledge of ages. But from time to time during three centuries, volumes of more frivolous thoughts, of longing and levity and words that rhymed, had happened to leap in amongst them.
Karen Blixen
Source
Report...
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
1
2
3
4
5
Quote of the day
Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Karen Blixen
Born:
April 17, 1885
Died:
September 7, 1962
(aged 77)
Bio:
Baroness Karen von Blixen-Finecke, née Karen Christenze Dinesen, was a Danish author, also known by the pen name Isak Dinesen, who wrote works in Danish, French and English.
Known for:
Out of Africa (1937)
Seven Gothic Tales (1934)
Shadows of the Grass (1960)
Anecdotes of Destiny (1957)
Babette's Feast (1950)
Most used words:
time
people
life
africa
god
story
eyes
mind
nature
silence
women
looked
thought
day
man
Karen Blixen on Wikipedia
Suggest an edit or a new quote
Karen Blixen Quotes
Karen Blixen Short Quotes
Danish Author Quotes
Author Quotes
19th-century Author Quotes
19th-century Women
Women Authors
Related People
Beryl Markham
British Aviator
Featured Authors
Lists
Predictions that didn't happen
If it's on the Internet it must be true
Remarkable Last Words (or Near-Last Words)
Picture Quotes
Confucius
Philip James Bailey
Eleanor Roosevelt
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Popular Topics
life
love
nature
time
god
power
human
mind
work
art
heart
thought
men
day
×
Lib Quotes