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 MARKHAMAfrica is never the same to anyone who leaves it and returns again. It is not a land of change, but it is a land of moods and its moods are numberless.
More Beryl Markham Quotes
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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.
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No human pursuit achieves dignity until it can be called work.
BERYL MARKHAM -
A map says to you. Read me carefully, follow me closely, doubt me not… I am the earth in the palm of your hand.
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It is just one of those preposterous things that men do like putting a dam across a great river, one tenth of whose volume could engulf the whole of mankind without disturbing the domestic life of a single catfish.
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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 -
In view of this and other things, I demand forgiveness for being so obviously impressed with my own parents.
BERYL MARKHAM -
Success feeds confidence.
BERYL MARKHAM -
There are all kinds of silences and each of them means a different thing. There is the silence that comes with morning in a forest, and this is different from the silence of a sleeping city.
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[Elephants] are less agile and physically less adaptable than ourselves.
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This, I suppose, is why we are so wonderful and can make movies and electric razors and wireless sets – and guns with which to shoot the elephant, the hare, clay pigeons, and each other.
BERYL MARKHAM -
There are as many Africas as there are books about Africa.
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It is absurd for a man to kill an elephant. It is not brutal, it is not heroic, and certainly it is not easy.
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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.
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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.
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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







