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A word grows to a thought – a thought to an idea – an idea to an act. The change is slow, and the Present is a sluggish traveler loafing in the path Tomorrow wants to take.

Beryl Markham

the sun is as dispassionate as the hand of a man who greets you with his mind on other things.
BERYL MARKHAM

Dispassionate Hands Men Mind
There is a certain silence that can emanate from a lifeless object as from a chair lately used, or from a piano with old dust upon its keys, or from anything that has answered to the need of a man, for pleasure or for work.
BERYL MARKHAM

Children Gay Lifeless Men
There is silence after a rainstorm, and before a rainstorm, and these are not the same. There is the silence of emptiness, the silence of fear, the silence of doubt.
BERYL MARKHAM

Different Emptiness Rainstorm Silence
It is not fickle, but because it has mothered not only men, but races, and cradles not only cities, but civilizations – and seen them die, and seen new ones born again – Africa can be dispassionate, indifferent, warm, or cynical, replete with the weariness of too much wisdom.
BERYL MARKHAM

Again Born Civilization Country
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.
BERYL MARKHAM

Mean Morning Sleep
Talk lives in a man’s head, but sometimes it is very lonely because in the heads of many men there is nothing to keep it company – and so talk goes out through the lips.
BERYL MARKHAM

Lips Lonely Many Men Sometimes
That’s what makes death so hard–unsatisfied curiosity
BERYL MARKHAM

Curiosity Hard Unsatisfied
Nature having developed their bodies in one direction and their brains in another, while human beings, on the other hand, drew from Mr. Darwin’s lottery of evolution both the winning ticket and the stub to match it.
BERYL MARKHAM

Hand Human Being Lottery Winning Other
I learned what every dreaming child needs to know, that no horizon is so far you cannot get above it or beyond it.
BERYL MARKHAM

Beyond Children Dream Hope Need
Success feeds confidence.
BERYL MARKHAM

Confidence Feeds Success
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.
BERYL MARKHAM

Character Hands Yield
Who thinks it just to be judged by a single error?
BERYL MARKHAM

Errors Inspirational Thinking
Africa is mystic; it is wild; it is a sweltering inferno; it is a photographer’s paradise, a hunter’s Valhalla, an escapist’s Utopia. It is what you will, and it withstands all interpretations.
BERYL MARKHAM

Home Justice People
Conformation … but not much else. Breeding, but too small a heart. You saw it everywhere – in men, in horses, and in women.
BERYL MARKHAM

Heart Horse Men
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.
BERYL MARKHAM

Believe Dog Horse Universal
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.
BERYL MARKHAM

Children Dream Men

A word grows to a thought – a thought to an idea – an idea to an act. The change is slow, and the Present is a sluggish traveler loafing in the path Tomorrow wants to take.

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A word grows to a thought – a thought to an idea – an idea to an act. The change is slow, and the Present is a sluggish traveler loafing in the path Tomorrow wants to take.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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