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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.

Beryl Markham

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.
BERYL MARKHAM

Balance Giving People
Africa 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.
BERYL MARKHAM

Land Men Moods Race Return
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.
BERYL MARKHAM

Dreaming Horizon Learn Mine Wander
Success breeds confidence.
BERYL MARKHAM

Confidence Inspirational Success
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

Ideas Journey Want
To me, desert has the quality of darkness; none of the shapes you see in it are real or permanent. Like night, the desert is boundless, comfortless, and infinite. Like night, it intrigues the mind and leads it to futility.
BERYL MARKHAM

Darkness Men Night Real
We fly, but we have not ‘conquered’ the air. Nature presides in all her dignity, permitting us the study and the use of such of her forces as we may understand.
BERYL MARKHAM

Dignity Fall Nature Pain
A life has to move or it stagnates. Even this life, I think. Every tomorrow ought not to resemble every yesterday.
BERYL MARKHAM

Moving Thinking Yesterday
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
At least David and Goliath were of the same species, but, to an elephant, a man can only be a midge with a deathly sting.
BERYL MARKHAM

Deathly Elephant Species Sting
She has a derelict quality in her character; she toys with freedom and hints at liberation, but yields her own desires gently.
BERYL MARKHAM

Character Freedom Gently Liberation
The abhorrence of loneliness is as natural as wanting to live at all.
BERYL MARKHAM

Cards Deck Loneliness Natural
When you have flown halfway across a desert, you experience the desperation of a sleepless man waiting for dawn which only comes when the importance of its coming is lost.
BERYL MARKHAM

Coming Desperation Importance Lost
A map says to you, ‘Read me carefully, follow me closely, doubt me not.’ It says, ‘I am the earth in the palm of your hand. Without me, you are alone and lost.
BERYL MARKHAM

Alone Doubt Earth Hand Lost Path
After that, work and hope. But never hope more than you work
BERYL MARKHAM

Hope More Work
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

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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