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Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance.

Beryl Markham

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
No human pursuit achieves dignity until it can be called work.
BERYL MARKHAM

Achieve Dignity Work
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
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
But the soul of Africa, its integrity, the slow inexorable pulse of its life, is its own and of such singular rhythm that no outsider, unless steeped from childhood in its endless.
BERYL MARKHAM

Integrity Knowing Nothing War
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
You can live a lifetime and, at the end of it, know more about other people than you know about yourself.
BERYL MARKHAM

Book Dog Loneliness
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

Men Riddled Water Years
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
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

Across Disturbing Making Putting Volume
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
For all professional pilots there exists a kind of guild, without charter and without by-laws. it demands no requirements for inclusion save an understanding of the wind, the compass, the rudder, and fair fellowship.
BERYL MARKHAM

Inclusion Law Understanding Wind
Silence is never so impenetrable as when the whisper of steel on paper strives to pierce it.
BERYL MARKHAM

Paper Silence Steel
The world grows bigger as the light leaves it. There are no boundaries and no landmarks. The trees and the rocks and the anthills begin to disappear, one by one, whisked away under the magical cloak of evening.
BERYL MARKHAM

Dark Landmarks Light Rocks
[The lion] began to contemplate me with a kind of quiet premeditation, like that of a slow-witted man fondling an unaccustomed thought.
BERYL MARKHAM

Kind Lions Men Unaccustomed
There are as many Africas as there are books about Africa.
BERYL MARKHAM

Book Country Many Things

Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance.

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Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance.

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Popular Authors

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