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 MARKHAMI 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.
More Beryl Markham Quotes
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I have a trunk containing continents.
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I know animals more gallant than the African warthog, but none more courageous. He is the peasant of the plains – the drab and dowdy digger in the earth.
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A life has to move or it stagnates. Even this life, I think. Every tomorrow ought not to resemble every yesterday.
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Silence is never so impenetrable as when the whisper of steel on paper strives to pierce it.
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[The lion] began to contemplate me with a kind of quiet premeditation, like that of a slow-witted man fondling an unaccustomed thought.
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If your hunch proves a good one, you were inspired; if it proves bad, you are guilty of yielding to thoughtless impulse.
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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.
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You learn to watch other people, but you never watch yourself because you strive against loneliness. If you read a book, or shuffle a deck of cards, or care for a dog, you are avoiding yourself.
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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.
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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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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.
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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.
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You know then what you had always been told — that the world once lived and grew without adding machines and newsprint and brick-walled streets and the tyranny of clocks.
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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.
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Success feeds confidence.
BERYL MARKHAM