black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

A lovely horse is always an experience…. It is an emotional experience of the kind that is spoiled by words.

Beryl Markham

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

Achieve Dignity Work
Success feeds confidence.
BERYL MARKHAM

Confidence Feeds Success
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 have lifted my plane . . . for perhaps a thousand flights and I have never felt her wheels glide from the Earth into the air without knowing the uncertainty and the exhilaration of first-born adventure.
BERYL MARKHAM

Adventure Air Knowing
You can live a lifetime and at the end of it, know more about other people than you know about yourself.
BERYL MARKHAM

Knowledge Lifetime People
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
If your hunch proves a good one, you were inspired; if it proves bad, you are guilty of yielding to thoughtless impulse.
BERYL MARKHAM

Guilty Hunches Inspired
Success breeds confidence.
BERYL MARKHAM

Confidence Inspirational Success
Silence is never so impenetrable as when the whisper of steel on paper strives to pierce it.
BERYL MARKHAM

Paper Silence Steel
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
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
In view of this and other things, I demand forgiveness for being so obviously impressed with my own parents.
BERYL MARKHAM

Demand Parent Views
I look at my yesterdays for months past, and find them as good a lot of yesterdays as anybody might want. I sit there in the firelight and see them all.
BERYL MARKHAM

Friend Good Responsibility Wall
The abhorrence of loneliness is as natural as wanting to live at all.
BERYL MARKHAM

Cards Deck Loneliness Natural
The hours that made them were good, and so were the moments that made the hours. I have had responsibilities and work, dangers and pleasure, good friends, and a world without walls to live in.
BERYL MARKHAM

Friends Good Moments
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
A map says to you. Read me carefully, follow me closely, doubt me not… I am the earth in the palm of your hand.
BERYL MARKHAM

Doubt Hands Maps
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.
BERYL MARKHAM

Age Fun Goldfish Translated
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
What a child does not know and does not want to know of race and colour and class, he learns soon enough as he grows to see each man flipped inexorably into some predestined groove like a penny or a sovereign in a banker’s rack. Kibii, the Nandi boy, was my good friend.
BERYL MARKHAM

Boys Children Friends Good
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
After that, work and hope. But never hope more than you work
BERYL MARKHAM

Hope More Work
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
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.
BERYL MARKHAM

Book Card Care Red Shuffle Strive
There are many Africas.
BERYL MARKHAM

Country Many People
In the family of continents, Africa is the silent, the brooding sister, courted for centuries by knight-errant empires – rejecting them one by one and severally, because she is too sage and a little bored with the importunity of it all.
BERYL MARKHAM

Bored Knights Littles
I have a trunk containing continents.
BERYL MARKHAM

Containing Continents Trunks

A lovely horse is always an experience…. It is an emotional experience of the kind that is spoiled by words.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

A lovely horse is always an experience…. It is an emotional experience of the kind that is spoiled by words.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Beryl Markham Quotes