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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

[Elephants] are less agile and physically less adaptable than ourselves.
BERYL MARKHAM

Direction Gun One Ourselves Winning
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
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
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
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

Cloud Future Hour Lived Passed Remember
The way to find a needle in a haystack is to sit down.
BERYL MARKHAM

Haystack Needles Way
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
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
Success feeds confidence.
BERYL MARKHAM

Confidence Feeds Success
This, I suppose, is why we are so wonderful and can make movies and electric razors and wireless sets – and guns with which to shoot the elephant, the hare, clay pigeons, and each other.
BERYL MARKHAM

Electric Elephant Pigeon Razor
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
I have a trunk containing continents.
BERYL MARKHAM

Containing Continents Trunks
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 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
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
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

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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