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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

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
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
One day the stars will be as familiar to each man as the landmarks, the curves, and the hills on the road that leads to his door, and one day that will be an airborne life.
BERYL MARKHAM

Curves Future Men Stars
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
No human pursuit achieves dignity unless it can be called work, and when you can experience a physical loneliness for the tools of your trade, you see that the other things – the experiments, the irrelevant vocations, the vanities you used to hold – were false to you.
BERYL MARKHAM

Loneliness Tools Vanity
Silence is never so impenetrable as when the whisper of steel on paper strives to pierce it.
BERYL MARKHAM

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

Demand Parent Views
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
Who thinks it just to be judged by a single error?
BERYL MARKHAM

Errors Inspirational Thinking
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
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
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
There are many Africas.
BERYL MARKHAM

Country Many 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
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
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

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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