[The lion] began to contemplate me with a kind of quiet premeditation, like that of a slow-witted man fondling an unaccustomed thought.
BERYL MARKHAMThere are many Africas.
More Beryl Markham Quotes
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We fly, but we have not ‘conquered’ the air. Nature presides in all her dignity, permitting us the study and the use of such of her forces as we may understand.
BERYL MARKHAM -
She has a derelict quality in her character; she toys with freedom and hints at liberation, but yields her own desires gently.
BERYL MARKHAM -
A lovely horse is always an experience…. It is an emotional experience of the kind that is spoiled by words.
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 -
To see ten thousand animals untamed and not branded with the symbols of human commerce is like scaling an unconquered mountain for the first time, or like finding a forest without roads or footpaths, or the blemish of an axe.
BERYL MARKHAM -
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 -
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 -
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 -
I 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.
BERYL MARKHAM -
You can live a lifetime and, at the end of it, know more about other people than you know about yourself.
BERYL MARKHAM -
It is absurd for a man to kill an elephant. It is not brutal, it is not heroic, and certainly it is not easy.
BERYL MARKHAM -
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 -
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 -
After that, work and hope. But never hope more than you work
BERYL MARKHAM -
There are many Africas.
BERYL MARKHAM