Mary Kingsley Quotes

• It is my melancholy fate to like so many people I profoundly disagree with and often heartily dislike people who agree with me.

  Mary Kingsley

  Fate, People, Opinion

  42 Copy quote

• the grim, grand African forests are like a great library, in which, so far, I can do little more than look at the pictures, although I am now busily learning the alphabet of their language, so that I may some day read what these pictures mean.

  Mary Kingsley

  Mean, Library, Looks

  52 Copy quote

• West Africa today is just a quarry of paving stones for Hell, and those stones were cemented in place with

  Mary Kingsley

  Stones, Today, West

  1899 West African Studies.

  46 Copy quote

• I most carefully confined myself to facts and arranged those facts on as thin a line of connecting opinion as possible.

  Mary Kingsley

  Lines, Facts, Opinion

  Mary Kingsley (2013). “West African Studies”, p.9, Routledge

  30 Copy quote

• the African leopard is an audacious animal, although it is ungrateful of me to say a word against him, after the way he has let me off personally ... taken as a whole, he is the most lovely animal I have ever seen; only seeing him, in the one way you can gain a full idea of his beauty, namely in his native forest, is not an unmixed joy to a person, like myself, of a nervous disposition.

  Mary Kingsley

  Taken, Animal, Ideas

  Mary Kingsley (2010). “Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons”, p.543, Cambridge University Press

  35 Copy quote

• [Responding to repeated questions about traveling in Africa without a husband:] I am looking for him.

  Mary Kingsley

  Husband, Responding

  27 Copy quote

• It is a generally received opinion that there are too many books in the world already. I cannot, however, subscribe to any Institution that proposes to alter this state of affairs, because I find no consensus of opinion as to which are the superfluous books.

  Mary Kingsley

  Book, World, Opinion

  Mary Kingsley (2013). “West African Studies”, p.187, Routledge

  18 Copy quote

• There is one distinctive charm about fishing - its fascinations will stand any climate. You may sit crouching on ice over a hole inside the arctic circle, or on a Windsor chair by the side of the River Lea in the so-called temperate zone, or you may squat in a canoe on an equatorial river, with the surrounding atmosphere forty-five percent mosquito, and if you are fishing you will enjoy yourself.

  Mary Kingsley

  Ice, Fishing, Circles

  Mary Kingsley (2013). “West African Studies”, p.75, Routledge

  28 Copy quote

• One immense old lady has a family of lively young crocodiles running over her, evidently playing like a lot of kittens. The heavy musky smell they give off is most repulsive, but we do not rise up and make a row about this, because we feel hopelessly in the wrong in intruding into these family scenes uninvited.

  Mary Kingsley

  Running, Smell, Giving

  Mary Kingsley (2010). “Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons”, p.244, Cambridge University Press

  23 Copy quote

• If you see a thing that looks like a cross between a flying lobster and the figure of Abraxas on a Gnostic gem, do not pay it the least attention, never mind where it is; just keep quiet and hope it will go away - for that's your best chance; you have none in a stand-up fight with a good thorough-going African insect.

  Mary Kingsley

  Fighting, Flying, Mind

  Mary Kingsley (2013). “West African Studies”, p.9, Routledge

  25 Copy quote

• Ambas and Bobia Islands are perfect gems of beauty. Mondoleh I cannot say I admire. It always looks to me exactly like one of those flower-stands full of ferns and plants - the sort you come across in drawing rooms at home, with wire-work legs. I do not mean that Mondoleh has wire-work legs under water, but it looks as if it might have.

  Mary Kingsley

  Flower, Mean, Home

  18 Copy quote

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