Isak Dinesen Quotes

Quotes about:

• You can't change the past, but you can ruin the present by worrying about the future.

  Isak Dinesen

  Wise, Past, Worry

  105 Copy quote

• The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea.

  Isak Dinesen

  Beach, Encouragement, Ocean

  176 Copy quote

• Difficult times have helped me to understand better than before, how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way, and that so many things that one goes worrying about are of no importance whatsoever.

  Isak Dinesen

  Inspirational, Life, Beautiful

  75 Copy quote

• God made the world round so we would never be able to see too far down the road.

  Isak Dinesen

  World, Able, Live In The Present

  As quoted in obituaries, September 7, 1962.

  49 Copy quote

• When you have a great and difficult task, something perhaps almost impossible, if you only work a little at a time, every day a little, suddenly the work will finish itself.

  Isak Dinesen

  Encouraging, Perseverance, Time

  42 Copy quote

• I think all sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them.

  Isak Dinesen

  Suffering, Stories, Bearable

  Interview with Bent Mohn in The New York Times Book Review, November 3, 1957.

  26 Copy quote

• Here I am, where I am supposed to be.

  Isak Dinesen

  Here I Am, Supposed To Be

  26 Copy quote

• To be a person is to have a story to tell.

  Isak Dinesen

  Stories, Public Speaking, Storytelling

  13 Copy quote

• Nobody has seen the trekking birds take their way towards such warmer spheres as do not exist, or rivers break their course through rocks and plains to run into an ocean which is not to be found. For God does not create a longing or a hope without having a fulfilling reality ready for them. But our longing is our pledge, and blessed are the homesick, for they shall come home.

  Isak Dinesen

  Running, Ocean, Blessed

  Isak Dinesen (2011). “Anecdotes of Destiny and Ehrengard”, p.10, Vintage

  12 Copy quote

• If I know a song of Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back, of the plows in the fields and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Will the air over the plain quiver with a color that I have had on, or the children invent a game in which my name is, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or will the eagles of the Ngong Hills look out for me?

  Isak Dinesen

  Song, Children, Lying

  "Fictional character: Karen Blixen". "Out of Africa", www.imdb.com. 1985.

  25 Copy quote

• What is it which is bought dearly, offered for nothing, and then most often refused?--Experience, old people's experience.

  Isak Dinesen

  People, Experience, Old People

  Isak Dinesen (2011). “Seven Gothic Tales”, p.115, Vintage

  30 Copy quote

• "Do you know a cure for me?" Why yes," he said, "I know a cure for everything. Salt water." Salt water?" I asked him. Yes," he said, "in one way or the other. Sweat, or tears, or the salt sea".

  Isak Dinesen

  Sea, Sweat, Water

  "The Deluge at Norderney" by Isak Dinesen, 1934.

  26 Copy quote

• I have been trying for a long time to understand God. Now I have made friends with him. To love him truly you must love change, and you must love a joke, these being the true inclinations of his own heart.

  Isak Dinesen

  Heart, Long, Trying

  Isak Dinesen (2011). “Seven Gothic Tales”, p.355, Vintage

  29 Copy quote

• You know you are truly alive when you’re living among lions.

  Isak Dinesen

  Travel, Adventure, Alive

  14 Copy quote

• Real art must always involve some witchcraft.

  Isak Dinesen

  Art, Real, Witchcraft

  "Letters from Africa: 1914-1931". Book edited by Frans Lasson translated by Anne Born, 1981.

  8 Copy quote

• We must leave our mark on life while we have it in our power.

  Isak Dinesen

  Mark

  4 Copy quote

• Coffee, according to the women of Denmark, is to the body what the Word of the Lord is to the soul.

  Isak Dinesen

  Coffee, Soul, Body

  Isak Dinesen (2011). “Seven Gothic Tales”, p.245, Vintage

  33 Copy quote

• And were my faith so strong that it could move mountains, that is the mountain that I would make come to me.

  Isak Dinesen

  Strong, Moving, Mountain

  Isak Dinesen (1987). “Out of Africa”, Crown Pub

  4 Copy quote

• Love, with very young people, is a heartless business. We drink at that age from thirst, or to get drunk; it is only later in life that we occupy ourselves with the individuality of our wine.

  Isak Dinesen

  Wine, Later In Life, People

  Isak Dinesen (2011). “Seven Gothic Tales”, p.83, Vintage

  29 Copy quote

• I had seen a herd of Buffalo, one hundred and twenty-nine of them, come out of the morning mist under a copper sky, one by one, as if the dark and massive, iron-like animals with the mighty horizontally swung horns were not approaching, but were being created before my eyes and sent out as they were finished.

  Isak Dinesen

  Morning, Eye, Dark

  Isak Dinesen (1938). “Out of Africa”

  11 Copy quote

• Be not afraid of absurdity; do not shrink from the fantastic. Within a dilemma, choose the most unheard-of, the most dangerous solution. Be brave, be brave.

  Isak Dinesen

  Brave, Fantastic, Dangerous

  Isak Dinesen (2011). “Seven Gothic Tales”, p.55, Vintage

  28 Copy quote

• Write a little every day, without hope, without despair.

  Isak Dinesen

  Writing, Despair, Littles

  9 Copy quote

• There are many ways to the recognition of truth, and Burgundy is one of them.

  Isak Dinesen

  Wine, Way, Recognition

  Isak Dinesen (2011). “Seven Gothic Tales”, p.100, Vintage

  49 Copy quote

• One must in this lower world love many things to know finally what one loves the best.

  Isak Dinesen

  World Love, World, One Love

  5 Copy quote

• I do not think that I could ever really love a woman who had not, at one time or another, been up on a broomstick.

  Isak Dinesen

  Thinking, Broomsticks, One Time

  7 Copy quote

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