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Isak Dinesen Biography

Baroness Karen Christenze von Blixen-Finecke (née Dinesen; 17 April 1885 – 7 September 1962) was a Danish author who wrote works in Danish and English. She is best known under her pen names Isak Dinesen, used in English-speaking countries, and Tania Blixen, used in German-speaking countries. She also published works using the aliases Osceola and Pierre Andrézel.

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Isak Dinesen Quotes

I do not know if you remember the tale of the girl who saves the ship under mutiny by sitting on the powder barrel with her lighted torch and all the time knowing that it is empty? This has seemed to me a charming image of the women of my time. There they were, keeping the world in order by sitting on the mystery of life and knowing themselves that there was no mystery.

Girl, Knowing, Mutiny, Order

death - a passage outside the range of imagination, but within the range of experience.

Imagination, Range, Passages, Death, Passage

The Cicada sing an endless song in the long grass, smells run along the earth and falling stars run over the sky, like tears over a cheek. You are the privileged person to whom everything is taken. The Kings of Tarshish shall bring gifts.

Gifts, Kings, Running, Sing, Song

Where a pack of monkeys had traveled over the road, the smell of them lingered for a long time in the air, a dry and stale, mousy smell.

Air, Dry, Long, Smell, Time

Here I am, where I am supposed to be.

Here I Am, Supposed, Supposed To Be

One does not travel by plane. One is merely sent, like a parcel.

Doe, Like, Merely, Parcel, Planes, Travel

What is life when you come to think upon it, but a most excellent, accurately set, infinitely complicated machine for turning fat playful puppies into old mangy blind dogs, and proud war horses into skinny nags, and succulent young boys, to whom the world holds great delights and terrors, into old weak men, with running eyes, who drink ground rhino-horn?

Dog, Ground, Horse, Running, Terrors, Young

There is something strangely determinate and fatal about a single shot in the night. It is as if someone had cried a message to you in one word, and would not repeat it.

Night, Sound, Messages, Cried, Shot, Determinate

The divine art is the story.

Art, Divine, Stories, Story, Writing

As we grow old we slowly come to believe that everything will turn out badly for us, and that failure is in the nature of things; but then we do not much mind what happens to us one way or the other.

Badly, Believe, Everything, Mind, Slowly, Way

The real difference between God and human beings is that God cannot stand continence. No sooner has he created a season of a year, or a time of day, than he wishes for something quite different and sweeps it all away. And human beings cleave to the existing state of things. All their lives they are striving to hold the moment fast, and are up against a force majeure. Their art itself is nothing but the attempt to catch by all means the one particular moment, one mood, one light, the momentary beauty of one woman or one flower, and make it everlasting.

Art, Attempt, Flower, Moment, Real, Things

People who dream when they sleep at night know of a special kind of happiness which the world of the day holds not, a placid ecstasy, and ease of heart, that are like honey on the tongue. They also know that the real glory of dreams lies in their atmosphere of unlimited freedom. It is not the freedom of the dictator, who enforces his own will on the world, but the freedom of the artist, who has no will, who is free of will.

Day, Dream, Ease, Lying, Real, Unlimited

There is something about safari life that makes you forget all your sorrows and feel as if you had drunk half a bottle of champagne — bubbling over with heartfelt gratitude for being alive.

Bottle, Drunk, Gratitude, Heartfelt

I have a feeling that wherever I may be in the future, I will be wondering whether there is rain at Ngong.

Rain, Feelings, May, Feeling, Wherever, Ngong

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.

Difficult, Encouraging, Finish, Perseverance, Time, Work

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

According, Body, Coffee, Denmark, Lord, Soul

The lime trees were in bloom. But in the early morning only a faint fragrance drifted through the garden, an airy message, an aromatic echo of the dreams during the short summer night.

Aromatic, Dream, Drifted, Nature, Summer, Trees

Who tells a finer tale than any of us. Silence does.

Doe, Finer, Silence, Tale, Tales, Tells

Real art must always involve some witchcraft.

Art, Involve, Real, Witchcraft

Africa, amongst the continents, will teach it to you: that God and the Devil are one, the majesty coeternal, not two uncreated but one uncreated, and the Natives neither confounded the persons nor divided the substance.

Devil, Natives, Substance, Two

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