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Isak Dinesen

Isak Dinesen Quotes

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Famous Isak Dinesen Quotes

“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.”

YearsHumansMeanArtDifferentRealStatesMomentsLightForceWishDifferencesHuman BeingsParticularFlowerSeasonsStriveMoodEverlastingOne WomanMomentaryTime Of Day
Author:Isak Dinesen
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“Here and there, in some older houses, old faded daguerreotypes still hang on the walls... They seem to us to be very simple... compared with the artistic and skillful portraits made in later days... Here was a photograph that at one time had been the last word, a very modern portrait... Today it is just a part of cultural history. The small yellowed surface has acquired depth, an admonishing perspective. We hold in our hand a symbol of the structure and ideology of an epoch.”

MadeStillsHandsSeemsTodayLastsHouseSimpleModernPerspectiveWallStructureDepthPhotographSurfaceIdeologySymbolsArtisticOne TimePortraitsLast WordsHere And ThereFadedSkillfulEpochDaguerreotypes
Author:Isak Dinesen
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“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?”

IfsKnowsLooksChildrenDoeFacesLyingSongGamesNamesAirFieldsColorMoonShadowCoffeeLike MeHillsEaglesFull MoonNew MoonQuiverGiraffeGravel
Author:Isak Dinesen
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“There was a place in the Hills, on the first ridge in the Game Reserve, that I myself at the time when I thought that I was to live and die in Africa, had pointed out to Denys as my future burial-place. In the evening, while we sat and looked at the hills from my house, he remarked that then he would like to be buried there himself as well. Since then, sometimes when we drove out in the hills, Denys had said: "Let us drive as far as our graves.”

FirstsWellsSaidSometimesDiesGamesHouseGravesEveningHillsSatBuriedReservesMy FutureBurialRidges
Book:Out of Africa
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“I was young, and by instinct of self-preservation I had to collect my energy on something, if I were not to be whirled away with the dusk on the farm-roads, or the smoke on the plain. I begun in the evenings to write stories, fairy-tales, and romances, that would take my mind a long way off, to other countries and times.”

IfsWayWritingMindLongSelfCountryStoriesRomanceYoungEnergyInstinctTalesEveningSmokeFairyFarmsFairy TaleOther CountriesPreservationLong WayDuskSelf Preservation
Author:Isak Dinesen
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“It is a sad hardship and slavery to people who live in towns, that in their movements they know of one dimension only; they walk along the line as if they were led on a string. The transition from the line to the plane into the two dimensions, when you wander across a field or through a wood, is a splendid liberation to the slaves, like the French Revolution. But in the air you are taken into the full freedom of the three dimensions; after long ages of exile and dreams the homesick heart throws itself into the arms of space.”

PeopleIfsKnowsHeartLongTwoDreamAgeThreeLinesSpaceWalksTakenAirMovementFieldsRevolutionArmsTownsSlaverySlaveWoodsWanderLiberationPlanesDimensionsStringsHardshipTransitionExileSplendidFrench RevolutionHomesickThree Dimensions
Book:Out of Africa
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