88 Quotes by Beryl Markham

Boredom, like hookworm, is endemic.

And now, at last, we are here. Now Eric fingers his glass and questions me hopefully, while the music of Muthaiga marches through our talk, and festive people clasp hands, revive old toasts -- and make bets on tomorrow's Leger. One hundred pounds -- two hundred pounds..."Has the filly a chance?""Against Wrack? Of course not.""Don't be too sure... don't be too sure. Why, I remember..."Well, that's what makes a horse-race.

(Quoting her friend Tom Black on an amateur hunter's injury:)"Lion, rifles -- and stupidity.

Success breeds confidence.

All this, and discontent too! Otherwise, why am I sitting here dreaming of England? Why am I gazing at this campfire like a lost should seeking a hope when all that I love is at my wingtips? Because I am curious. Because I am incorrigibly, now, a wanderer.

One day the stars will be as familiar to each man as the landmarks, the curves, and the hills on the road that leads to his door, and one day this will be an airborne life. But by then men will have forgotten how to fly; they will be passengers on machines whose conductors are carefully promoted to a familiarity with labelled buttons, and in whose minds knowledge of the sky and the wind and the way of weather will be extraneous as passing fiction.

In view of this and other things, I demand forgiveness for being so obviously impressed with my own parents.

"Still, not to be English is hardly regarded as a fatal deficiency even by the English, though grave enough to warrant sympathy.

A life has to move or it stagnates.