179 Quotes by Isak Dinesen

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.

Then Martine said: "So yuo will be poor now all your life, Babette?"Poor?" said Babette. She smiled as if to herself. "No, I shall never be poor. I told you that I am a great artist. A great artist, Mesdames, is never poor.We have something, Mesdames, of which other people know nothing.

Idet hun forsigtigt havde banet sig vej gennem græsset, da hun med ét kommet til en lysning midt inde i det, en ganske lille åben plads, som en alkove med gyldengrønne omhæng. Hun havde pludselig følt, at hun her var lige i hjertet af sit kongerige, hun var blevet så lykkelig bevæget derved. Ak, mon hun kunne finde det hellige hemmelighedsfulde sted igen? Hvis hun fandt det, ville hun stå ganske stille derinde, skjult for hele verden.

I start with a tingle, a kind of feeling of the story I will write. Then come the characters, and they take over, they make the story.

A visitor is a friend, he brings news, good or bad, which is bread to the hungry minds in lonely places. A real friend who comes to the house is a heavenly messenger, who brings the panis angelorum.

Dr Sass…maintained that in paradise, until the time of the fall, the whole world was flat, the back-curtain of the Lord, and that it was the devil who invented a third dimension. Thus are the words ‘straight’, ‘square’, and ‘flat’ the words of noblemen, but the apple was an orb, and the sin of our first parents, the attempt at getting around God. I myself much prefer the art of painting to sculpture

From my journeys in southern Europe I have gained the impression that in our time the Virgin Mary is the only heavenly creature who is really beloved by millions. But I believe these millions would be uncomprehending and perhaps even offended if I were to tell them that the Virgin Mary had made a significant discovery, solved difficult mathematical problems, or masterfully organized and administered an association of housewives in Nazareth.

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

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