179 Quotes by Isak Dinesen

It's an odd feeling-farewell-there is some envy in it. Men go off to be tested for courage and if we're tested at all, it's for patience, for doing without, for how well we can endure loneliness.

We invent the past and remember the future.

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

Do you know...what I think is a great pity? It is this: that we have all become such skeptics that we hardly believe what our pious grandmothers told us.

It is difficult to restrain admirers of Shakespeare once they have begun to speak of him.

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.

While we are young the idea of death or failure is intolerable to us; even the possibility of ridicule we cannot bear.

All suffering is bearable if it is seen as part of a story.

In the mind and nature of a man a secret is an ugly thing, like a hidden physical defect.