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Within our whole universe the story only has the authority to answer that cry of heart of its characters, that one cry of heart of each of them: Who am I?

Isak Dinesen

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Isak Dinesen
Heart
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More quotes by Isak Dinesen

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It is little silly to be a caricature of something of which you know very little, and which means very little to you, but to be your own caricature — that is the true carnival!
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It is difficult to restrain admirers of Shakespeare once they have begun to speak of him.
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I had seen a herd of Elephant travelling through dense native forest ... pacing along as if they had an appointment at the end of the world.
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Now, looking back on my life in Africa, I feel that it might altogether be described as the existence of a person who had come from a rushed and noisy world, into a still country.
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No domestic animal can be as still as a wild animal. The civilized people have lost the aptitude of stillness, and must take lessons in silence from the wild before they are accepted by it.
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It is not a bad thing in a tale that you understand only half of it.
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The pleasure of the true dreamer does not lie in the substance of the dream, but in this: that there things happen without any interference from his side, and altogether outside his control.
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Do you know a cure for me? Why yes, he said, I know a cure for everything. Salt water. Salt water? I asked him. Yes, he said, in one way or the other. Sweat, or tears, or the salt sea.
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To set sail somewhere is more important than life itself.
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And I had by now become used to the idea of witchcraft, it seemed a reasonable thing, so many things are about, at night, in Africa.
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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.
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It is often the case with a new idea that when it comes knocking on society's door with modesty and the best premises for its existence, there is a tremendous outcry from inside.
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We must leave our mark on life while we have it in our power.
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During the first quarter of the last century, seaside resorts became the fashion, even in those countries of Northern Europe within the minds of whose people the sea had hitherto held the role of the devil, the cold and voracious hereditary foe of humanity.
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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.
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Tragedy should remain the right of human beings, subject, in their conditions or in their own nature, to the dire law of necessity. To them it is salvation and beatification.
Isak Dinesen
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When you have caught the rhythm of Africa, you find out that it is the same in all her music.
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I think it will be truly glorious when women become real people and have the whole world open to them.
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My love was both humble and audacious, like that of a page for his lady.
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I have before seen other countries, in the same manner, give themselves to you when you are about to leave them.
Isak Dinesen