Karen Blixen Quotes

“We must leave our mark on life while we have it in our power.”

“Write a little every day, without hope, without despair.”

“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?”

“There is a particular hapiness in giving a man whom you like very much, good food that you have cooked yourself.”

“I know of a cure for everything: salt water… in one way or the other. Sweat, or tears, or the salt sea.”

Source: Out of Africa

“Difficult times have helped me to understand better than before how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way, and that so many things that one goes worrying about are of no importance whatsoever.”

As quoted in Reader's Digest (April 1964)
Variant: I know a cure for everything. Salt water … in one form or another, sweat, tears or the salt sea.
Variant: The cure for anything is salt water — sweat, tears, or the sea.

Karen Blixen Quotes about time

“I think Marilyn is bound to make an almost overwhelming impression on the people who meet her for the first time. It is not that she is pretty, although she is of course almost incredibly pretty, but she radiates, at the same time, unbounded vitality and a kind of unbelievable innocence. I have met the same in a lion-cub, which my native servants in Africa brought me. I would not keep her, since I felt that it would in some way be wrong…I shall never forget the almost overpowering feeling of unconquerable strength and sweetness which she conveyed. I had all the wild nature of Africa amicably gazing at me with mighty playfulness.”

“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.”

Written of her experience with actress Marilyn Monroe in a letter to the American author, Fleur Cowles Meyer, in 1961. As quoted in Fragments, by Stanley Buchthal and Bernard Comment (2010)

“When in the end, the day came on which I was going away, I learned the strange learning that things can happen which we ourselves cannot possibly imagine, either beforehand, or at the time when they are taking place, or afterwards when we look back on them.”

“White people, who for a long time live alone with Natives, get into the habit of saying what they mean, because they have no reason or opportunity for dissimulation, and when they meet again their conversation keeps the Native tone.”

Source: Out of Africa / Shadows on the Grass

“Taciturn old people received the gift of tongues; ears that for years had been almost deaf were opened to it. Time itself had merged into eternity. Long after midnight the windows of the house shone like gold, and golden song flowed out into the winter air.”

Out of Africa (1937)

Karen Blixen book Anecdotes of Destiny

"Babette's Feast"
Anecdotes of Destiny (1953)
Context: Of what happened later in the evening nothing definite can here be stated. None of the guests later on had any clear remembrance of it. They only knew that the rooms had been filled with a heavenly light, as if a number of small halos had blended into one glorious radiance. Taciturn old people received the gift of tongues; ears that for years had been almost deaf were opened to it. Time itself had merged into eternity. Long after midnight the windows of the house shone like gold, and golden song flowed out into the winter air.

Karen Blixen Quotes about people

“People who dream when they sleep at night know of a special kind of happiness which the world of the day holds not, a placid ecstasy, and ease of heart, that are like honey on the tongue. They also know that the real glory of dreams lies in their atmosphere of unlimited freedom. It is not the freedom of the dictator, who enforces his own will on the world, but the freedom of the artist, who has no will, who is free of will.”

“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.”

Source: Out of Africa (1937)
Context: People who dream when they sleep at night know of a special kind of happiness which the world of the day holds not, a placid ecstasy, and ease of heart, that are like honey on the tongue. They also know that the real glory of dreams lies in their atmosphere of unlimited freedom. It is not the freedom of the dictator, who enforces his own will on the world, but the freedom of the artist, who has no will, who is free of will. 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. Great landscapes create themselves, long splendid views, rich and delicate colours, roads, houses, which he has never seen or heard of...

“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.”

Source: Out of Africa

“Love, with very young people, is a heartless business. We drink at that age from thirst, or to get drunk; it is only later in life that we occupy ourselves with the individuality of our wine. A young man in love is essentially enraptured by the forces within himself.”

"The Deluge at Norderney"
Seven Gothic Tales (1934)

“Let physicians and confectioners and servants in the great houses be judged by what they have done, and even by what they have meant to do; the great people themselves are judged by what they are.”

"The Old Chevalier"
Seven Gothic Tales (1934)

“There is hardly any other sphere in which prejudice and superstition of the most horrific kind have been retained so long as in that of women, and just as it must have been an inexpressable relief for humanity when it shook off the burden of religious prejudice and superstition, I think it will be truly glorious when women become real people and have the whole world open before them.”

"The Dreamers"
Seven Gothic Tales (1934)
Context: The consolations of the vulgar are bitter in the royal ear. Let physicians and confectioners and servants in the great houses be judged by what they have done, and even by what they have meant to do; the great people themselves are judged by what they are. I have been told that lions, trapped and shut up in cages, grieve from shame more than from hunger.

“I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills.”

Letter to her sister Elle (1923); later published in Letters from Africa: 1914-1931 (1981) edited by Frans Lasson, translated by Anne Born.

Karen Blixen: Trending quotes

“"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."”

First lines.
Source: Out of Africa (1937)
Context: I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills. The Equator runs across these highlands, a hundred miles to the North, and the farm lay at an altitude of over six thousand feet. In the day-time you felt that you had got high up, near to the sun, but the early mornings and evenings were limpid and restful, and the nights were cold.

“A great artist is never poor.”

"The Deluge at Norderney"
Source: Seven Gothic Tales (1934)

“Here I am, where I ought to be.”

Karen Blixen Quotes

“The vain illusions of this earth had dissolved before their eyes like smoke, and they had seen the universe as it really is. They had been given one hour of the millennium.”

Source: Out of Africa

Karen Blixen book Anecdotes of Destiny

"Babette's Feast"
Anecdotes of Destiny (1953)
Context: When later in life they thought of this evening it never occurred to any of them that they might have been exalted by their own merit. They realized that the infinite grace of which General Loewenhielm had spoken had been allotted to them, and they did not even wonder at the fact, for it had been but the fulfillment of an ever-present hope. The vain illusions of this earth had dissolved before their eyes like smoke, and they had seen the universe as it really is. They had been given one hour of the millennium.

“Perhaps he knew, as I did not, that the Earth was made round so that we would not see too far down the road.”

“All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them.”

As quoted in obituaries (7 September 1962)
Variant: God made the world round so we would never be able to see too far down the road.
Source: Out of Africa

“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.”

As quoted in The Human Condition (1958) by Hannah Arendt. This appears as part of a statement in a 1957 interview where she speaks of a friend's comments about her:
I am not a novelist, really not even a writer; I am a storyteller. One of my friends said about me that I think all sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them, and perhaps this is not entirely untrue. To me, the explanation of life seems to be its melody, its pattern. And I feel in life such an infinite, truly inconceivable fantasy.
Interview with Bent Mohn in The New York Times Book Review (3 November 1957)
Paraphrased variant : All suffering is bearable if it is seen as part of a story.

“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.”

Source: Out of Africa

“I have a feeling that wherever I may be in the future, I will be wondering whether there is rain at Ngong.”

“It never has happened, and it never will happen, and that is why it is told.”

Letter to her mother (26 February 1919)

Karen Blixen book Anecdotes of Destiny

"The Immortal Story"
Anecdotes of Destiny (1953)

“Real art must always involve some witchcraft.”

“There is something about safari life that makes you forget all your sorrows and feel as if you had drunk half a bottle of champagne — bubbling over with heartfelt gratitude for being alive.”

Letters from Africa: 1914-1931 (1981) edited by Frans Lasson, translated by Anne Born.

“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.”

Out of Africa (1937)

“Where the storyteller is loyal, eternally and unswervingly loyal to the story, there, in the end, silence will speak. Where the story has been betrayed, silence is but emptiness. But we, the faithful, when we have spoken our last word, will hear the voice of silence.”

Out of Africa (1937)

Karen Blixen book Last Tales

"The Blank Page"
Last Tales (1957)
Context: Why, you are to become a story teller, and I shall give you the reasons! Hear then: Where the storyteller is loyal, eternally and unswervingly loyal to the story, there, in the end, silence will speak. Where the story has been betrayed, silence is but emptiness. But we, the faithful, when we have spoken our last word, will hear the voice of silence. Whether a small snotty lass understands it or not.

“The true aristocracy and the true proletariat of the world are both in understanding with tragedy. To them it is the fundamental principle of God, and the key, the minor key, to existence.”

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

Out of Africa (1937)
Context: The true aristocracy and the true proletariat of the world are both in understanding with tragedy. To them it is the fundamental principle of God, and the key, the minor key, to existence. They differ in this way from the bourgeoisie of all classes, who deny tragedy, who will not tolerate it, and to whom the word tragedy means in itself unpleasantness.

“Of all the idiots I have met in my life, and the Lord knows that they have not been few or little, I think that I have been the biggest.”

Source: Out of Africa

“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.”

As quoted in Journey Through Womanhood: Meditations from Our Collective Soul (2002) by Tian Dayton

“Through all the world there goes one long cry from the heart of the artist: Give me a chance to do my best.”