Quotes from Beryl Markham

The rain feeds the seed, and the seed the mill. When the rain stops, the mill wheels stop — or, if they continue to turn, they grind despair for the man who owns them. My father owned them.

All the pieces are put together, and the whole is yours …' A word grows to a thought — a thought to an idea — an idea to an act. The change is slow, and the Present is a sluggish traveller loafing in the path Tomorrow wants to take.

A Claridge's in London or a pub, a Cirro's in Paris or a bistro — alehouse, coffee-house, bodega, caravansary — by any name each is a sanctuary, a temple for talk, and for the observance of the warming rites of comradeship.

Whispers are not restricted to the bearing of bad news and there are men who smell injustice however softly it walks.

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.

I experienced that sense of futility all pilots must sometimes feel when the natural forces that rule this planet reassert their sovereignty (and express their contempt) for Man the Pretender.

The soul is not dead, but silent, the wisdom not lacking, but of such simplicity as to be counted non-existent in the tinker's mind of modern civilization.

I always concluded that lonely or not it was still free from the curse of boredom.

Whatever happens, armies will continue to rumble, colonies may change masters, and in the face of it all Africa lies, and will lie, like a great, wisely somnolent giant unmolested by the noisy drum-rolling of bickering empires. It is not only a land; it is an entity born of one man's hope and another man's fancy.

Life is life and fun is fun, but it's all so quiet when the goldfish die.

The days that marked the war went on like the ticking of a clock that had no face and showed no time.

Beyond are villages still sleeping in the forests, on the great reservations — villages peopled with human beings only vaguely aware that the even course of their racial life may somehow be endangered by the persistent and irresistible pressure of the White man.

hardly Africa. Not a stone has a familiar cast; the sky and the earth meet like strangers, and the touch of the sun is as dispassionate as the hand of a man who greets you with his mind on other things. Such is Molo. Its first glance presages the character I later learn — a stern country

Many German flyers, having a superstition that to wish good luck brings bad luck, will see a fellow pilot off with the cheering remark, 'Farewell — but I hope you break your arms and legs!

Work hard, trust in God, and keep your bowels open — Oliver Cromwell Well

two brown eyes that seemed trapped in a spider web of weary lines.

I am incapable of a profound remark on the workings of Destiny. It seems to get up early and go to bed very late, and it acts most generously toward the people who nudge it off the road whenever they meet it.

He shrugged and dusted dustless hands, one against the other. He

In Africa people learn to serve each other. They live on credit balances of little favours that they give and may, one day, ask to have returned. In any country almost empty of men, 'love thy neighbour' is less a pious injunction than a rule for survival. If you meet one in trouble, you stop — another time he may stop for you.

Missugused tavalised asjad võivad alguse saada kahe inimese kohtumisest ühel kõrgendiku maalapil? Kuidas saab muuta elu kulgu kõigest ühe tolmusel teel lausutud sõnaga, kui too tee ise on kõigest kui nõelaga veetud kriips, üürike ajas ja nõrguke Aafrika mägedest krobelisel koorel? Kuhu mujale kui tuulde võiks too sõna õigupoolest lennata?

occasional gust of fretful

It is amazing what a lot of insect life goes on under your nose when you have got it an inch from the earth. I suppose it goes on in any case, but if you are proceeding on your stomach, dragging your body along by your fingernails, entomology presents itself very forcibly as a thoroughly justified science. The problem of classification alone must continue to be very discouraging.

The distant roar of a walking lion rolls against the stillness of the night, and we listen. It is the voice of Africa bringing memories that do not exist in our minds or in our hearts - perhaps not even in our blood. It is out of time, but it is there, and it spans a chasm whose other side we cannot see.

Benghazi sprawls in the path of war. Mars kicks the little city to earth and it rises again, stubbornly, and is reduced again, but not for long. It is a small city with a soul — a grubby soul, perhaps, but cities with souls seldom die.