You know you are truly alive when you’re living among lions.
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?
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the reciprocal relationship between individuals and their environment, questioning the impact one has on their surroundings.
In this quote, Isak Dinesen contemplates the connection between herself and Africa. She reflects on whether the land, life, and culture that she knows so well will also recognize and remember her. The imagery suggests a deep bond with nature and humanity, emphasizing how individuals are both shaped by their environment and leave an imprint on it. It poses profound questions about legacy, belonging, and the relationship between people and the places they inhabit.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used during a speech on environmental conservation to illustrate our impact on nature.
More from Isak Dinesen
All quotes →I do not know if you remember the tale of the girl who saves the ship under mutiny by sitting on the powder barrel with her lighted torch... and all the time knowing that it is empty? This has seemed to me a charming image of the women of my time. There they were, keeping the world in order... by sitting on the mystery of life, and knowing themselves that there was no mystery.
I was young, and by instinct of self-preservation I had to collect my energy on something, if I were not to be whirled away with the dusk on the farm-roads, or the smoke on the plain. I begun in the evenings to write stories, fairy-tales, and romances, that would take my mind a long way off, to other countries and times.
The lime trees were in bloom. But in the early morning only a faint fragrance drifted through the garden, an airy message, an aromatic echo of the dreams during the short summer night.
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.
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.
Similar quotes
All of [the] activities here have a surreptitious end-of-the-world feel to them:... these joggers sleepwalking in the mist like shadow's who have escaped from Plato's cave
The world is too brutal for me-I am glad there is such a thing as the grave-I am sure I shall never have any rest till I get there.
It should not be strange that the values cherished by all the three major religions are the same, since they originate from a common source. For example, Islam, the predominant religion in the Middle East, accepts as an integral part of its religious teachings both the Old and the New Testaments. If this commonality of moral traditions among the world's major religions does not say something about the universality of religion, it does say something about the universality of mankind.
At some point along the way, I stopped being a writer, and I became a black writer. I never used to be a black writer. I used to write 'Spider-Man,' 'Green Lantern,' whatever was lying around. 'Thor,' 'Hulk,' whatever. Now, if the phone rings or when the phone rings, it's almost exclusively some project that has something to do with my ethnicity.
The problem with certainty is that it is static; it can do little but endlessly reassert itself. Uncertainty, by contrast, is full of unknowns, possibilities, and risks.
If you're going to have a story, have a big story, or none at all.