Isak Dinesen Quotes

Women are much stronger than men. When a woman says enough is enough, which means enough is enough. Man will always lie at her feet in the hope of return. I was lying. And somehow happy.

It takes three or four women to get each man into, through, and out of the world.

Society is a masked ball, where every one hides his real character, and reveals it by hiding.

I. At Tea THE kettle descants in a cosy drone, And the young wife looks in her husband's face, And then in her guest's, and shows in her own Her sense that she fills an envied place; And the visiting lady is all abloom, And says there was never so sweet a room. And the happy young housewife does not know That the woman beside her was his first choice, Till the fates ordained it could not be so.... Betraying nothing in look or voice The guest sits smiling and sips her tea, And he throws her a stray glance yearningly.

Generally speaking, that's good drama - the marriage plot or the tragedy - but the reality of women's lives is that most of us don't get what we wanted, and most of us find ways to have really interesting lives anyway.

You know, people seldom go to the trouble of scratching the surface of things to find the inner truth.

Actions that sometimes seem mean aren’t. Rather they are done by the ones we love in order to protect us without our knowing it. (Acheron)

Making the world safe for hypocrisy.

The trouble with a mask is it never changes

A man who marries without knowing Bunbury has a very tedious time of it.

Everyone has something to hide. And if they couldn't hide it the world would be in a lot worse mess than it is.

All words are masks and the lovelier they are, the more they are meant to conceal.

The vain.- We are like shop windows in which we are continually arranging, concealing or illuminating the supposed qualities other ascribe to us - in order to deceive ourselves.

We can't be certain who the villains are cuz everyone's so pretty, but the after party's sure to be the wing-ding as it moves into your city.

The horror of knowing someone and living with them and even thinking you're lucky and then wham and now you know that every person is really two people and how can you ever know what the other half is up to.

One knows quite well that harmony can be a harmony of appearances.

The affected modesty of most women is a decoy for the generous, the delicate, and unsuspecting; while the artful, the bold, and unfeeling either see or break through its slender disguises.

It strikes me how strange people are. You can see them every day - you can think you know them - and then you fшnd out you hardly know them at all.

...hoarders of guilty secrets are inevitably consumed with appearances.

The skin of everyday appearances stretched over such shamelessness, such consuming explosions of lust.

Sane and intelligent human beings are like all other human beings, and carefully and cautiously and diligently conceal their private real opinions from the world and give out fictitious ones in their stead for general consumption.

We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,- - This debt we pay to human guile; With torn and bleeding hearts we smile And mouth with myriad subtleties. Why should the world be otherwise, In counting all our tears and sighs? Nay, let them only see thus, while We wear the mask. We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries To thee from tortured souls arise. We sing, but oh the clay is vile Beneath our feet, and long the mile; But let the world dream otherwise, We wear the mask!

There's nothing more threatening than a powerful woman, and there's nothing more threatening to the current order of things than women powerfully owning their own narrative. It's so threatening to people, to women as well, and it's threatening the order of things.

The average woman is at the head of something with which she can do as she likes; the average man has to obey orders and do nothing else.

Nothing is dead: men feign themselves dead, and endure mock funerals and mournful obituaries, and there they stand looking out ofthe window, sound and well, in some new and strange disguise.