You know you are truly alive when you’re living among lions.
Isak DinesenRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on women's role in society, suggesting they maintain order despite understanding life's complexities.
Isak Dinesen's quote uses the metaphor of a girl saving a ship from mutiny by sitting on a powder barrel with a lighted torch to illustrate the nuanced and often unrecognized strength of women. It highlights how women, like the character in the tale, uphold societal norms and stability even while being aware of the underlying truths of existence, which may lack the romanticized essence that society attributes to them. Essentially, it speaks to their quiet resilience and the power they embody in the face of life's uncertainties.
Themes
WomenStrengthSocietyResilienceLife'S Mysteries
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a speech about women's empowerment at a conference.
More from Isak Dinesen
All quotes →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.
Isak DinesenRead
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.
Isak DinesenRead
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.
Isak DinesenRead
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.
Isak DinesenRead
through the loveliness and power of her dream world she was now, in her old frock and botched shoes, very likely the loveliest, mightiest and most dangerous person on earth
Isak DinesenRead
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