Tragedy should remain the right of human beings, subject, in their conditions or in their own nature, to the dire law of necessity. To them it is sal… - Karen Blixen

I first began to tell tales to delight the world and make it wiser...

The real difference between God and human beings, he thought, was that God cannot stand continuance. No sooner has he created a season of a year, or a time of the day, than he wishes for something quite different, and sweeps it all away. No sooner was one a young man, and happy at that, than the nature of things would rush one into marriage, martyrdom or old age. And human beings cleave to the existing state of things. All their lives they are striving to hold the moment fast....Their art itself is nothing but the attempt to catch by all means the one particular moment, one light, the momentary beauty of one woman or one flower, and make it everlasting.

Where, My Lord, is music bred — upon the instrument or within the ear that listens? The loveliness of woman is created in the eye of man.