Africa is never the same to anyone who leaves it and returns again. It is not a land of change, but it is a land of moods and its moods are numberless. It is not fickle, but because it has mothered not only men, but races, and cradles not only cities, but civilizations - and seen them die, and seen new ones born again - Africa can be dispassionate, indifferent, warm, or cynical, replete with the weariness of too much wisdom.

A life has to move or it stagnates. Even this life, I think. Every tomorrow ought not to resemble every yesterday.

Harmony comes gradually to a pilot and his plane. The wing does not want so much to fly true as to tug at the hands that guide it; the ship would rather hunt the wind than lay her nose to the horizon far ahead. She has a derelict quality in her character; she toys with freedom and hints at liberation, but yields her own desires gently.

If a man has any greatness in him, it comes to light, not in one flamboyant hour, but in the ledger of his daily work.

That's what makes death so hard--unsatisfied curiosity

Talk lives in a man’s head, but sometimes it is very lonely because in the heads of many men there is nothing to keep it company - and so talk goes out through the lips.

[The lion] began to contemplate me with a kind of quiet premeditation, like that of a slow-witted man fondling an unaccustomed thought.