Desert Quotes - Page 25

• My mother's English, and she always was fascinated by the desert.

  Arizona Muse

  Mother, Fascinated

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• And how should a beautiful, ignorant stream of water know it heads for an early release — out across the desert, running toward the Gulf, below sea level, to murmur its lullaby, and see the Imperial Valley rise out of burning sand with cotton blossoms, wheat, watermelons, roses, how should it know?

  Carl Sandburg

  Beautiful, Running, Nature

  Carl Sandburg (2003). “The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg”, p.433, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• [I]n the gloomy month of February.... The Deserts of Arabia are not more dreary and inhospitable than the streets of London at such a time.

  Washington Irving

  Arabia, London, Months

  Washington Irving (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Washington Irving (Illustrated)”, p.3203, Delphi Classics

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• Absorbing. . . . Scrupulously reported . . . illuminates today’s Middle East. . . . The ‘least interventionist of any modern president,’ the father of the Eisenhower Doctrine that still defines US policy in the Middle East . . . in 1956 battled demons in bodies personal and politic and in the desert – and prevailed. Nichols’ book, written lean enough to allow the facts to speak for themselves, makes for exciting history.

  Carlo Wolff

  Father, Book, President

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• A man perfects himself by working. Foul jungles are cleared away, fair seed-fields rise instead, and stately cities; and with the man himself first ceases to be a jungle, and foul unwholesome desert thereby. The man is now a man.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Work, Men, Cities

  Thomas Carlyle (2016). “Past and Present: The Historian”, p.189, 北戴河出版

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• Give unto us this day the daily manna Without which, in this desert where we dwell, He must go backward who would most advance.

  Dante Alighieri

  Giving, Spirituality, This Day

  Dante Alighieri (1948). “Dante”

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• It is unacceptable that immigrants, including children, are shackled and detained in deplorable conditions. And it is unacceptable that already this year immigrants have died by the dozens in the California desert or in other parts of the Southwest.

  Roger Mahony

  Children, Years, California

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• Human vitality is so exuberant that in the sorriest desert it still finds a pretext for glowing and trembling.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Glowing, Vitality, Trembling

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• Obsessions of the Orient, of the desert, of its ardor and its emptiness, of the shadows of palm gardens, of the garments white and wide - obsessions where the senses go berserk, where nerves are exasperated, and which made me, at the onset of each night, believe sleep impossible.

  Andre Gide

  Believe, Sleep, Night

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• Piety practiced in solitude, like the flower that blooms in the desert, may give its fragrance to the winds of heaven, and delight those unbodied spirits that survey the works of God and the actions of men; but it bestows no assistance upon earthly beings, and however free from taints of impurity, yet wants the sacred splendor of beneficence.

  Samuel Johnson

  Flower, Men, Wind

  Samuel Johnson (1912). “The works of Samuel Johnson”

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• That was what, ultimately, war did to you. It was not the physical dangers--the mines at sea, the bombs from the air, the crisp ping of a rifle bullet as you drove over a desert track. No, it was the spiritual danger of learning how much easier life was if you ceased to think.

  Agatha Christie

  Spiritual, War, Thinking

  Agatha Christie (1987). “There Is a Tide”

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• The Great Arizona Desert is full of the bleaching bones of people who waited for me to start something.

  Robert Benchley

  People, Arizona, Bones

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• This life as a simple citizen and laborer has its benefits not only for the person himself but perhaps also for his country. After all, there is room for only one Prime Minister, but for those who make the desert bloom there is room for hundreds, thousands and even millions. And the destiny of the state is in the hands of the many rather than of a single individual. There are times when an individual feels he should do those things which only can and should be done by the many.

  David Ben-Gurion

  Country, Simple, Destiny

  "Why I Retired to the Desert". The New York Times Magazine, p. 47, March 28, 1954.

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• In Botswana in the Kalahari Desert there's a tented camp called Jack's Camp, which is like old Africa meets Ralph Lauren. The Oriental rugs, the old leather chairs - you feel like you've just jumped out of a Ralph Lauren ad.

  Mark Burnett

  Like You, Chairs, Lauren

  "Traveling with the Stars: Mark Burnett". Interview with Kelly Carter, abcnews.go.com. August 28, 2009.

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• The [Jewish] Sabbath was not intended to be simply a desert of prohibitions, but rather an oasis for moral restoration and seemly pleasure-one was to eat, drink, even be merry.

  Israel Shenker

  Oasis, Restoration, Moral

  Israel Shenker (1985). “Coat of Many Colors: Pages from Jewish Life”, Doubleday Books

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• What if this were Hell, this absence of sleep, this poet's desert, this pain of living, this dying of not dying, this anguish of shadows, this passion over death and light.

  Leopold Sedar Senghor

  Pain, Sleep, Passion

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• At present, [in the desert] an exasperating clarity reigns. The sky has become less visible than water in a jar. Black peaks, spines of granite, a twisted tree are sculpted in this atmosphere basted with reflections. All that remains: a countryside of imperishable contours.

  Mohammed Dib

  Nature, Reflection, Sky

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• We human beings have not secured happiness; on the contrary, science gives us catastrophes. We are like travelers losing their way in a desert. They see a big black shadow ahead and desperately run to it, thinking it may lead them somewhere. But after running a long way, they no longer see the shadow and fall into the slough of despond. What is that shadow? It is this ""Mr. Science.

  Liang Qichao

  Running, Fall, Technology

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• "Ideals are like stars," Carl Schurz wrote. "You will not succeed in touching them with your hands. But like seafarers on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you will reach your destiny." Ideals do not determine what we do to make a living in life; They govern what we become as we do it.

  Joan D. Chittister

  Stars, Destiny, Hands

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• I would have been content with any job however thankless, in any quarter however remote, if I had a chance of making a corner of the desert blossom and the solitary place glad.

  John Buchan

  Jobs, Work, Would Be

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• The economic transmission of power without wires is of all-surpassing importance to man. By its means he will gain complete mastery of the air, the sea and the desert. It will enable him to dispense with the necessity of mining, pumping, transporting and burning fuel, and so do away with innumerable causes of sinful waste.

  Nikola Tesla

  Mean, Men, Air

  Nikola Tesla (2013). “The Wireless Tesla”, p.23, Simon and Schuster

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• On the one hand, I want to go off and live in the desert with my dog and sculpt things out of adobe.

  Tom Ford

  Dog, Hands, Want

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• A child raised on a desert island, alone, without social interaction, without language, and thus lacking empathy, is still a sentient being.

  Daniel Dennett

  Children, Islands, Empathy

  "Daniel Dennett: 'I don't like theory of mind". Interview with Carole Jahme, www.theguardian.com. March 22, 2013.

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• I hate to paint portraits! I hope never to paint another portrait in my life. Portraiture may be all right for a man in his youth, but after forty I believe that manual dexterity deserts one, and, besides, the color-sense is less acute. Youth can better stand the exactions of a personal kind that are inseparable from portraiture. I have had enough of it.

  John Singer Sargent

  Hate, Believe, Men

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• When you're a little kid, you are small, your life is small - and you're terrifically aware of that. But when you read, you can ride Arabian horses across the desert, you can be a dogsledder.

  Janet Fitch

  Horse, Kids, Littles

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