Desert Quotes - Page 3

• Strolling on, it seems to me that the strangeness and wonder of existence are emphasized here, in the desert, by the comparative sparsity of the flora and fauna: life not crowded upon life as in other places but scattered abroad in spareness and simplicity, with a generous gift of space for each herb and bush and tree, each stem of grass, so that the living organism stands out bold and brave and vivid against the lifeless sand and barren rock. The extreme clarity of the desert light is equaled by the extreme individuation of desert life-forms. Love flowers best in openness and freedom.

  Edward Abbey

  Flower, Space, Light

  Edward Abbey (1988). “Desert Solitaire”, p.26, University of Arizona Press

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• Only the desert has a fascination--to ride alone--in the sun in the forever unpossessed country--away from man. That is a great temptation.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Country, Men, Forever

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• It is very hard to live with silence. The real silence is death and this is terrible. To approach this silence, it is necessary to journey to the desert. You do not go to the desert to find identity, but to loses it, to lose your personality, to be anonymous. You make yourself void. You become silence. You become more silent than the silence around you. And then something extraordinary happens: you hear silence speak.

  Edmond Jabes

  Death, Real, Journey

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• The spirit of man is nomad, his blood bedouin, and love is the aboriginal tracker on the faded desert spoor of his lost self; and so I came to live my life not by conscious plan or prearranged design but as someone following the flight of a bird.

  Laurens van der Post

  Love Is, Men, Self

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  If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand.

  Milton Friedman

  Government, Years, Political

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• A father may turn his back on his child, brothers and sisters may become inveterate enemies, husbands may desert their wives, wives their husbands. But a mother's love endures through all.

  Washington Irving

  Love, Family, Sister

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• This is the sense of the desert hills, that there is room enough and time enough

  Mary Hunter Austin

  Rooms, Hills, Enough

  Mary Hunter Austin, Marjorie Pryse (1987). “Stories from the Country of Lost Borders”, p.56, Rutgers University Press

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• Sadly, it's much easier to create a desert than a forest.

  James Lovelock

  Forests, Easier

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  I dream of the realization of the unity of Africa, whereby its leaders combine in their efforts to solve the problems of this continent. I dream of our vast deserts, of our forests, of all our great wildernesses.

  Nelson Mandela

  Dream, Effort, Leader

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Keep your hands open, and all the sands of the desert can pass through them. Close them, and all you can feel is a bit of grit.

  Taisen Deshimaru

  Inspirational, Hands, Grit

  "Zen to Go" by Jon Winokur, (p. 126), 1989.

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• They defended the grains of sand in the desert to the last drop of their blood.

  Gamal Abdel Nasser

  Blood, Lasts, Sand

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• Life is a desert of shifting sand dunes. Unpredictable. Erratic. Harmony changes into dissonance, the immediate outlives the profound, esoteric becomes cliched. And vice versa.

  Ella Leya

  Profound, Vices, Erratic

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• I have this personal affinity for the desert. I am fascinated by the desert. I love it.

  Erika Slezak

  Affinity, Fascinated

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• You should not see the desert simply as some faraway place of little rain. There are many forms of thirst.

  William Langewiesche

  Rain, Littles, Form

  William Langewiesche (2011). “Sahara Unveiled: A Journey Across the Desert”, p.18, Vintage

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• The bare earth, plantless, waterless, is an immense puzzle. In the forests or beside rivers everything speaks to humans. The desert does not speak. I could not comprehend its tongue; its silence...

  Pablo Neruda

  Music, Rain, Rivers

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• In this glare of brilliant emptiness, in this arid intensity of pure heat, in the heart of a weird solitude, great silence and grand desolution, all things recede to distrances out of reach, relecting light but impossible to touch, annihilating all thought and all that men have made to a spasm of whirling dust far out on the golden desert.

  Edward Abbey

  Heart, Men, Dust

  Edward Abbey (1968). “Desert solitaire: a season in the wilderness”

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• I had to live in the desert before I could understand the full value of grass in a green ditch.

  Ella Maillart

  Good Life, Green, Wise Women

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• A man in a desert can hold absence in his cupped hands, knowing it is something that feeds him more than water.

  Michael Ondaatje

  Men, Hands, Knowing

  Michael Ondaatje (2009). “The English Patient: Special Edition”, p.165, A&C Black

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• Wilderness is not only a haven for native plants and animals but it is also a refuge from society. Its a place to go to hear the wind and little else, see the stars and the galaxies, smell the pine trees, feel the cold water, touch the sky and the ground at the same time, listen to coyotes, eat the fresh snow, walk across the desert sands, and realize why its good to go outside of the city and the suburbs. Fortunately, there is wilderness just outside the limits of the cities and the suburbs in most of the United States, especially in the West.

  John Muir

  Stars, Animal, Cities

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• The desert weed lives on, but the flower of spring blooms and wilts.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Weed, Spring, Flower

  Khaled Hosseini (2004). “The Kite Runner”, p.188, Penguin

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• It's strange how deserts turn us into believers. I believe in walking in a landscape of mirages, because you learn humility. I believe in living in a land of little water because life is drawn together. And I believe in the gathering of bones as a testament to spirits that have moved on. If the desert is holy, it is because it is a forgotten place that allows us to remember the sacred. Perhaps that is why every pilgrimage to the desert is a pilgrimage to the self.

  Terry Tempest Williams

  Believe, Humility, Self

  Terry Tempest Williams (2008). “Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert”, p.77, Vintage

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• I bought a cactus. A week later it died. And I got depressed, because I thought, Damn. I am less nurturing than a desert.

  Demetri Martin

  Funny, Flower, Humor

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• The desert takes our dreams away from us, and they don't always return. We know that, and we are used to it. Those who don't return become a part of the clouds, a part of the animals that hide in the ravines and of the water that comes from the earth. They become part of everything. They become the Soul of the World.

  Paulo Coelho

  Dream, Encouragement, Animal

  "The Alchemist". Book by Paulo Coelho, 1988.

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• Night comes to the desert all at once, as if someone turned off the light.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Night, Light, Turned Off

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• ... the desert, where there is the communal book of moonlight. We were among the rumour of wells. In the palace of winds.

  Michael Ondaatje

  Book, Wind, Palaces

  Michael Ondaatje (2011). “The English Patient”, p.261, Vintage

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