Desert Quotes - Page 7

• I've crossed these sands many times," said one of the camel drivers one night. "But the desert is so huge, and the horizons so distant, that they make a person feel small, and as if he should remain silent." The boy understood intuitively what he meant, even without ever having set foot in the desert before. Whenever he saw the sea, or a fire, he fell silent, impressed by their elemental force.

  Paulo Coelho

  Boys, Night, Fire

  Paulo Coelho (1998). “The Alchemist - 10th Anniversary Edition”, HarperSanFrancisco

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• I've come to believe that every one who reaches the best that life holds for him reaches it through some Desert of Waiting.

  Annie Fellows Johnston

  Believe, Waiting

  Annie Fellows Johnston (1912). “Mary Ware's Promised Land”, p.128, Pelican Publishing

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• No wonder the film industry started in the desert in California where, like all desert dwellers, they dream their buildings, rather than design them.

  Arthur Erickson

  Dream, Artist, California

  Arthur Erickson's Speech to McGill University School of Architecture, www.arthurerickson.com. October 21, 2000.

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• I love Sufism as I love beautiful poetry, but it is not the answer. Sufism is like a mirage in the desert. It says to you, come and sit, relax and enjoy yourself for a while.

  Naguib Mahfouz

  Beautiful, Love Yourself, Relax

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• They were conspiring to desert us in the night and steal some of our horses... we engaged a spy.

  Zebulon Pike

  Horse, Night, Spy

  Zebulon Montgomery Pike, Thomas Rees (1811). “Exploratory Travels Through the Western Territories of North America: Comprising a Voyage from St. Louis, on the Mississippi, to the Source of that River, and a Journey Through the Interior of Louisiana, and the North-eastern Provinces of New Spain ; Performed in the Years 1805, 1806, 1807, by Order of the Government of the United States”, p.186

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• The ought to be a worldwide cultural taskforce that just stops you when you have ideas like combining The Red Desert with an armored car heist movie.

  Steven Soderbergh

  Ideas, Car, Red Lipstick

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• How do I know that there is a God? In the same way that I know, on looking at the sand, when a man or beast has crossed the desert - by His footprints in the world around me.

  Henry Parry Liddon

  Men, World, Way

  Henry Parry Liddon (1872). “Some Elements of Religion: Lent Lectures, 1870”, p.56

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• I distrust Great Men. They produce a desert of uniformity around them and often a pool of blood too, and I always feel a little man's pleasure when they come a cropper.

  E. M. Forster

  Greatness, Men, Blood

  E.M. Forster (1951). “Two Cheers for Democracy”

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• Christ shared our experience; he suffered as we suffer; he died as we shall die, and for forty days in the desert he underwent the struggle between good and evil.

  Basil Hume

  Struggle, Evil, Suffering

  Basil Hume (2001). “Cardinal Hume: A Spiritual Companion : Reflections Through the Year”, Paraclete Press (MA)

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• I was a fighter pilot, flying Hurricanes all round the Mediterranean. I flew in the Western Desert of Libya, in Greece, in Syria, in Iraq and in Egypt.

  Roald Dahl

  Egypt, Iraq, Flying

  Roald Dahl (2008). “Boy: Tales of Childhood”, p.156, Penguin UK

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• Somali is turning into a desert. Rwanda, you can hardly find a place to plant a potato, it's so crowded.

  Jim Fowler

  Potatoes, Plant, Crowded Places

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• Some of the evil of my tale may have been inherent in our circumstances. For years we lived anyhow with one another in the naked desert, under the indifferent heaven.

  T. E. Lawrence

  Years, Evil, Heaven

  T. E. Lawrence (2015). “Seven Pillars of Wisdom & The Evolution of a Revolt (Complete Edition with Original Illustrations and Maps): Lawrence of Arabia's Account and Memoirs of the Arab Revolt and Guerrilla Warfare during World War One”, p.16, e-artnow

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• That hemisphere of the moon which faces us is better known than the earth itself; its vast desert plains have been surveyed to within a few acres; its mountains and craters have been measured to within a few yards; while on the earth's surface there are 30,000,000 square kilometres (sixty times the extent of France), upon which the foot of man has never trod, which the eye of man has never seen.

  Camille Flammarion

  Knowledge, Eye, Science

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• Critical lice are like body lice, which desert corpses to seek the living.

  Theophile Gautier

  Body, Lice, Critical

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• You can't totally rebel, otherwise you have to go live on your own, on a desert island. It's as simple as that.

  Patrick McGoohan

  Simple, Islands, Rebel

  Interview with Warner Troyer in Toronto for the Ontario Educational Communications Authority, March 1977.

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• The Democratic Party will never desert the freedoms of our people under the guise of pretending to protect them.

  Emanuel Celler

  Party, Hymns, People

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• Being a good psychoanalyst has the same disadvantage as being a good parent: The children desert one as they grow up.

  Morton Hunt

  Children, Growing Up, Parent

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• The day I initiated divorce proceedings against Michael Farmer, I was ready to retire to a desert cave and rethink my life.

  Gloria Swanson

  Divorce, Caves, Farmers

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• Except when war is waged in a desert, noncombatants, also known as civilians or "the people," constitute the great majority of those affected.

  Martin Van Creveld

  War, People, Majority

  Martin Van Creveld (2009). “Transformation of War”, p.72, Simon and Schuster

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• If this were so; if the desert were 'home'; if our instincts were forged in the desert; to survive the rigours of the desert - then it is easier to understand why greener pastures pall on us; why possessions exhaust us, and why Pascal's imaginary man found his comfortable lodgings a prison.

  Bruce Chatwin

  Home, Men, Prison

  Bruce Chatwin (2012). “The Songlines”, p.162, Random House

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• My mother named me after a miracle of nature: Waris means desert flower. The desert flower blooms in a barren environment where few living things can survive.

  Waris Dirie

  Mother, Flower, Mean

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• If you can't stand a little sacrifice and you can't stand a trip across the desert with limited water, we're never going to straighten this country out.

  Ross Perot

  Country, Sacrifice, Journey

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• All of a sudden their husband's dead and maybe a child is dead and they have absolutely nothing - and they're heading through the desert at night.

  Nicholas D. Kristof

  Children, Husband, Night

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• I'm just going to put out three or four releases a year and make it so that if you like the Desert Sessions, then you'll definitely like everything else.

  Joshua Homme

  Years, Three, Four

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• Before a dream is realized, the Soul of the World tests everything that was learned along the way. It does this not because it is evil, but so that we can, in addition to realizing our dreams, master the lessons we’ve learned as we’ve moved toward that dream. That’s the point at which most people give up. It’s the point at which, as we say in the language of the desert, one 'dies of thirst just when the palm trees have appeared on the horizon.

  Paulo Coelho

  Dream, Giving Up, People

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