Dervla Murphy Quotes

There are two phases of enjoyment in journeying through an unknown country - the eager phase of wondering interest in every detail, and the relaxed phase when one feels no longer an observer of the exotic, but a participator in the rhythm of daily life.

Dervla Murphy

Country, Two, Details

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On my tenth birthday a bicycle and an atlas coincided as presents and a few days later I decided to cycle to India.

Dervla Murphy

Inspirational, India, Atlas

1965 Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle.

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Buying a bicycle is a momentous event, akin to marriage: you are acquiring a partner.

Dervla Murphy

Events, Buying, Partners

Dervla Murphy (2001). “South From the Limpopo”, p.235, The Overlook Press

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hatred, however apparently justifiable, excusable or inevitable, always damages the hater.

Dervla Murphy

Hate, Hatred, Damage

Dervla Murphy (1995). “Transylvania and Beyond: A Travel Memoir”, p.73, The Overlook Press

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one of the advantages of cycling is that it automatically prevents a journey from becoming an Expedition.

Dervla Murphy

Journey, Cycling, Becoming

Dervla Murphy (1995). “Full Tilt: Dunkirk to Delhi by Bicycle”, HarperPerennial

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the sudden violent dispossession accompanying a refugee flight is much more than the loss of a permanent home and a traditional occupation, or than the parting from close friends and familiar places. It is also the death of the person one has become in a particular context, and every refugee must be his or her own midwife at the painful process of rebirth.

Dervla Murphy

Home, Loss, Occupation

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poverty denotes a lack of necessities and simplicity a lack of needs.

Dervla Murphy

Simplicity, Needs, Poverty

Dervla Murphy (1987). “Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle”, p.56, The Overlook Press

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The more I see of life in these 'undeveloped countries' and of the methods adopted to 'improve' them, the more depressed I become. It seems criminal that the backwardness of a country like Afghanistan should be used as an excuse for America and Russia to have a tug-of-war for possession.

Dervla Murphy

Country, War, America

Dervla Murphy (1987). “Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle”, p.53, The Overlook Press

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Whatever the theologians might say about heaven being in a state of union with God, I knew it consisted of an infinite library; and eternity was simply what enabled one to read uninterruptedly for ever.

Dervla Murphy

Heaven, Library, Unions

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Sunnis consider Shias a pack of unwholesome fanatics and Shias consider Sunnis a gang of lukewarm no-goods - there's nothing like religion for spreading brotherly love!

Dervla Murphy

Brotherly Love, Gang, Shia

Dervla Murphy (1987). “Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle”, p.70, The Overlook Press

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... strong bonds are forged in high emotional temperatures.

Dervla Murphy

Strong, Emotional, Temperature

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This is a city of absolute enchantment in the literal sense of the word. It loosens all the bonds binding the traveller to his own age and sets him free to live in a past that is vital and crude but never ugly. Herat is as old as history and as moving as a great epic poem - if Afghanistan had nothing else it would have been worth coming to experience this.

Dervla Murphy

Moving, Epic, Past

Dervla Murphy (1987). “Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle”, p.39, The Overlook Press

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Without evading the grimness of life in much of modern Africa, one can recognize that this continent is not yet sick as our continent is sick. Most Africans remain plugged into reality. In contrast we have become disconnected from it, reduced to compulsively consuming units, taught to worship 'economic growth' - the ultimate unreality in a finite world.

Dervla Murphy

Reality, Sick, Growth

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one feels guilty on behalf of Western civilisation. What damage are we doing, blindly and swiftly, to those races who are being taught that because we are materially richer we must be emulated without question? What compels us to infect everyone else with our own sick urgency to change, soften and standardise? How can we have the effrontery to lord it over peoples who retain what we have lost - a sane awareness that what matters most is immeasurable?

Dervla Murphy

What Matters, Race, Sick

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On my tenth birthday a bicycle and an atlas coincided as gifts, and a few days later I decided to cycle to India...However, I was a cunning child so I kept my ambition to myself, thus avoiding the tolerant amusement it would have provoked among my elders.

Dervla Murphy

Children, Ambition, India

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To me writing was not a career but a necessity. And so it remains, though I am now, technically, a professional writer. The strength of this inborn desire to write has always baffled me. It is understandable that the really gifted should feel an overwhelming urge to use their gift; but a strong urge with only a slight gift seems almost a genetic mistake.

Dervla Murphy

Strong, Mistake, Writing

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The Irish have a flair for wringing from death the last drop of emotion and they do not quite understand those who react otherwise.

Dervla Murphy

Lasts, Emotion, Flair

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With our mad lust for Uniformity and a Higher Standard of Living and Expanding Markets, we go to a country like Afghanistan and cruelly try to jerk her forward two thousand years in two decades, giving no thought to the profound shock this must be to her national psychology.

Dervla Murphy

Country, Years, Two

Dervla Murphy (1987). “Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle”, p.76, The Overlook Press

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I wonder if those experts who tell us that our sexual appetite is the strongest know what real thirst feels like; I can imagine the desire for water driving someone to commit a crime to which sexual desire could never drive them.

Dervla Murphy

Real, Water, Desire

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perhaps there is something more than courtesy behind the dissembling reticence of childhood. ... Most artists dislike having their incomplete work considered and discussed and this analogy, I think, is valid. The child is incomplete, too, and is constantly experimenting as he seeks his own style of thought and feeling.

Dervla Murphy

Children, Thinking, Artist

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Is this something else our age does - on the one hand make communication easier than ever before, while on the other hand widening the gulf between those who are 'developed' and those who are not?

Dervla Murphy

Communication, Hands, Age

Dervla Murphy (1987). “Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle”, p.74, The Overlook Press

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... I know a number of Western children who would benefit greatly if only someone were primitive enough to inhibit the development of their personalities.

Dervla Murphy

Children, Numbers, Personality

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Undoubtedly the Afghans must be, by our standards, the best-looking people in the world. They have everything; height, proportions, carriage, features and complexion.

Dervla Murphy

People, World, Height

Dervla Murphy (1987). “Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle”, p.69, The Overlook Press

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[On Addis Ababa:] Among the city's handicaps are an immaturity for which no one can be blamed, as it was founded only eighty years ago, and a proliferation of architectural excesses for which many people can and should be blamed.

Dervla Murphy

Years, Cities, People

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apartheid still hangs in the air like a poisonous cloud left over from chemical warfare.

Dervla Murphy

Clouds, Air, Racism

Dervla Murphy (2001). “South From the Limpopo”, p.55, The Overlook Press

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Born: November 28, 1931
Occupation: Cyclist
Cite this Page: Citation

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