Desert Quotes - Page 17

• When I took off from Providence, my only professional aspiration was what it had always been: I wanted to be a sportscaster. By the time I landed in the desert, I knew I would spend the rest of my life trying to be a writer.

  Mike Greenberg

  Trying, Providence, Aspiration

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• The knowledge that refuge is available, when and if needed, makes the silent inferno of the desert more easily bearable. Mountains complement desert as desert complements city, as wilderness complements and completes civilization.

  Edward Abbey

  Nature, Civilization, Cities

  Edward Abbey (1968). “Desert Solitaire”, p.129, Simon and Schuster

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• This city desert makes you feel so cold. It's got so many people, but it's got no soul.

  Gerry Rafferty

  Reality, Cities, People

  Song: Baker Street, Album: City to City

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• Apart altogether from our own vital interests, we cannot and must not desert those other nations who have already gone through so much tragedy and suffering to defeat the evil designs of the Axis powers.

  Stafford Cripps

  Axes, Evil, Design

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• There is always a sneer in Las Vegas. The mountains around it sneer. The desert sneers. And arrogant in the middle of its wide valley, dominating those diligent sprawling suburbs, the downtown city sneers like anything.

  Jan Morris

  Vegas, Cities, Mountain

  Jan Morris (1985). “Journeys”, p.24, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• The night before I left Las Vegas I walked out in the desert to look at the moon. There was a jeweled city on the horizon, spires rising in the night, but the jewels were diadems of electric and the spires were the neon of signs ten stories high.

  Norman Mailer

  Moon, Night, Vegas

  Norman Mailer (2013). “An American Dream: A Novel”, p.256, Random House

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• I wrote about wasting time, which I suppose is a part of the great human journey. We're supposed to wallow, to go through the desert without water for a long time so that when we finally drink it, we'll truly need it and we won't spill a drop. It's about being present.

  Walton Goggins

  Journey, Long, Water

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• In our haste to grow too soon, we left our innocence on Desert Moon.

  Dennis DeYoung

  Moon, Reality, Haste

  Song: Desert Moon

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• The people we call the prophets I think are the earliest dissident intellectuals, and they're treated like most dissident intellectuals - very badly. They're imprisoned, driven into the desert. King Ahab, the epitome of evil in the Bible, condemned Elijah as a "hater of Israel." This is the first self-hating Jew, the origin of the term. It goes right up to the present. That's the history of intellectuals.

  Noam Chomsky

  Kings, Hate, Thinking

  Source: www.commonwealmagazine.org

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• Yet each country had items that the other needed. The Arridi had reserves of red gold and iron in their deserts that the Toscans required to finance and equip their large armies. Even more important, Toscans had become inordinately fond of kafay, the rich coffee grown by the Arridi.

  John Flanagan

  Country, Coffee, Army

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• She laughed, and the desert sang.

  Jerry Spinelli

  Laughed

  Jerry Spinelli (2012). “The Stargirl Collection”, p.60, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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• I think that friendship always makes us feel such sweet gratitude, because the world almost always seems like a very hard desert, and the flowers that grow there seem to grow against such high odds.

  Stephen King

  Gratitude, Sweet, Flower

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• There is supercomputer somewhere in the Nevada desert whose sole function is to count the number of times that I have said the following, because it is unquantifiable by human minds at this point, but this time it’s really true: I should have stayed home.

  David Rakoff

  Regret, Home, Numbers

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• Over the summit, I saw the so-called Mono desert lying dreamily silent in the thick, purple light -- a desert of heavy sun-glare beheld from a desert of ice-burnished granite.

  John Muir

  Lying, Light, Ice

  John Muir (1997). “Nature Writings: The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, My First Summer in the Sierra, the Mountains of California, Stickeen, Selected Essays”, p.348, Library of America

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• It was ironic, but when you scratched the surface, most successful men were working for one thing only--to retire--and the sooner the better. Whereas women were the complete opposite. She had never heard a woman say she was working so she could retire to a desert island or to live on a boat. It was probably, she thought, because most women didn't think they deserved to do nothing.

  Candace Bushnell

  Successful, Men, Thinking

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• Religions are, by definition, metaphors, after all: God is a dream, a hope, a woman, an ironist, a father, a city, a house of many rooms, a watchmaker who left his prize chronometer in the desert, someone who loves you - even, perhaps, against all evidence, a celestial being whose only interest is to make sure your football team, army, business, or marriage thrives, prospers, and triumphs over all opposition.

  Neil Gaiman

  Football, Dream, Father

  "American Gods". Book by Neil Gaiman, June 19, 2001.

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• I wish I wasn’t a girl who needed so much but a little free creature that slept in deserts and ran on clouds and lived on lilies.

  Francesca Lia Block

  Life, Girl, Clouds

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• In that little party there was not one who would desert another; yet we were of different countries, different colours, different races, different religions--and one of us was of a different world.

  Edgar Rice Burroughs

  Country, Party, Race

  Edgar Rice Burroughs (2015). “EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS Ultimate Collection: 30+ Adventure Novels & Science Fiction Classics (Illustrated): The Tarzan Series, The Barsoom Series, The Pelucidar Series, Caspak Trilogy, The Mucker Trilogy, Lost World Novels, Fantastic Stories, Historical Novels and more”, p.1666, e-artnow

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• The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.

  H. L. Mencken

  Rights, Belief, Common

  "A Second Mencken Chrestomathy (Varieties of Envy)". Book by H. L. Mencken, 1995.

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• Sometimes I knew in all my mind and heart why I had done what I had done, and I welcomed the sacrifice. But there were times too when I lived in a desert and felt no joy and saw no hope and could not remember my old feelings. Then I lived by faith alone, faith without hope. What good did I get from it? I got to have love in my heart.

  Wendell Berry

  Heart, Sacrifice, Joy

  Wendell Berry (2000). “Jayber Crow: A Novel”, Counterpoint LLC

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• In his eyes shone the reflection of the most beautiful planet in the Universe---a planet that is not too hot and not too cold; that has liquid water on the surface and where the gravity is just right for human beings and the atmosphere is perfect for them to breathe; where there are mountains and deserts and oceans and islands and forests and trees and birds and plants and animals and insects and people---lots and lots of people. Where there is life. Some of it, possibly, intelligent.

  Stephen Hawking

  Beautiful, Ocean, Eye

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• She had wandered, without rule or guidance, into a moral wilderness... Her intellect and heart had their home, as it were, in desert places, where she roamed as freely as the wild Indian in his woods... The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers—stern and wild ones—and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Teacher, Strong, Home

  The Scarlet Letter ch. 18 (1850)

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• Theology is like a map. Merely learning and thinking about the Christian doctrines, if you stop there, is less real and less exciting than the sort of thing my friend got in the desert. Doctrines are not God: they are only a kind of map. But that map is based on the experience of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God--experiences compared with which many thrills of pious feelings you and I are likely to get on our own are very elementary and very confused. And secondly, if you want to get any further you must use the map.

  C. S. Lewis

  Christian, Confused, Real

  C.S. Lewis (1960). “Mere Christianity”

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• We had been hopelessly labouring to plough waste lands; to make nationality grow in a place full of the certainty of God… Among the tribes our creed could be only like the desert grass – a beautiful swift seeming of spring; which, after a day’s heat, fell dusty.

  T. E. Lawrence

  Beautiful, Spring, Military

  T. E. Lawrence (2013). “Seven Pillars of Wisdom”, p.338, Black House Publishing Ltd

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• But what I wanted back had never really been there. He was a temporary illusion, a mirage of water after walking in the desert. I had made him up. And he could have killed me. You've got to stop the ride sometimes. Stop it and get off.

  Deb Caletti

  Attitude, Water, Mirages

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