Desert Quotes - Page 18

• 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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• Whether one sees the world as God's creation or as a secular mystery that science is on the way to figuring out, there is no denying the beauty and majesty of everything from mountain ranges, deserts, and rain forests to the exquisite details in the design of an ordinary mosquito.

  Robert C. Solomon

  Rain, Mountain Ranges, Design

  Robert C. Solomon (2006). “Spirituality for the Skeptic: The Thoughtful Love of Life”, p.15, Oxford University Press

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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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• In the desert the most loved waters, like a lover's name, are carried blue in your hands, enter your throat. One swallows absence.

  Michael Ondaatje

  Blue, Hands, Names

  Michael Ondaatje (2011). “The English Patient”, p.150, A&C Black

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• I would never, ever desert my child. A lot of my friends didn't have fathers growing up, and they were very upset that their fathers weren't around. I was lucky to have mine around.

  Dwight Howard

  Growing Up, Children, Father

  "Dwight Howard: The ESQ+A". Interview with Scott Raab, www.esquire.com. October 17, 2011.

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• I love being outdoors, being in the mountains and the desert, and my wife enjoys that too. That's one of the things that sustain our relationship.

  Jon Krakauer

  Love Is, Wife, Mountain

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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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• Whom do I call educated? First, those who manage well the circumstances they encounter day by day. Next, those who are decent and honorable in their intercourse with all men, bearing easily and good naturedly what is offensive in others and being as agreeable and reasonable to their associates as is humanly possible to be... those who hold their pleasures always under control and are not ultimately overcome by their misfortunes... those who are not spoiled by their successes, who do not desert their true selves but hold their ground steadfastly as wise and sober - minded men.

  Socrates

  Life, Success, Education

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• It is the doctors who desert the dying and there is so much to be learned about pain.

  Norman Barrett

  Death, Pain, Science

  Quoted in Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 94: 430 (2001)

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• Victoria was just as much in love with me as I was with her. We could not bear to be apart for a single second. We were like two lovers shipwrecked on a desert island. There was no world outside our love.

  Andy Gibb

  Islands, Two, World

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• No man has a right to leave his wife to fight the battle alone if he is able to help. No man has a right to desert his children if he can possibly be of use. As long as he can add to the comfort of those he loves, as long as he can . . . be of any use, it is his duty to remain.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Life, Children, Fighting

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.2305, Library of Alexandria

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• Recent studies have considered the detection of a spaceship visiting our parish of the galaxy. In my opinion that last thought should bring a blush to every human cheek... Fecklessness might be the main theme of the aliens' report on the new-found source of radio pollution ... that emanates from beings who have mastered a lot of physics, chemistry and biology and yet let their children starve-while all around their planet the energy of their mother star runs to waste in a desert of space.

  Nigel Calder

  Mother, Running, Stars

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• Going up north with the redwoods and driving along the coast, it's got everything, man. It's got the desert, the mountains, and the ocean. It's beautiful.

  Chad Smith

  Beautiful, Ocean, Men

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• For me a true landscape is not just a representation of a desert or a forest. It shows an inner state of mind, literally inner landscapes, and it is the human soul that is visible through the landscapes presented in my films.

  Werner Herzog

  Soul, Mind, Landscape

  "Herzog on Herzog". Book by Paul Cronin, 2002.

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• When, in 1913, in a desperate attempt to rid art of the ballast of objectivity, I took refuge in the form of the square... the critics... sighed, "All that we loved has been lost. We are in a desert"... But the desert is filled with the spirit of non-objective feeling.

  Kazimir Malevich

  Art, Squares, Objectivity

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