Desert Quotes - Page 23

• In a landscape where nothing officially exists (otherwise it would not be 'desert'), absolutely anything becomes thinkable, and may consequently happen.

  Reyner Banham

  Landscape, May, Happens

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• The truth of the matter is that for all the drive-in movie references, what Weston Ochse has really created in Multiplex Fandango is a travelogue. Acting as narrator and guide, Weston takes you on a trip to places familiar and obscure-New Orleans, the Sonoran desert, Mexico's Pacific coast, and the dark, impenetrable reaches of the soul. He shows off sights that chill the blood, and as with any good trip, the things seen and experienced along the way will stay with you for a lifetime.

  Jeff Mariotte

  Dark, New Orleans, Sight

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• If I want to walk out in the desert and heat up a can of beans on a fire, I still can. In those movies like Gattaca or whatever, the space age stuff is always all there is. But in the world there is never just one way of living. It's more like a big junkyard. Put it this way: I'm not afraid I'm going to end up on a space station in aluminium-foil underwear.

  Tom Waits

  Fire, Space, Age

  "Tom Waits: 'I look like hell but I'm going to see where it gets me'". Interview With Tim Adams, www.theguardian.com. October 22, 2011.

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• I didn't grow up in the ocean -- as a matter of fact -- near the ocean -- I grew up in the desert. Therefore, it was a pleasant contrast to see the ocean. And I particularly like it when I'm fishing.

  George W. Bush

  Growing Up, Ocean, Fishing

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• But the whim we have of happiness is somewhat thus. By certain valuations, and averages, of our own striking, we come upon some sort of average terrestrial lot; this we fancy belongs to us by nature, and of indefeasible rights. It is simple payment of our wages, of our deserts; requires neither thanks nor complaint. Foolish soul! What act of legislature was there that thou shouldst be happy? A little while ago thou hadst no right to be at all.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Happiness, Simple, Rights

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• You know what animals exist in the desert. He's going to his indigenous natural habitat. What better place for night crawlers?

  Don King

  Animal, Night, Boxing

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• Identity would seem to be the garment with which one covers the nakedness of the self: in which case, it is best that the garment be loose, a little like the robes of the desert, through which one's nakedness can always be felt, and, sometimes, discerned. This trust in one's nakedness is all that gives one the power to change one's robes.

  James A. Baldwin

  Change, Self, Giving

  "The Devil Finds Work". Book by James A. Baldwin, 1976.

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• That was what, ultimately, war did to you. It was not the physical dangers--the mines at sea, the bombs from the air, the crisp ping of a rifle bullet as you drove over a desert track. No, it was the spiritual danger of learning how much easier life was if you ceased to think.

  Agatha Christie

  Spiritual, War, Thinking

  Agatha Christie (1987). “There Is a Tide”

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• Why do I live in the desert? Because the desert is the *locus Dei*.

  Edward Abbey

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.10, RosettaBooks

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• Piety practiced in solitude, like the flower that blooms in the desert, may give its fragrance to the winds of heaven, and delight those unbodied spirits that survey the works of God and the actions of men; but it bestows no assistance upon earthly beings, and however free from taints of impurity, yet wants the sacred splendor of beneficence.

  Samuel Johnson

  Flower, Men, Wind

  Samuel Johnson (1912). “The works of Samuel Johnson”

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• If you're never ridden a fast horse at a dead run across a desert valley at dawn, be of good cheer: You've only missed out on one half of life.

  Edward Abbey

  Running, Horse, Cheer

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• I know I can not paint a flower, I can not paint the sun on the desert on a bright summer morning but maybe in terms of paint colour I can convey to you my experience of the flower or the experience that makes the flower of significance to me at that particular time.

  Georgia O'Keeffe

  Summer, Morning, Flower

  Britta Benke, Georgia O'Keeffe (2000). “O'Keeffe”

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• When I found the beautiful white bones in the desert I picked them up and took them home too...I have used these things to say what is to me the wideness and wonder of the world as I live in it.

  Georgia O'Keeffe

  Beautiful, Home, White

  Britta Benke, Georgia O'Keeffe (2000). “O'Keeffe”

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• If this practice [of totalitarianism] is compared with […] [the desert] of tyranny, it seems as if a way had been found to set the desert itself in motion, to let loose a sand storm that could cover all parts of the inhabited earth.
  The conditions under which we exist today in the field of politics are indeed threatened by these devastating sand storms.

  Hannah Arendt

  Practice, Storm, Earth

  Hannah Arendt (1968). “Totalitarianism: Part Three of The Origins of Totalitarianism”, p.200, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• All of the great prophets of modern times have come from the desert and were uneducated: Mohammed, Jesus and myself.

  Muammar al-Gaddafi

  Jesus, Modern, Prophet

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• We are used to thinking of the Arabs as primitive men of the desert, as a donkey-like nation that neither sees nor understands what is going around it. But this is a GREAT ERROR. The Arab, like all sons of Sham, has sharp and crafty mind . . . Should time come when life of our people in Palestine imposes to a smaller or greater extent on the natives, they WILL NOT easily step aside.

  Ahad Ha'am

  Son, Men, Thinking

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• Christian humility does not consist in denying what there is of good in us; but in an abiding sense of ill-desert, and in the consciousness that what we have of good is due to the grace of God.

  Charles Hodge

  Christian, Humility, Grace

  Charles Hodge (1860). “An Exposition of the First Epistle to the Corinthians”, p.317

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• New York... is a city of geometric heights, a petrified desert of grids and lattices, an inferno of greenish abstraction under a flat sky, a real Metropolis from which man is absent by his very accumulation.

  Roland Barthes

  New York, Real, Men

  Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag (1983). “Barthes: Selected Writings”

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• When does gold ore become gold? When it is put through a process of fire. So the human being during the training becomes as pure as gold through suffering. It is the burning away of the dross. Suffering has a great redeeming quality. As a drop of water failing on the desert sand is sucked up immediately, so we must become nothing and nowhere ... we must disappear.

  Bhai Sahib Singh

  Spiritual, Fire, Water

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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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• Human vitality is so exuberant that in the sorriest desert it still finds a pretext for glowing and trembling.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Glowing, Vitality, Trembling

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• This life as a simple citizen and laborer has its benefits not only for the person himself but perhaps also for his country. After all, there is room for only one Prime Minister, but for those who make the desert bloom there is room for hundreds, thousands and even millions. And the destiny of the state is in the hands of the many rather than of a single individual. There are times when an individual feels he should do those things which only can and should be done by the many.

  David Ben-Gurion

  Country, Simple, Destiny

  "Why I Retired to the Desert". The New York Times Magazine, p. 47, March 28, 1954.

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