Desert Quotes - Page 5

• Man, full of emptiness and torn apart with homesickness for the desert has had to create from within himself an adventure, a torture-chamber, an unsafe and hazardous wilderness- this fool, this prisoner consumed with longing and despair, became the inventor of 'bad conscience'.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Adventure, Men, Despair

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2006). “Nietzsche: 'On the Genealogy of Morality' and Other Writings Student Edition”, p.57, Cambridge University Press

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• As a matter of fact, an ordinary desert supports a much greater variety of plants than does either a forest or a prairie.

  Ellsworth Huntington

  Support, Ordinary, Doe

  Ellsworth Huntington (1920). “The Red Man's Continent: A Chronicle of Aboriginal America”

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• As we crossed the Colorado-Utah border I saw God in the sky in the form of huge gold sunburning clouds above the desert that seemed to point a finger at me and say, "Pass here and go on, you're on the road to heaven.

  Jack Kerouac

  Clouds, Utah, Sky

  Jack Kerouac (2007). “Road Novels 1957-1960”

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• To hike out alone in the desert; to sleep on the valley floor on a night with no moon, in the pitch black, just listening to the boom of silence: you can't imagine what that's like.

  Nicole Krauss

  Sleep, Moon, Night

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• I would go out into the desert. The desert was my teacher. I didn't know about gurus and wise people-I wasn't a reader.

  Byron Katie

  Wise, Teacher, People

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• They cannot scare me with their empty spaces Between stars—on stars where no human race is. I have it in me so much nearer home To scare myself with my own desert places.

  Robert Frost

  Romantic, Stars, Home

  Further Range (1936) "Desert Places"

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• Not to have known - as most men have not - either the mountain or the desert is not to have known one's self. Not to have known one's self is to have known no one.

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Journey, Men, Hiking

  Joseph Wood Krutch (2010). “The Desert Year”, p.126, University of Iowa Press

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• You liked me." I smiled. "You were smitten with me. You were speechless to behold my beauty. You had never met anyone so fascinating. You thought of me every waking minute. You dreamed about me. You couldn't stand it. You couldn't let such wonderfulness out of your sight. You had to follow me." I turned to Cinnamon. He licked my nose. "Don't give yourself so much credit. It was your rat I was after." She laughed, and the desert sang.

  Jerry Spinelli

  Sight, Giving, Cinnamon

  Jerry Spinelli (2001). “Stargirl”, p.86, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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• The poor looking shepherd of the dessert is in substance very rich with all the magical treasures of the desert.

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Shepherds, Substance, Treasure

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• It is true there is a scent in the desert, though there may be no flower or tree or blade of grass within miles. It is the essence of the untrodden, untarnished earth herself!

  Rosita Forbes

  Flower, Essence, Tree

  Rosita Forbes (1921). “The Secret of the Sahara: Kufara”

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• From inaccessible mountain range by way of desert untrod by human foot to the ends of the unknown seas, the breath of the everlasting creative spirit is felt, rejoicing over every speck of dust that hearkens to it and lives.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Life, Mountain Ranges, Dust

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1963). “Goethe's world view: presented in his reflections and maxims”

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• Within two hours of where I live, you have mountains and desert as location. I like the natural elements that abstract into light, texture, shape and shadow.

  Herb Ritts

  Light, Two, Shadow

  Herb Ritts, Paul Martineau, James Crump (2012). “Herb Ritts: L.A. Style”, p.3, Getty Publications

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• I don't look like a desert person because I stay indoors most of the day and fool around at night. That's what the desert animals do - they don't have a tan either.

  Don Van Vliet

  Animal, Night, Looks

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• Those fields of daisies we landed on, and dusty fields and desert stretches. Memories of many skies and earths beneath us - many days, many nights of stars.

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh

  Stars, Memories, Night

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1981). “War within and without: diaries and letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1939-1944”, Berkley

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• "Oh, ancient god, whatever your name," whispered Ahmed. "Help this lost son of a good father, this evil boy who meant no harm but slept in school, ran errands slowly, did not pray from his heart, ignored his mother, and did not hold his family in great esteem. For all this I know I must suffer. But here in the midst of silence, at the desert's heart, where even the wind knows not my name? Must I die so young? Am I to be forgotten without having been?"

  Ray Bradbury

  God, Mother, Father

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• When corruption is visited upon the cities of men, the mountains and the deserts await him. The cities are for money but the high-up hills are purely for the soul.

  Louis L'Amour

  Men, Cities, Soul

  Louis L'Amour (2003). “Galloway”, p.177, Bantam

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• Mountains and deserts, with their sparse life at the limit of existence, make one restless and disconsolate; one becomes an explorer in an intellectual realm as well as in a physical one.

  George Schaller

  Intellectual, Mountain, Limits

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• I do not know what right I have to so much happiness, but rather hold it in reserve till the time of my desert.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Happiness, Knows, Reserves

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Familiar Letters (Annotated Edition)”, p.35, Jazzybee Verlag

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• I may be able to spot arrowheads on the desert but a refrigerator is a jungle in which I am easily lost.

  Edward T. Hall

  May, Able, Refrigerators

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• Many of the tribal peoples of the world recognize that there are four places in nature where you can find deep peace and remember who you really are. One is in the deep woods; one is in the desert; one in the mountains and one near the ocean

  Angeles Arrien

  Ocean, Mountain, World

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• To the desert go profits and hermits, through deserts go pilgrims and exiles. Here the leaders of the great religions have sought the therapeutic and spiritual values of retreat, not to escape but to find reality.

  Paul Shepard

  Spiritual, Reality, Leader

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• Nothing the desert produces expresses it better than the unhappy growth of the tree yuccas

  Mary Hunter Austin

  Tree, Growth, Atheism

  Mary Hunter Austin, Reuben J. Ellis (1996). “Beyond Borders: The Selected Essays of Mary Austin”, p.34, SIU Press

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• New York is the great stone desert.

  Israel Zangwill

  New York, Stones

  Israel Zangwill (2015). “The Melting Pot”, p.109, Israel Zangwill

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• We may seem competent, but by the end of next century there will be new deserts, new ruins.

  Edward Bond

  Insecurity, Literature, May

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• In the desert you celebrate nothing but water.

  Michael Ondaatje

  Water, Celebrate

  Michael Ondaatje (2011). “The English Patient”, p.25, A&C Black

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