Desert Quotes

“Polish comes from the cities; wisdom from the desert.”

“They make a desert and call it peace.”

“desert”

“Wikipedia: Desert”

“What makes the desert beautiful is that it hides, somewhere, a well.”

“Wikicommons: Deserts”

“"It's a little lonely in the desert..."
"It is lonely when you're among people, too," said the snake.”

“It is the real, and not the map, whose vestiges persist here and there in the deserts that are no longer those of the Empire, but ours: the desert of the real itself.”

“I've been through the desert on a horse with no name
It felt good to be out of the rain.
In the desert you can remember your name
'Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain.”

“Encounters between strangers in the desert, while rare, were occasions of mutual suspicion, and masked by initial preparations on both sides for an incident that might prove either cordial or warlike.”

“"Once you get into the desert, there’s no going back," said the camel driver. "and, when you can’t go back, you have to worry only about the best way of moving forward. The rest is up to Allah, including the danger."”

“You neglect and belittle the desert.
The desert is not remote in southern tropics
The desert is not only around the corner,
The desert is squeezed in the tube-train next to you,
The desert is in the heart of your brother.”

“The desert takes our dreams away from us, and they don't always return. We know that, and we are used to it. Those who don't return become a part of the clouds, a part of the animals that hide in the ravines and of the water that comes from the earth. They become part of everything … They become the Soul of the World.”

“After nine days I let the horse run free
'Cause the desert had turned to sea.
There were plants and birds and rocks and things,
There was sand and hills and rings.
The ocean is a desert with its life underground,
And a perfect disguise above.
Under the cities lies a heart made of ground,
But the humans will give no love.”

“I would say that the desert deserves to be called a temple of our God without walls. Since it is clear that God dwells in silence, we must believe that he loves the solitary expanses of the desert. ... Although God is present everywhere, and regards the whole world as his domain, we may believe that his preferred place is the solitudes of heaven and of the desert.”

“The desert was held in a crazed communism by which Nature and the elements were for the free use of every known friendly person for his own purposes and no more. Logical outcomes were the reduction of this licence to privilege by the men of the desert, and their hardness to strangers unprovided with introduction or guarantee, since the common security lay in the common responsibility of kinsmen.”

“The apocalypse is finished, today it is the precession of the neutral, of forms of the neutral and of indifference. I will leave it to be considered whether there can be a romanticism, an aesthetic of the neutral therein. I don't think so — all that remains, is the fascination for desertlike and indifferent forms, for the very operation of the system that annihilates us.”

“I think you are another of these desert-loving English: Doughty, Stanhope, Gordon of Khartoum. No Arab loves the desert. We love water and green trees, there is nothing in the desert. No man needs nothing.”

“Arabs felt no incongruity in bringing God into the weaknesses and appetites of their least creditable causes. He was the most familiar of their words; and indeed we lost much eloquence when making Him the shortest and ugliest of our monosyllables.
This creed of the desert seemed inexpressible in words, and indeed in thought. It was easily felt as an influence, and those who went into the desert long enough to forget its open spaces and its emptiness were inevitably thrust upon God as the only refuge and rhythm of being.”

“"I’ve crossed these sands many times," said one of the camel drivers one night. "But the desert is so huge, and the horizon so distant, that they make a person feel small, and as if he should remain silent." The boy intuitively knew what he meant, even without having ever set foot in the desert before. Whenever he saw the sea, or a fire, he fell silent, impressed by their elemental force. I’ve learned things from the sheep, and I’ve learned things from crystal, he thought. I can learn something from the desert, too. It seems old and wise.”