“It is difficult to analyse the motive that induced me to make those journeys, or the satisfaction I derived from such a life. There was of course the lure of the unknown; there was the constant test of resolution and endurance. Yet those travels in the Empty Quarter would have been for me a pointless penance but for the comradeship of my Bedu companions. All they possessed were their camels and saddlery, their rifles and daggers, some waterskins and cooking pots and bowls, and the very clothes they wore; few of them even owned a blanket. They possessed, however, a freedom which we, with all our craving for possessions, cannot experience. Any of them could have found a job in the towns and villages of the Hadhramaut; but all would have rejected that easier life of lesser men. They met every challenge, every hardship, with the proud boast: 'We are Bedu.”

— Wilfred Thesiger

Source: The Life Of My Choice (1987), p. 398.

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Wilfred Thesiger 55

British explorer 1910–2003

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“The Empty Quarter offered me the chance to win distinction as a traveller; but I believed that it could give me more than this, that in those empty wastes I could find the peace that comes with solitude, and, among the Bedu, comradeship in a hostile world. Many who venture into dangerous places have found this comradeship among members of their own race; a few find it more easily among people from other lands, the very differences which separate them binding them ever more closely. I found it among the Bedu. Without it these journeys would have been a meaningless penance.”

Wilfred Thesiger book Arabian Sands

Source: Arabian Sands (1959), p. 4.

“I never enjoyed life in my twenties, not one minute of it. It was a test of endurance that I'm surprised I survived. Professionally, of course, I was doing very well but personally it couldn't have been worse or more difficult for me if I'd been living in a mud hut in Leeds.”

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In interviews etc., About himself and his work

“I knew that I had made my last journey in the Empty Quarter and that a phase in my life was ended. Here in the desert I had found all that I asked; I knew that I should never find it again. But it was not only this personal sorrow that distressed me. I realized that the Bedu with whom I had lived and travelled, and in whose company I had found contentment, were doomed. Some people maintain that they will be better off when they have exchanged the hardship and poverty of the desert for the security of a materialistic world. This I do not believe. I shall always remember how often I was humbled by those illiterate herdsmen who possessed, in so much greater measure than I, generosity and courage, endurance, patience, and light-hearted gallantry. Among no other people have I felt the same sense of personal inferiority.”

Wilfred Thesiger book Arabian Sands

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“Career has given me a lot of happiness and I’ve fallen in love with it. Of course, there is joy in fame, but there are plenty of difficult periods to endure as well. It’s not unusual to feel down or stressed, but I use those as motivators to remain steadfast and look ahead.”

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“All through my life, I have been tested. My will has been tested, my courage has been tested, my strength has been tested. Now my patience and endurance are being tested.”

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Variant: All through my life I have been tested. My will has been tested, my courage has been tested, my strength has been tested. Now my patience and endurance are being tested.
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“Those who derive satisfaction by perpetuating pain in others will probably not stop their tirade against me. I do not expect them to.”

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Context: Those who derive satisfaction by perpetuating pain in others will probably not stop their tirade against me. I do not expect them to. But, I pray in all humility, that they at least now stop irresponsibly maligning the 6 crore people of Gujarat.

“In my journeys I refused to follow those paths, feeling that they were not safe or dependable and fearing that they might cloud my own view or make me lose my way.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Psychic Politics: An Aspect Psychology Book (1976), p. 28-29
Context: Others have provided maps for the psyche, but I've never trusted them. Those maps carried the marks of too many name-places in this reality. When you travel through the psyche, you necessarily journey through your own deepest mind -- and as you travel into inner realities, this means that you move into another kind of atmosphere, as you would if you were travelling in outer space. In the past, others have projected phantoms of their own minds there, then acted as if these were natural signposts. In my journeys I refused to follow those paths, feeling that they were not safe or dependable and fearing that they might cloud my own view or make me lose my way.

“Having no human companion I felt a spirit of comradeship for the objects of nature around me. In my childish way I communed with these as with my own soul; they became the sharers of my confidence.”

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“It would have been impossible for me to have told anyone what I derived from these novels, for it was nothing less than a sense of life itself. All my life had shaped me for the realism, the naturalism of the modern novel, and I could not read enough of them.”

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“They were Bedu, and these empty spaces where there was neither shade nor shelter were their homelands. Any of them could have worked in the gardens around Salala; all of them would have scorned this easier life of lesser men. Among the Bedu only the broken are stranded among the cultivations on the desert’s shore.”

Wilfred Thesiger book Arabian Sands

Source: Arabian Sands (1959), p. 85.

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Wilfred Thesiger 55

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