“The desert is not an island: the island is not enchanted: and the desert is no habitation for men.”
"To speak about the soul"
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Peter Levi3
writer, archaeologist, sometime Jesuit priest 1931–2000Related quotes
“Alone dwells every man and everyone mocks everyone else, and a deserted island is our pain.”
Albert Cohen (1895–1981) Swiss writer
Le livre de ma mère [The Book of My Mother] (1954)
“Zuleika, on a desert island, would have spent most of her time in looking for a man's footprint.”
Max Beerbohm (1872–1956) English writer
Source: Zuleika Dobson http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/zdbsn11.txt (1911), Ch. II
Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator
"A Magic Mountain" (1975), trans. Czesław Miłosz and Lillian Vallee
Hymn of the Pearl (1981)
Glenn Gould (1932–1982) Canadian pianist
Gramophone
Context: I think that if I were required to spend the rest of my life on a desert island, and to listen to or play the music of any one composer during all that time, that composer would almost certainly be Bach. I really can't think of any other music which is so all-encompassing, which moves me so deeply and so consistently, and which, to use a rather imprecise word, is valuable beyond all of its skill and brilliance for something more meaningful than that -- its humanity.
