“Regretfully, however, I realize that the maps I made helped others, with more material aims, to visit and corrupt a people whose spirit once lit the desert like a flame.”

— Wilfred Thesiger , book Arabian Sands

Source: Arabian Sands (1959), p. 68.
Context: Yet I wondered fancifully if he had seen more clearly than they did, had sensed the threat which my presence implied – the approaching disintegration of his society and the destruction of his beliefs. Here especially it seemed that the evil that comes with sudden change would far outweigh the good. While I was with the Arabs I wished only to live as they lived and, now that I have left them, I would gladly think that nothing in their lives was altered by my coming. Regretfully, however, I realize that the maps I made helped others, with more material aims, to visit and corrupt a people whose spirit once lit the desert like a flame.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Regretfully, however, I realize that the maps I made helped others, with more material aims, to visit and corrupt a peo…" by Wilfred Thesiger?

Wilfred Thesiger 55

British explorer 1910–2003

Related quotes

“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.”

Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French sociologist and philosopher

The Precession of Simulcra
1980s, Simulacra and Simulation (1981)

“I feel once more the scars of the old flame.”
Agnosco veteris vestigia flammae.

Virgil Aeneid

Source: Aeneid (29–19 BC), Book IV, Line 23 (tr. C. Day Lewis); Dido acknowledging her love for Aeneas.

“[with painting] directly tube against canvas, one soon becomes too slick... I regretfully realized that my composition was reduced to no more than a series of coloured rhythms, harmonious, discordant, monotonous and that, from simplification to simplification, I was falling into the trap of decoration. I no longer got to the bottom of things: I no longer cut through to their heart. The decorative spirit was leading me to forget painting.”

Maurice de Vlaminck (1876–1958) French painter

Vlaminck himself had become disillusioned with Fauvism, c. 1907-08
Source: Quotes dated, Dangerous Corner', 1929, p. 15

“At midnight on the Emperor’s pavement flit
Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit,
Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame,
Where blood-begotten spirits come
And all complexities of fury leave,
Dying into a dance,
An agony of trance,
An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve.”

W.B. Yeats book The Winding Stair and Other Poems

Byzantium, st. 4
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933)

“Peace can only come as people begin to meet each other. Those that do have the courage to cross the road, however, to look kindly at people and to listen to them with tenderness, will find people much like themselves, people seeking to be loved for who they are. And that it is OK for each one of us to admit, "I don't have all the truth…. I am vulnerable, I am broken. I need help." Then comes the realization, "I need your help. I need your friendship." In the end, what you will find, and what you will help the world to discover, Vanier said, is what it means to be human.”

Jean Vanier (1928–2019) Canadian humanitarian

Google this: Jean Vanier and what it means to be human http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-briggs/google-this-jean-vanier-a_b_7484702.html Huffington Post, 02/06/2015
From interviews and talks

“There is a concept which corrupts and upsets all others. I refer not to Evil, whose limited realm is that of ethics; I refer to the infinite.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

Hay un concepto que es el corruptor y el desatinador de los otros. No hablo del mal cuyo limitado imperio es la ética; hablo del infinito.
"Avatars of the Tortoise"
Variant translations:
One concept corrupts and confuses the others. I am not speaking of the Evil whose limited sphere is ethics; I am speaking of the infinite.
There is a concept that is the corruptor and dazzler of others. I'm not talking about the evil whose limited empire is the ethic; I'm talking about infinity.
There is a concept that is the corrupter and destroyer of all others. I speak not of Evil, whose limited empire is that of ethics; I speak of the infinite.
Discussion (1932)