“To awaken quite alone in a strange town, is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.”

—  Freya Stark

Baghdad Sketches

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 "To awaken quite alone in a strange town, is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world." by Freya Stark?
Freya Stark photo
Freya Stark 5
British explorer and writer 1893–1993

Related quotes

Charlotte Brontë photo
William Hazlitt photo

“One of the pleasantest things in the world is going a journey; but I like to do it myself. I can enjoy society in a room; but out of doors, nature is company enough for me. I am then never less alone than when alone.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On Going on a Journey"
Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

Simon Blackburn photo
N. K. Jemisin photo

“Otherwise it was quiet—that eerie, not-quite-comforting quiet one finds in small towns before dawn.”

Source: The Broken Kingdoms (2011), Chapter 20 “Life” (oil study) (p. 364)

Fernando Pessoa photo
Albert Hofmann photo

“I was seized by the dreadful fear of going insane. I was taken to another world, another place, another time. My body seemed to be without sensation, lifeless, strange.”

Albert Hofmann (1906–2008) Swiss chemist

Source: LSD : My Problem Child (1980), Ch. 1 : How LSD Originated
Context: I was seized by the dreadful fear of going insane. I was taken to another world, another place, another time. My body seemed to be without sensation, lifeless, strange. Was I dying? Was this the transition? At times I believed myself to be outside my body, and then perceived clearly, as an outside observer, the complete tragedy of my situation. I had not even taken leave of my family (my wife, with our three children had traveled that day to visit her parents, in Lucerne). Would they ever understand that I had not experimented thoughtlessly, irresponsibly, but rather with the utmost caution, and that such a result was in no way foreseeable? My fear and despair intensified, not only because a young family should lose its father, but also because I dreaded leaving my chemical research work, which meant so much to me, unfinished in the midst of fruitful, promising development. Another reflection took shape, an idea full of bitter irony: if I was now forced to leave this world prematurely, it was because of this lysergic acid diethylamide that I myself had brought forth into the world.

Vladimir Nabokov photo
James Branch Cabell photo

“I quite fixedly believe the Wardens of Earth sometimes unbar strange windows, that face on other worlds than ours.”

Ch 28 : The Shallowest Sort of Mysticism
The Cream of the Jest (1917)
Context: I quite fixedly believe the Wardens of Earth sometimes unbar strange windows, that face on other worlds than ours. And some of us, I think, once in a while get a peep through these windows. But we are not permitted to get a long peep, or an unobstructed peep, nor very certainly, are we permitted to see all there is — out yonder. The fatal fault, sir, of your theorizing is that it is too complete. It aims to throw light upon the universe, and therefore is self-evidently moonshine. The Wardens of Earth do not desire that we should understand the universe, Mr. Kennaston; it is part of Their appointed task to insure that we never do; and because of Their efficiency every notion that any man, dead, living, or unborn, might form as to the universe will necessarily prove wrong.

Confucius photo

“To throw oneself into strange teachings is quite dangerous.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

The word translated "strange teachings" means literally another end [of textile]. There are two different understandings about "strange teachings" or heretical. One possible understanding is "strange from the authentic teaching", another understanding is simply different subjects, just as two authors or two scholastic fields literature and politics.
Source: The Analects, Chapter II

John Jay photo

“Among the strange things of this world, nothing seems more strange than that men pursuing happiness should knowingly quit the right and take a wrong road, and frequently do what their judgments neither approve nor prefer.”

John Jay (1745–1829) American politician and a founding father of the United States

Letter to (22 August 1774), as published in The Life of John Jay (1833) by William Jay, Vol. 2, p. 345.
1770s, Letter to Lindley Murray (1774)
Context: Among the strange things of this world, nothing seems more strange than that men pursuing happiness should knowingly quit the right and take a wrong road, and frequently do what their judgments neither approve nor prefer. Yet so is the fact; and this fact points strongly to the necessity of our being healed, or restored, or regenerated by a power more energetic than any of those which properly belong to the human mind.
We perceive that a great breach has been made in the moral and physical systems by the introduction of moral and physical evil; how or why, we know not; so, however, it is, and it certainly seems proper that this breach should be closed and order restored. For this purpose only one adequate plan has ever appeared in the world, and that is the Christian dispensation. In this plan I have full faith. Man, in his present state, appears to be a degraded creature; his best gold is mixed with dross, and his best motives are very far from being pure and free from earth and impurity.

Related topics