Quotes about desert
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“Somewhere in the desert, there's a forest And an acre before us But I don't know where to begin <br/”

Sufjan Stevens (1975) American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist

"Death with Dignity"
Lyrics, Carrie and Lowell (2015)

“A human being is a flower that originates miraculously amidst a cosmic desert, capable of becoming a blossoming universal tree if we recognize this meaning and sincerely desire to.”

Zafar Mirzo (1972)

Flowers, Tree, Universe, Sincerity

“There had been certain romantic interludes in the past that had included galloping across the desert at night; but he had never abducted any woman whose enthusiastic support for such a plan had not been secured well in advance.”

Robin McKinley book The Blue Sword

Source: The Blue Sword

Support, Past, Night

“Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.”

Thomas Gray (1716–1771) English poet, historian

St. 14 Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?text=elcc (written 1750, publ. 1751) Source: An Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard

Flowers

“It would be very unjust to say that you deserted me, but that I was deserted, and sometimes terribly so, is true.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

Source: Diaries of Franz Kafka

“Just think of all those women on the Titanic who said, 'No thank you' to desert that night. And for what?!”

Erma Bombeck (1927–1996) When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent le…

Women, Thinking, Night

“The desert surrounds your every step and you walk forever a thirsty man.”

Christopher Pike (1954) American author Kevin Christopher McFadden

Source: Creatures of Forever

“Words deserted him immediately. He could only speak when he was not asked to.”

E.M. Forster book Maurice

Source: Maurice

“The desert weed lives on, but the flower of spring blooms and wilts. Such grace, such dignity, such a tragedy.”

Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner

Variant: The desert weed lives on, but the flower of spring blooms and wilts.
Source: The Kite Runner

Spring, Flowers

“He saw that no one owned anything really. It's all rented, or borrowed. Our possessions will outlast us, we'll desert them in the end.”

Ian McEwan book Saturday

Source: Saturday

“You told us to leave you in the desert, because you planned to start a new life as cactus," Catarina said, her voice flat. "Then you conjured up tiny needles and threw them at us. With pinpoint accuracy.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: What Really Happened in Peru

Life

“Life is short… eat desert first!”

Wendy Mass Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life

Variant: Life is short, have dessert first.
Source: Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life

Life

“But what I wanted back had never really been there. He was a temporary illusion, a mirage of water after walking in the desert. I had made him up. And he could have killed me. You've got to stop the ride sometimes. Stop it and get off.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: The Secret Life of Prince Charming

Water

“He is in my soul and i am in his, and we are in bed but we are in a desert, and i do not know where he begins and i end - Mac”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Dreamfever

Soul

“As we crossed the Colorado-Utah border I saw God in the sky in the form of huge gold sunburning clouds above the desert that seemed to point a finger at me and say, "Pass here and go on, you're on the road to heaven.”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Source: On the Road

God

“Defend the weak, protect both young and old, never desert your friends. Give justice to all, be fearless in battle and always ready to defend the right."

—The law of Badger Lords”

Brian Jacques book Lord Brocktree

Source: Lord Brocktree

Justice, Law

“The deeds of men, as footprints in the desert.
Nothing under the circling moons is fated to last.
Even the sun goes down.”

Guy Gavriel Kay book The Lions of Al-Rassan

Source: The Lions of Al-Rassan

Men, Fate, Sun

“Ah, Los Angeles! Dust and fog of your lonely streets. I am no longer lonely. Just you wait, all of you ghosts of this room, just you wait, because it will happen yet, and that Camilla, she can have her Sammy in the desert, with his cheap short stories and stinking prose, but wait until she has a taste of me, because it will happen, as sure as there's a God in heaven.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Source: Ask the Dust (1939)

God, Angels, Waiting

“Every habit he's ever had is still there in his body, lying dormant like flowers in the desert. Given the right conditions, all his old addictions would burst into full and luxuriant bloom.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

Flowers, Lying

“In every heart there should be one grief that is like a well in the desert.”

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) American novelist, short story writer, designer

Heart

“She laughed, and the desert sang.”

Jerry Spinelli book Stargirl

Source: Stargirl

“Lemme guess," Regin said. "You had your introductory spiel all planned, but rational thought deserted you when you saw me stroll in braless.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Dreams of a Dark Warrior

“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”

Stephen King book The Gunslinger

Source: The Gunslinger

“What is a Shadowhunter made of, if they desert their own, if they throw away a child’s heart like rubbish left on the side of the road? Tell me, Simon Lewis, if that is what Shadowhunters are, why would I wish to be one?”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Bitter of Tongue

Heart

“The desert is a capricious lady, and sometimes she drives men crazy.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

Men

“It was as if hope had appeared out of nowhere to settle beside her and it wasn't going anywhere, it wasn't going to desert her now.”

Alice Hoffman (1952) Novelist, young-adult writer, children's writer

Hope, Appearance

“Can I be blamed for wanting a real body, to put my arms around? Without it I too am disembodied. I can listen to my own heartbeat against the bedsprings… but there’s something dead about it, something deserted.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Dead

“I went into the desert to forget about you. But the sand was the color of your hair. The desert sky was the color of your eyes. There was nowhere I could go that wouldn't be you.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book Middlesex

Source: Middlesex

Color, Forgetting

“He wanders, like a day-appearing dream,
Through the dim wildernesses of the mind; Through desert woods and tracts, which seem Like ocean, homeless, boundless, unconfined.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

Dreams, Appearance

“I think that real friendship always makes us feel such sweet gratitude, because the world almost always seems like a very hard desert, and the flowers that grow there seem to grow against such high odds.”

Stephen King book The Eyes of the Dragon

Source: The Eyes of the Dragon

Friendship, World, Feeling, Flowers

“And Adam ruled, for he was the King. Until the day his will to be King deserted him. Then he died, food for a stronger. And the strongest was always the King, not by strength alone, but King by cunning and luck and strength together. Among the rats.”

James Clavell book King Rat

Source: King Rat

Food

“Always expect trouble in the desert. Then you usually won't meet it.”

John Flanagan (1873–1938) Irish-American hammer thrower

Source: Erak's Ransom

“If you added it up, without her there was nothing--but with her even the simplest of gestures of walking a bird dog in the desert, or selecting the ingredients for a meal for two rather than one took on an ineffable charm.

(from the novella,)”

Jim Harrison (1937–2016) American novelist, poet, essayist

Source: Legends of the Fall

Dogs, Bird

“Men had always been the reciters of poetry in the desert.”

Michael Ondaatje book The English Patient

Source: The English Patient

Men

“No miles of level desert, no jagged mountain heights, no sea of endless blue
Neither words nor tears, nor silent fears
will keep me from coming back to you.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Again the Magic

Fear, Mountain, Tear, Sea

“Lots of different ways to live and lots of different ways to die. But in the end that doesn't make a bit of difference. All that remains is a desert.”

Haruki Murakami book South of the Border, West of the Sun

Source: South of the Border, West of the Sun

Way

“She has mischievious moments when she wishes she could get him alone on a desert island…”

George Bernard Shaw Pygmalion

Source: Pygmalion

“I have inside me the winds, the deserts, the oceans, the stars, and everything created in the universe. We were all made by the same hand, and we have the same soul.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

Soul, Star, Universe

“I will You, in all, Myself, with promise to never desert you,
To which I sign my name.”

Walt Whitman book Fulles d'herba

Source: Leaves of Grass

“Once again there was the desert, and that only.”

Stephen King book The Gunslinger

Source: The Gunslinger

“"Don't you want to join us?" I was recently asked by an acquaintance when he ran across me alone after midnight in a coffeehouse that was already almost deserted. "No, I don't," I said.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

(June 1914)
The Diaries of Franz Kafka 1910-1923 (1948)
Source: Diaries of Franz Kafka

“How long can we maintain? I wonder. How long before one of us starts raving and jabbering at this boy? What will he think then? This same lonely desert was the last known home of the Manson family. Will he make that grim connection..”

Hunter S. Thompson book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Source: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Family, Home, Boy, Thinking

“Every human being must be viewed according to what it is good for. For not one of us, no, not one, is perfect. And were we to love none who had imperfection, this world would be a desert for our love.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Love, World, Perfection

“Maybe God created the desert so that man could appreciate the date trees”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

God, Tree

“We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.”

Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965) Television journalist

The reference to Cassius is that of the character in William Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar. Listen to an mp3 sound file http://www.otr.com/murrow_mccarthy.shtml of parts of this statement. See It Now (1954) Context: No one familiar with the history of this country can deny that congressional committees are useful. It is necessary to investigate before legislating, but the line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one and the junior Senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly. His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind as between the internal and the external threats of communism. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men — not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular. This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy's methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn't create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it — and rather successfully. Cassius was right. "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves." Good night, and good luck.

World, Home, Freedom

“An oasis of horror in a desert of boredom.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

“I could fall in love with a cruel desert that kills without passion, a canyon full of scorpions, one thousand blinding arctic storms, a century sealed in a cave, a river of molten salt flowing down my throat. But never with you.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Source: Solipsist

Love, Passion

“Nothing is more deadly than a deserted, waiting street.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

Waiting

“I have spent weeks in the desert, forgetting to look at the moon, he says, as a married man may spend days never looking into the face of his wife. These are not sins of omission but signs of pre-occuopation.”

Michael Ondaatje book The English Patient

Source: The English Patient

Forgetting

“The extreme clarity of the desert light is equaled by the extreme individuation of desert life forms. Love flowers best in openness and freedom.”

Edward Abbey book Desert Solitaire

Source: Desert Solitaire

Love, Life, Flowers, Freedom

“The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

“Long since, the desert wind wiped away our footprints in the sand. But at every second of my existence, I remember what happened, and you still walk in my dreams and in my reality. Thank you for having crossed my path.”

Paulo Coelho book The Fifth Mountain

Source: The Fifth Mountain

Dreams, Reality

“I was aware too how strange adults were, how theirs lives were vaster than they wanted anyone to realize, that they actually stretched on and on like deserts, dry and desolate, with an unpredictable, shifting sea of dunes.”

Marisha Pessl Special Topics in Calamity Physics

Source: Special Topics in Calamity Physics

Sea

“I have always hated crowds. I like deserts, prisons, and monasteries. I have discovered, too, that there are fewer idiots at 3000 meters above sea level than down below.”

Jean Giono (1895–1970) French writer

Source: An Italian Journey

Hate, Sea

“The desert sharpened the sweet ache of his longing, amplified it, gave shape to it in sere geology and clean slant of light.”

Jon Krakauer book Into the Wild

Source: Into the Wild

Light

“What did that stupid deserting crap-bag ex-boyfriend, ex-best friend with the most perfect stupid hair do? He DIDN'T delete his crap off the desktop before he fled my life and left me all alone. That's what he did.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Fang

Life, Stupidity, Perfection

“The good Watson had at that time deserted me for a wife, the only selfish action I can recall in our association. I was alone.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

Source: The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

Time, Selfishness

“But no one walks out of his family without reprisals: a family is too disciplined an army to offer compassion to its deserters.”

Pat Conroy book Beach Music

Source: Beach Music

Family

“America is the greatest, freest, and most decent society in existence. It is an oasis of goodness in a desert of cynicism and barbarism. This country, once an experiment unique in the world, is now the last best hope for the world.”

Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author

Source: Books, What's So Great About America (2003), Ch. 6: America the Beautiful

World, Hope, Country

“But I know the difference. Everyone else is a ghost. I exist here alone, stranded by choice. Deserted.”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

“I can speak to my soul only when the two of us are off exploring deserts or cities or mountains or roads.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Source: Aleph

Soul, Mountain

“A deserted library in the morning - there's something about it that really gets to me. All possible words and ideas are there, resting peacefully.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

Idea

“Everyone just keeps on disappearing. Some things vanish, like they were cut away. Others fade slowly into the mist. And all that remains is a desert.”

Haruki Murakami book South of the Border, West of the Sun

Source: South of the Border, West of the Sun

“The wicked are wicked, no doubt, and they go astray and they fall, and they come by their deserts: but who can tell the mischief which the very virtuous do?”

William Makepeace Thackeray Vanity Fair

The Newcomes, Ch. 20.
Source: Vanity Fair

“here in the summer desert, winter found my blood”

Dean Koontz Odd Thomas

Source: Odd Thomas

Winter, Summer

“On your journey to your dream, be ready to face oasis and deserts. In both cases, don't stop”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Dreams

“In the desert of my dreams I saw you there;
And I'm walking towards the water steaming body cold and bare.
But your words cut loose the fire and you left my soul to bleed.
And the pain that's in your truth's deceiving me, has got me scared.
Oh why?”

Sarah McLachlan (1968) Canadian musician, singer, and songwriter

Vox
Song lyrics, Touch (1988)

Pain, Truth, Dreams, Soul

““Fool. There is no why. The very word is a semantic fallacy. Ask me how and I can lay out for you cause and effect, one thing leading to another, the alcohol acting on a grieving man’s mind, the door inadequately guarded, the people within isolated from the common lot of humanity by the dreadful secret of their ancestry.”
He rattled his glass.
Nathan refilled it.
Faust drank. “But to ask why,” he continued, “implies that things happen for a purpose, and they do not. There is no purpose, no direction, no guidance to events. Nothing means anything. The world is a howling desert of meaningless, and reason is useless before it. There is only blind event.”
He stared off into the bleak landscapes of the future while Nathan refilled his glass and refilled his glass and refilled his glass.
He saw so clearly now, without delusion or hope. It was a crystal night of the soul.”

Michael Swanwick book Jack Faust

Source: Jack Faust (1997), Chapter 19, “Ashes” (pp. 327-328)

People, Alcohol, Secret, World

“Turtle on its back in the desert sea / and you look like a cool drink / just slightly out of reach / Draw myself into the shell / waiting on a sign from God / or a nod from hell”

Blake Schwarzenbach (1967) American singer

"Sea Anemone"
Orange Rhyming Dictionary (1998)

God, Hell, Drink, Waiting

“Love is just a little bit of death in the heart,
For how often can one love in certainty that love will be returned?
Giving so much love, and receiving so little of it;
Because people are fickle, or indifferent? Who knows?
During moments together as in hours apart,
I'm mindful that the moon fades, flowers wither, souls pass away…
They wander lost in the somber darkness of sorrow,
Those fools who follow the footprints of love.
Because life is an endless desert,
And love is an entangling web.
Love is just a little bit of death in the heart.”

Xuân Diệu (1916–1985) Vietnamese poet

"Love" [Yêu], as quoted in "Shattered Identities and Contested Images: Reflections of Poetry and History in 20th-Century Vietnam" by Neil Jamieson, in Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 7, No. 2, 1992, pp. 86–87, and in Understanding Vietnam by Neil Jamieson (University of California Press, 1995), p. 162
Variant translation by Huỳnh Sanh Thông:
To love is to die a little in the heart,
for when you love can you be sure you're loved?
You give so much, so little you get back—
the other lets you down or looks away.
Together or apart, it's still the same.
The moon turns pale, blooms fade, the soul's bereaved...
They'll lose their way amidst dark sorrowland,
those passionate fools who go in search of love.
And life will be a desert bare of joy,
and love will tie the knot that binds to grief.
To love is to die a little in the heart.

Love, Life, Death, People

“She knows I'm a deserter from the Scottish Fusiliers,
She knows I stole a blind-man's can…that got me seven years!
She knows I've been connected with a gang of West-End Pests,
And the police have had me twice inside the cage;
And she knows I mix with ladies that have got a shady past,
But my mother doesn't know I'm on the stage.”

Billy Bennett (1887–1942) British comedian

"My Mother Doesn't Know I'm on the Stage", line 11

Past

“Some Confederate soldiers switched sides, beginning as early as 1862. When Sherman made his famous march to the sea from Atlanta to Savannah, his army actually grew in number, because thousands of white southerners volunteered along the way. Meanwhile, almost two-thirds of the Confederate army disappeared through desertion. Eighteen thousand slaves joined Sherman, so many that the army had to turn some away. Compare these facts with the portrait common in our textbooks of Sherman's marauders looting their way through a united south. The increasing ideological confusion in the Confederate states, coupled with the increasing strength of the United States, helps explains the Union victory… Many nations and people have continued to fight with far inferior means and weapons… The Confederacy's ideological contradictions were its gravest liabilities, ultimately causing its defeat.”

James W. Loewen book Lies My Teacher Told Me

As quoted in Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong https://books.google.com/books?id=5m23RrMeLt4C&pg=PT225&dq=%22Twenty+Nigger+Law%22+loewen&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwitwZHxq7fKAhXFdR4KHVgMDrYQ6AEIHzAA#v=onepage&q=%22Twenty%20Nigger%20Law%22%20loewen&f=false (2007), New York: New Press, pp. 225&ndash;226 2000s, 2007, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong (2007)

People, Way, Victory, Help

“Like beauteous flowers which vainly waste their scent
Of odours in unhaunted deserts.”

William Chamberlayne (poet)

Pharonida (1659), Part II, Book IV.

Flowers

“Now ain't it good to know
That you've got a friend
When People can be so cold.
They'll hurt you, kiss and desert you.
And take your soul if you let them.
Oh, but don't you let them.”

Carole King (1942) Nasa

You've Got a Friend
Song lyrics, Tapestry (1971)

People, Soul, Kiss, Hurt

“Well I'm starvin' and freezin'
In this measly old bed
(Then I'll crawl across the salt flats
To stroke your sweet head)
Come across the desert,
with no shoes on?
(I love you truly,
or I love no-one)”

Joanna Newsom (1982) American musician

Only Skin
Ys (2006)

Love, Shoe

“All we saw was that Time is taller than Space is wide.
That's why we got bound to a round desert island,
'neath the sky where our sailors have gone.
Have they drowned, in those windy highlands?
Highlands away, my John.”

Joanna Newsom (1982) American musician

Waltz Of The 101st Lightborne Divers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divers_(Joanna_Newsom_album) (2015)

Time

“It is astonishing to witness the struggles of this city so shattered, so starved, so deprived of all those things that justify a city’s existence, to adapt itself to a collapse into conditions which must resemble life in the Dark Ages. People camp out like Bedouins in deserts of brick.”

Norman Lewis book Naples '44

Naples '44

Life, People, Age

“The fact that men have a same origin and live in the same universe means that they are representatives of a same unity. Deep down, they are also related (or connected) among them; that they consider (or not) themselves as strangers, this just depends on the feeling (or sensation) that dictate their relationships. In their country, two fellow coutrymen whose paths berely cross (or see each only only briefly) with inferrence, would effusively rush themselves up (or throw themselves) into each other arms if they would happen to meet in a desert, among Cannibles.”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 42.

Men, Feeling, Universe, Dependency

“These plays and stories have for their continual theme the passing away of gods and men and cities before the mysterious power which is sometimes called by some great god's name but more often 'Time.' His travellers, who travel by so many rivers and deserts and listen to sounding names none heard before, come back with no tale that does not tell of vague rebellion against that power, and all the beautiful things they have seen get something of their charm from the pathos of fragility. This poet who has imagined colours, ceremonies and incredible processions that never passed before the eyes of Edgar Allen Poe or of De Quincey, and remembered as much fabulous beauty as Sir John Mandeville, has yet never wearied of the most universal of emotions and the one most constantly associated with the sense of beauty; and when we come to examine those astonishments that seemed so alien we find that he has but transfigured with beauty the common sights of the world.”

Lord Dunsany (1878–1957) Irish writer and dramatist

About

Men, God, World, Beauty

“For the artist, fulfillment of self consists not in marching in the ranks of the liberators but in being entered in the roll of the Masters. The artist tends to find himself in the position of a deserter from his social group — or, at best, one who collaborates, with secret reservations.”

Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978) American writer and art critic

Source: Art & Other Serious Matters, (1985), p. 271, "Being Outside"

Secret

“It is the glistening and softly spoken lie; the amiable fallacy; the patriotic lie of the historian, the provident lie of the politician, the zealous lie of the partisan, the merciful lie of the friend, and the careless lie of each man to himself, that cast that black mystery over humanity, through which we thank any man who pierces, as we would thank one who dug a well in a desert.”

John Ruskin book The Seven Lamps of Architecture

Source: The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849), Chapter II: The Lamp of Truth, section 1.

Lie

“Since the 1970s some seven-hundred-thousand people have signed up for a self-improvement called 'est', or as it's now called 'The Forum.' Est was the brainchild of a former used-car salesman named Jack Rosenberg. Back in the sixties, Rosenberg deserted his wife and four children in Philadelphia, changed his name to Werner Hans Erhard, and moved to California where he started another family, and, came up with the idea for est.”

Ed Bradley (1941–2006) News correspondent

Children, People, Family, Cars

“How does the rest of the world perceive America under Obama? We're the nation that stood by and didn't lift a finger when the Iranian public was protesting their government. We voiced no support and did not try to help in any significant way, and the protest was soon quelled. We're the nation that drew red lines in Syria and watched them being crossed without a whimper. We're the nation that only uttered a few lukewarm words as Putin invaded the Crimea and the Ukraine. We're the nation that traded five of the world's most dangerous terrorists for one American deserter. We're the nation that gave away the store to insure that Iran can finance its terrorist attacks and be assured of having a nuclear device in a few years.”

Charlie Daniels (1936) American singer and musician

2010s, 2016, Letter to America's Enemies (2016)

World, Way, Support, Help

“The law of socialism is that of the desert: a tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye. Socialism is a rude and bitter truth, which was born in the conflict of opposing forces and in violence. Socialism is war, and woe to those who are cowardly in war. They will be defeated.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

As quoted in Il Duce: The Life and Work of Benito Mussolini, L. Kemechey, New York: NY, Richard R. Smith (1930) p. 56. Written just before taking editorship of the Italian Socialist Party newspaper Avanti in 1912.
1910s

War, Truth, Law

“With the disintegration of all that [Nietzsche] had revered, existence, to him, had become a desert in which only one thing remained, namely that which had relentlessly forced him into this path: truthfulness that knows no limits and is not subject to any condition.”

Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) German psychiatrist and philosopher

Source: Nietzsche (1946), p. 45

Truth

“As geographers, Sosius, crowd into the edges of their maps parts of the world which they do not know about, adding notes in the margin to the effect that beyond this lies nothing but sandy deserts full of wild beasts, and unapproachable bogs.”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Life of Theseus, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

World, Parting

“How dull, how impossible life would be without dreams — waking dreams, I mean — the dreams that we call "castles in the air," built by the kindly hands of Hope! Were it not for the mirage of the oasis, drawing his footsteps ever onward, the weary traveler would lie down in the desert sand and die. It is the mirage of distant success, of happiness that, like the bunch of carrots fastened an inch beyond the donkey's nose, seems always just within our reach, if only we will gallop fast enough, that makes us run so eagerly along the road of Life.”

Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) English humorist

Dreams http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext97/jjdrm10.txt

Life, Happiness, Lie, Dreams

“The multicultural lobby has little respect for the history of Australia between 1788 and 1950. In the eyes of multicultural supporters, Australia was a desert between 1788 and 1950 because it was populated largely by people from the British Isles and because it seemed to have a cultural unity, a homogeneity which is the very antithesis of multiculturalism.”

Geoffrey Blainey (1930) Australian historian

Eye on Australia: Speeches and Essays of Geoffrey Blainey (1991)

People, History, Support

“When you live on cash, you understand the limits of the world around which you navigate each day. Credit leads into a desert with invisible boundaries.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Letter to A.S. Suvorin (August 18, 1893)
Letters

World, Understanding

“One was there who left all his friends behind;
Who going inland ever more and more,
And being left quite alone, at last did find
A lonely valley sheltered from the wind,
Wherein, amidst an ancient cypress wood,
A long-deserted ruined castle stood.”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

The Earthly Paradise (1868-70), The Lady of the Land

“The path which leads to the mount bf ascension does not lie among flowers; and he who travels it must climb the cold hillside, he must have his feet cut by the pointed rocks, he must faint in the dark valley, he must not seldom have his rest at midnight on the desert sand.”

Henry Giles (1809–1882) Irish minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 107.

Lie, Travel, Flowers

“For once in my life
I won’t let sorrow hurt me,
Not like it’s hurt me before, oh
For once I have something I know won't desert me
‘Cause I’m not alone anymore.”

Stevie Wonder (1950) American musician

For Once In My Life
Song lyrics

Life, Hurt

“It was evening when we came to the river
With a low moon over the desert
that we had lost in the mountains, forgotten,
what with the cold and the sweating
and the ranges barring the sky.
And when we found it again,
In the dry hills down by the river,
half withered, we had
the hot winds against us. There were two palms by the landing;
The yuccas were flowering; there was
a light on the far shore, and tamarisks.
We waited a long time, in silence.
Then we heard the oars creaking
and afterwards, I remember,
the boatman called us.
We did not look back at the mountains.”

Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) American theoretical physicist and professor of physics

"Crossing" describing memories of New Mexico in Hound and Horn (June 1928)

Mountain, Flowers, Light, Silence

“In thinking about the costs of this war, and thinking about renewing it, we have to reconsider what it has done to America. It has turned the U. S. military into a force at ease with abuse of captives and civilians, occupying a Muslim nation. Some of this is surely due to the sheer hell of fighting an enemy you cannot see, surrounded by people you do not understand or trust, and being killed randomly in urban or desert insurgency conditions where friend and foe are close to indistinguishable, and where your buddies are killed on a regular basis by faceless cowards. You can certainly understand how soldiers grow completely numb in the face of abuse in those circumstances. Every "hajji" can seem like the enemy after a while. It requires men and women of almost saintly capabilities to keep their moral bearings among terrorists who massacre scores of innocents as a religious duty, among people whose differences are impossible for young troops to figure out in split-seconds. In such conditions, and as a consequences of grotesque under-manning, the breakdown in ethical discipline is no big surprise. But that doesn't make it any the less of a big deal.”

Andrew Sullivan (1963) Journalist, writer, blogger

"Re-Thinking The War II" http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/05/rethinking_the__5.html, The Daily Dish (8 May 2007)

Women, Men, War, People

“If free market prices don't give people what they morally deserve, should we try to regulate factor prices so that they do track producers' moral deserts? Hayek offered two compelling arguments against this proposal. First, if you fix prices on a backward-looking standard, they will no longer be able to perform their informational function. Producers will produce for what was demanded last quarter, even if it isn't demanded today. This creates enormous waste and generates huge opportunity costs. We'd be much poorer in an economy that worked like this. […] Hayek was right. It might sound like a compelling idea, to make sure that people receive the income they morally deserve. But orienting the economy around this goal, assuming it is achievable at all (and there are principled doubts about that), would doom us to poverty and serfdom. It would abolish capitalism, along with its chief virtues. It isn't worth the draconian costs.”

Elizabeth S. Anderson (1959) professor of philosophy and womens' studies

How Not to Complain About Taxes (III): "I deserve my pretax income" http://left2right.typepad.com/main/2005/01/how_not_to_comp_1.html (January 26, 2005)

People, Idea

“Senator Kerry now tells us he has a clear position on the [war on terror]. He voted no on Desert Storm in 1991 and yes on Desert Shield today. Then he voted no on [troop funding], just after he'd voted yes. He's campaigned against the [war] all year, but says he'd vote yes today. This nation can't afford [presidential leadership] that comes in 57 varieties.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

Republican Convention Speech, 2004.
2003–2007 Governor of Massachusetts

War

“But if, through division in the ranks of those opposed to Mr. Lincoln, he should be elected, we have no excuse for dissolving the Union. The Union is worth more than Mr. Lincoln, and if the battle is to be fought for the Constitution, let us fight it in the Union and for the sake of the Union. With a majority of the people in favor of the Constitution, shall we desert the Government and leave it in the hands of the minority? A new obligation will be imposed upon us, to guard the Constitution and to see that no infraction of it is attempted or permitted. If Mr. Lincoln administers the Government in accordance with the Constitution, our rights must be respected. If he does not, the Constitution has provided a remedy.”

Sam Houston (1793–1863) nineteenth-century American statesman, politician, and soldier, namesake of Houston, Texas

1860s, Speech in Austin (1860)

People, Fight

“I too was filled with a sort of shyness and fear, as I was called to leave 'the world of will and idea' in which I had lived and created, and in whose reality I had believed. But the happy liberating touch of non-objectivity drew me out into the 'desert' where only feeling is real.... and so feeling became the content of my life. It was no 'empty square' I had exhibited but the feeling of non-objectivity. I perceived that the 'thing' and the 'idea' were taken to be equivalents of feeling, and understood the lie of the world of will and idea. Is the milk bottle the symbol of milk? Suprematism is the rediscovery of that pure art which in the course of time, and by an accretion of 'things', had been lost to sight.”

Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935) Russian and Soviet artist of polish descent

As quoted in Artists on Art; from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 453
1921 - 1930

Life, Happiness, Lie, World

“Now I am not ashamed of my defeat.
One murky island with its barking seals
Or a parched desert is enough
To make us say: yes, oui, si.”

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)

“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)

Quotes about desert page 2

Quotes about desert
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