Best 478 quotes in «desert quotes» category

Rich people always had someone to call who could arrange something that the average guy couldn't get done, no matter how right or wrong. The only call the poor man could make was to Jesus. If Jesus didn't answer, Smith and Wesson always did.

Shall I run back into the desert ... and stay there until the devil has passed out of me and I am fit to meet human kind again without driving it to despair at the first look? I haven't had enough desert yet.

She hated religion as much as she loved its architecture. She detested the pomposity of its spiritual leaders, be they Muslim, Christian or Jews. Whenever she spoke to them, she was outraged by their confident certainty that they were right and all others were wrong, their self-righteousness, haughtiness and aggrandizement. The art and architecture of religion had been amongst mankind's finest achievements, but its inspiration had brought destruction to countless millions. Even the ancient artefacts she'd personally uncovered in the desert, monuments to humanity's earliest attempts to come to terms with spiritual explanations for natural phenomena, had been exquisite, but etched into their stone or marble were the blood and bones of those who believed differently.

She thirsted for love, but found only a mirage. Some hearts are a desert you can die wandering in.

She smiled, and said, “Take care that the voice of God and the Devil sound one in the same in the desert. Trust your instincts. You were not put on this earth to be naïve, blindly optimistic, or passive; you are here to be vigilant, to survive.

She was rain to a parched desert She was color to a gray sky She was the beautiful butterfly you longed to possess But I let her fly For fear of breaking her wings!

She was rain to a parched desert She was color to a gray sky She was the butterfly you longed to possess But I let her fly For fear of breaking her delicate wings!

Sunshine - sunshine! tedious, changeless, monotonous. Not that discreet English Sunshine which varies its charm with clouds, with rainbows, with golden mist... here the sun has ceased trying to please so venerable a world.

Strangely it came to Gale then that he was glad. Yaqui had returned to his own — the great spaces, the desolation, the solitude — to the trails he had trodden when a child, trails haunted now by ghosts of his people, and ever by his gods. Gale realized that in the Yaqui he had known the spirit of the desert, that this spirit had claimed all which was wild and primitive in him.

The breeze across the desert as the light died was so sweet she could almost drink it.

The desert lay in wait, more infinite than God, no less remote.

The day here is a something without value, a mere torment suffered by living creatures as they await the night. Night is deliverance.

The desert and the ocean are realms of desolation on the surface. The desert is a place of bones, where the innards are turned out, to desiccate into dust. The ocean is a place of skin, rich outer membranes hiding thick juicy insides, laden with the soup of being. Inside out and outside in. These are worlds of things that implode or explode, and the only catalyst that determines the direction of eco-movement is the balance of water. Both worlds are deceptive, dangerous. Both, seething with hidden life. The only veil that stands between perception of what is underneath the desolate surface is your courage. Dare to breach the surface and sink.

The desert became grim, dark and foreboding. A silence of death lay over the land, and it seemed as though the very stars held their breath and twinkled no more.

The desert sings of loss, always loss, and if you stand quiet with your eyes closed, it will grieve you too.

The Estate of Solemnity By right, it reigns in its places- in long beards Of spanish moss hanging from a live oak On a windless evening, and in the chill of new Icicles rigidly, imperceptibly lengthening. Cavern Stalagmites are almost majestic with solemnity. The black morel and the tree ear mushroom Are solemn without grief, solemn without joy, Solemn without reverence, without a single Flicker of green or lift of a wing or cry. But the most solemn, most stalwart, the least Wavering are the tors and crags, the towering desert Spires and carved pinnacles, the devoted ascents And sharp, raw rims of boulders and bluffs, the maw Of a distant cave I saw yesterday and the day before, And the grave echo there of the day and the before. Mystics and divines have always sought the pure, White-rock serenity of the silent, solemn moon Bound in its flight alone far above the peaks, far Above the earth, surrounded there forever by bevies Of giddy stars, all asparkling, all aglow.

The eastern sky was red as coals in a forge, lighting up the flats along the river. Dew had wet the million needles of the chaparral, and when the rim of the sun edged over the horizon the chaparral seemed to be spotted with diamonds. A bush in the little backyard was filled with the little rainbows as the sun touched the dew.

The house was left; the house was deserted. It was left like a shell on a sandhill to fill with dry salt grains now that life had left it. The long life seemed to have set in; the trifling airs, nibbling, the clammy breaths, fumbling, seemed to have triumphed. ..

The fresh “breeze of freedom” that so many people promise lightheartedly, so often, remains void in the hot desert of yearning expectations. Pretending that everything is just a deplorable misunderstanding, may soothe their conscience and let them walk out easily on their pledge. (“Breeze of freedom)

The journey of every ignorant and obedient society always ends up in the same place: In the desert!

The immense desert, empty as a bird's wing, inspired him with promise.

The inside of the Trace Italian, of course, does not exist. A player can get close enough to see it: it shines in the new deserts of Kansas, gleaming in the sun or starkly rising from the winter cold. The rock walls that protect it meet in points around it, one giving way to another, for days on end. But the dungeons into which you'll fall as you work through the pathways to its gates number in the low hundreds, and if you actually get into the entry hall, there are a few hundred more sub-dungeons before you'll actually reach somewhere that's truly safe. Technically, it's possible to get to the last room in the final chamber of the Trace Italian, but no one will ever do it. No one will ever live that long.

The land afterward was cleared by oxen, the fallen trees stripped of their bark and cut for lumber that would be used in the construction of the villa, in which the women would live as servants, on whose property their daughters terraced the mountain for orange and lemon groves, where they could see to the east from the peak of Mount Terminus their sons raising swine in the valley below.

The painted aircraft took on sunlight and pulse. Sweeps of color, bands and spatters, airy washes, the force of saturated light—the whole thing oddly personal, a sense of one painter’s hand moved by impulse and afterthought as much as by epic design. I hadn’t expected to register such pleasure and sensation. The air was color-scrubbed, coppers and ochers burning off the metal skin of the aircraft to exchange with the framing desert.

The men who are dropped in a jungle or a desert and expected video games and got mundanity and depravity and friends dying like animals.

There are people who come home from war and want to talk about the pain, but no one wants to listen; there are others who want to keep silent and repress the memories, and all their family and friends want is to talk about it. I call this the war veteran reintegration paradox.

The region is altogether valueless. After entering it, there is nothing to do but leave. -Lt. Edward Beale, Congress report on Arizona, 1858

This sweet virginal primitive land will metaphorically breathe a sigh of relief --like a whisper of wind--when we are all and finally gone and the place and its creations can return to their ancient procedures unobserved and undisturbed by the busy, anxious, brooding consciousness of man.

There have been many many times where the uncertainty of life has made me want to force roots into the soil I'm currently standing on - because I'd rather have roots in any soil - than none at all. I hate living with unknowns.

THE RIVER OF A WOMAN Man is like a desert without the rain of a woman. Nothing can be born and grown without her nourishment. She is a life-giving river that gives and loves without holding anything back. And without her water, man would walk around aimlessly, feeling incomplete and hollow like an empty well. The longer he roams, the deeper the hole within his soul expands, growing bigger and bigger like a barren tree whose branches resemble the cracks on hard, dry soil. And he shall continue to feel incomplete and malnourished, until – he encounters a godly woman, to show him life and quench his thirst.

The 'Wild West' is a good description of law enforcement in the desert southwest USA.

They laid up in the shade of a rock shelf until past noon, scratching out a place in the gray lava dust to sleep, and they set forth in the afternoon down the valley following the war trail and they were very small and they moved very slowly in the immensity of that landscape. Come evening they hove toward the rimrock again and Sproule pointed out a dark stain on the face of the barren cliff. It looked like the black from old fires. The kid shielded his eyes. The scalloped canyon walls rippled in the heat like drapery folds.

This is, however, one of the greatest delights of a garden; the nearly hypnotic ability it has to make you slow down, consider things about life more carefully, wrangle over difficulties with care and imagination rather than anger and ferocity.

The sand doesn't care if you're made of flesh or stone.

The stories shatter. Or you wear them out or leave them behind. Over time the story of the memory loses its power. Over time you become someone else. Only when the honey turns to dust are you free.

The vastness of the desert frightened her. Everything looked too far away, even the couldless sky. There was nowhere you could hide in such emptiness.

The weather here is windy, balmy, sometimes wet. Desert springtime, with flowers popping up all over the place, trees leafing out, streams gushing down from the mountains. Great time of year for hiking, camping, exploring, sleeping under the new moon and the old stars. At dawn and at evening we hear the coyotes howling with excitement - mating season. And lots of fresh rabbit meat hopping about to feed the young ones with.

They do not deserve you, if they desert you in times of distress.

This is the supreme anguish of the soul; it realizes itself as itself, as thing separate from that which is not itself, from God. In this spasm there are two ways: if fear and pride are left in the soul, it shuts itself up, like a warlock in a tower, gnashing its teeth with agony. "I am I," it cried, "I will not lose myself," and in that state damned, it is slowly torn by the claws of circumstance disintegrated bitterly, for all its struggles, throughout ages and ages, its rags to be cast piecemeal upon the dungheap without the city. But the soul that has understood the blessedness of that resignation which grasps the universe and devours it, which is without hope or fear, without faith or doubt, without hate or love, dissolves itself ineffable into the abounding bliss of God. It cries with Shelley, as the "chains of lead about its flight of fire" drop molten from its limbs: "I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire," and in that last outbreaking is made one with the primal and final breath, the Holy Spirit of God. Such must be the climax of any retirement to the Desert on the part of any aspirant of the Mysteries who has the spark of that fire in him.

This was the desert, everything all at once, whether it was needed or not. What survived had learned to save, live carefully, and keep a low profile, even appear to be dead for long periods. Perseverance and patience.

Vast skies in the Australian desert waves that don't move we slide surf glide like condors

True understanding lies beyond the desert

Water is a desert's gold.

Water, water, water... There is no shortage of water in the desert but exactly the right amount...unless you try to establish a city where no city should be.

What is true pleasure? It depends primarily on the given situation. For example, drinking fresh water is true pleasure for someone in the desert.

What did you say, Gram? About there being no church out here?" "I said that the sky was the roof of my cathedral and the desert was its floor and any time I paid attention, I could feel a higher power all around me.

Where is my oasis? Too far from here for me to crawl with these dead legs, refusing to co-operate Hands and fingers clawing uselessly through the grains of sand...

When I came to this city, I would have agreed with anyone who said there was little mystery left in the world. But in you, madam, first in your image, then in your living self, I saw the allure of something far away and as secret as the stars. As I reached towards this unknown, I began to feel like a man who has ridden through a vast desert, never knowing anything but the sand around him and the dry road under him, then comes upon the mirage of a garden and a city, and finds that the mirage is real, and that it is bigger than the desert; that the desert was, after all his walking, only a small part of the mirage” “Then you felt love, which is the state of feeling desire and the fulfillment of desire at the same time,” she said.

Why are the desert blooms that spring to life after a monsoon so magnificent? The answer is – their impermanence. The lush growth and blooming flowers do not last very long here in the desert, and this new growth only happens once a year. If this growth was never-ending, we would soon take it for granted. Likewise, our human lives. What makes them so special and unique? Our fleeting impermanence.

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.