Desert quotes
361 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
"I have always loved the desert. One sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing, hears nothing. Yet through the silence something throbs, and gleams."
"The desert wears... a veil of mystery. Motionless and silent it evokes in us an elusive hint of something unknown, unknowable, about to be revealed. Since the desert does not act it seems to be waiting -- but waiting for what?"
"The desert is a natural extension of the inner silence of the body."
"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."
"Use every man after his desert, and who should scape whipping?"
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside desert — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"If you look back on your life and where you started from it's like looking back down a mountain back to the desert floor. It's like now I can't believe I had whatever it takes or perceived whatever it took to get here."
"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."
"Once again there was the desert, and that only."
"The desert is a capricious lady, and sometimes she drives men crazy."
"Night comes to the desert all at once, as if someone turned off the light."
"Use every man according to his desert and who should 'scape whipping? Use them after your own honor and dignity, the less they deserve ... the more merit in your bounty."
"The great illusion of leadership is to think that man can be led out of the desert by someone who has never been there."
"Someone asked me, if I were stranded on a desert island what book would I bring... 'How to Build a Boat.'"
"When there's no sign of hope in the desert, so much hope still lives inside despair. Heart, don't kill that hope."
"Although people rarely died playing Quidditch, referees had been known to vanish and turn up months later in the Sahara Desert."
"There were no lies here. All fancies fled away. That's what happened in all deserts. It was just you, and what you believed."
"The people who were honored in the Bible were the false prophets. It was the ones we call the prophets who were jailed and driven into the desert."
"This creed of the desert seemed inexpressible in words, and indeed in thought."
"Men have looked upon the desert as barren land, the free holding of whoever chose; but in fact each hill and valley in it had a man who was its acknowledged owner and would quickly assert the right of his family or clan to it, against aggression."
"The desert is an ocean in which no oar is dipped."
"If you sing of beauty though alone in the heart of the desert you will have an audience."
"The desert, when the sun comes up...I couldn't tell where heaven stopped and the Earth began."
"The extreme clarity of the desert light is equaled by the extreme individuation of desert life forms. Love flowers best in openness and freedom."
"When a building is about to fall down, all the mice desert it."
"What e'er you are That in this desert inaccessible, Under the shade of melancholy boughs, Lose and neglect the creeping hours of time."
