Tag: quotation

In the desert, as on shipboard, one is sensible of the passage of time. In that parching heat a man feels that the day is a voyage towards the goal of evening, towards the promise of a cool breeze that will bathe the limbs and wash away the sweat. Under the heat of the day beasts and men plod towards the sweet well of night as confidently as towards death. Thus, idleness here is never vain; and each day seems as comforting as the roads that lead to the sea.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, in Wind, Sand and Stars, 1939, translated by Lewis Galantiére.

In the desert, as on shipboard, one is sensible of the passage of time. In that parching heat a man feels that the day is a voyage towards the goal of evening, towards the promise of a cool breeze that will bathe the limbs and wash away the sweat. Under the heat of the day beasts and men plod towards the sweet well of night as confidently as towards death. Thus, idleness here is never vain; and each day seems as comforting as the roads that lead to the sea.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, in Wind, Sand and Stars, 1939, translated by Lewis Galantiére.

I shall never be able to express clearly whence comes this pleasure men take from aridity, but always and everywhere I have seen men attach themselves more stubbornly to barren lands than to any other.  …  And we, my comrades and I, we too have loved the desert to the point of feeling that it was there we had lived the best years of our lives.  …  

I succumbed to the desert as soon as I saw it.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, in Wind, Sand and Stars, 1939, translated by Lewis Galantiére.

I shall never be able to express clearly whence comes this pleasure men take from aridity, but always and everywhere I have seen men attach themselves more stubbornly to barren lands than to any other.  …  And we, my comrades and I, we too have loved the desert to the point of feeling that it was there we had lived the best years of our lives.  …  

I succumbed to the desert as soon as I saw it.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, in Wind, Sand and Stars, 1939, translated by Lewis Galantiére.

A lot of questions about the woods can’t be answered by staying all the time in the woods, and it also works the other way – a lot of deep inner questions get no answer unless you go for a walk in the woods.

Norman Maclean in Young Men and Fire –  A True Story of the Mann Gulch Fire (1992). This remarkable book was published from Maclean’s unfinished manuscript two years after his death at age 87. He is best known as the author of A River Runs Through It and Other Stories. 

A lot of questions about the woods can’t be answered by staying all the time in the woods, and it also works the other way – a lot of deep inner questions get no answer unless you go for a walk in the woods.

Norman Maclean in Young Men and Fire –  A True Story of the Mann Gulch Fire (1992). This remarkable book was published from Maclean’s unfinished manuscript two years after his death at age 87. He is best known as the author of A River Runs Through It and Other Stories. 

If water had its way, if geology stopped, the seas would chew up the continents, and rain would wear down the mountains. Water would eventually scour the entire planet into a smooth, definitionless sphere. We’d be left with a single ocean, waist deep, all over the globe. Then, with nothing left to throw itself at, all the divisions and obstacles eroded – no unworn pebbles, no beaches to crash into, every water molecule touching another – water would disclose, finally, what was in its molecular heart. Would it stand calm and unruffled? Or would it turn on itself – would it throw itself up into storms?

Anthony Doerr, in About Grace, 2005. 

If water had its way, if geology stopped, the seas would chew up the continents, and rain would wear down the mountains. Water would eventually scour the entire planet into a smooth, definitionless sphere. We’d be left with a single ocean, waist deep, all over the globe. Then, with nothing left to throw itself at, all the divisions and obstacles eroded – no unworn pebbles, no beaches to crash into, every water molecule touching another – water would disclose, finally, what was in its molecular heart. Would it stand calm and unruffled? Or would it turn on itself – would it throw itself up into storms?

Anthony Doerr, in About Grace, 2005. 

“Echo spoke her love in her love’s own words. Narcissus spoke to himself and heard from his lips his own words return. To bend down and kiss those lips mars the lips – mars the surface with breath. Voice travels through air by moving the air it travels through. Echo’s ear a pond as still as a mirror that breath moves upon to speak. That lake – inside the ear – speaks back. Echo’s love in love’s words. Repetition intones wonder – the world spoken of in other’s words.  All spoken and we speak all back. There are no other words.

"I’ve seen a pond so still it reflects the sky back to itself. I’ll speak to you of it to you. The sky at the bottom of the hill.”

Text: Excerpt from This Nest, Swift Passerine by Dan Beachy-Quick, 2009. Photo: Water strider (Family Gerridae) at the Arboretum at Flagstaff, Flagstaff, Arizona. 

“Echo spoke her love in her love’s own words. Narcissus spoke to himself and heard from his lips his own words return. To bend down and kiss those lips mars the lips – mars the surface with breath. Voice travels through air by moving the air it travels through. Echo’s ear a pond as still as a mirror that breath moves upon to speak. That lake – inside the ear – speaks back. Echo’s love in love’s words. Repetition intones wonder – the world spoken of in other’s words.  All spoken and we speak all back. There are no other words.

"I’ve seen a pond so still it reflects the sky back to itself. I’ll speak to you of it to you. The sky at the bottom of the hill.”

Text: Excerpt from This Nest, Swift Passerine by Dan Beachy-Quick, 2009. Photo: Water strider (Family Gerridae) at the Arboretum at Flagstaff, Flagstaff, Arizona.