Negev Desert Quotes

Your wife has deserted you, but you'll find a new one; whereas, soon my wits will desert me, and for this there is no remedy. ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Adam Larey gazed with hard and wondering eyes down the silent current of the red river upon which he meant to drift away into the desert ~ Zane Grey

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

Why didn't I know about Sedona before? Why did no one tell me? It's breathtaking. It's ... indescribable.
Well, all right, not literally indescribable. You can describe it. You can say, There are these huge red sandstone rocks everywhere, jutting up from the desert, making you feel all tiny and insignificant. You can say, There's a kind of rawness to the landscape which gives you goosebumps. You can say, There's a solitary bird of prey hanging above us, high in the sky, which seems to put all of humankind into perspective.
You can say all that. But it's not the same as being there. ~ Sophie Kinsella

The next time that boy pursues you, he better do it like a dying man looking for water in a desert. When it's the right guy, you'll know, because he'll cherish you. ~ Karen Kingsbury

The song 'What Goes Up' was inspired as I was playing the piano and reminiscing about the Spaceship One launches I witnessed in the Mojave desert. It is an awesome thing to comprehend the magnitude of what a human being dreams and imagines can be realized. ~ Vanna Bonta

My heart was a desert You planted a seed And this is the flower This hour of sweet fulfillment ~ Leo Robin

The only reason of living only you. Within my desert you are my oasis, the sweetest chocolate ~ Oasis

A man in a desert can hold absence in his cupped hands knowing it is something that feeds him more than water. There is a plant he knows of near El Taj, whose heart, if one cuts it out, is replaced with a fluid containing herbal goodness. Every morning one can drink the liquid the amount of a missing heart. ~ Michael Ondaatje

In that long sequence, when Lawrence enters in the desert to rescue a lost man, Lean listened the music I wrote and wanted to extend the scene to let my work stay completely. ~ Maurice Jarre

A lost sheep is, for all practical purposes a dead sheep. It is the admission that we are dead in our sins
that we have no power of ourselves either to save ourselves or to convince anyone else that we are worth saving. It is the recognition that our whole life is out of our hands and that if we ever live again, our life will be entirely the gift of some gracious shepherd. God finds us the desert of death (not in the garden of improvement) and in the power of Jesus' resurrection, he puts us on his shoulders rejoicing and brings us home. ~ Robert Farrar Capon

Believe me, I will never desert life until this last hope is torn from my bosom, that in some way my labours may form a link of gold with which we ought all to strive to drag Happiness from where she sits enthroned above the clouds, now far beyond our reach, to inhabit the earth with us. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Sometimes I get tired of trying to convince him that I love him and shall love him for ever. He pounces on my words like a barrister and twists them. I know he is afraid of that desert which would be around him if our love were to end, but he can't realize that I feel exactly the same. What he says aloud, I say to myself silently and write it here. ~ Graham Greene

I'm the granule of sand in vast desert
propelled by the dry gale
through the path of my nemesis... ~ Pratyush Kumar

What makes the desert beautiful,' said the little prince, 'is that somewhere it hides a well ... ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

All had this in common: that if they returned from the Empty Quarter - even though their journey might have taken them only a day's ride into that place - they came back changed men. Nobody could set his eyes on such a void and return to hearth and home without having lost a part of himself to the wilderness forever. Many, having endured the void once, went back, and back again, as if daring the desert to claim them; not content until it did. And those unhappy few who died at home, died with their eyes not on the loving faces at their bedside, nor on the cherry tree in blossom outside the window, but on that waste that called them as only the Abyss can call, promising the soul the balm of nothingness. ~ Clive Barker

She had always loved the stars. But in the desert of winter it was impossible to forget that they were cold, and distant, and did not care. ~ Seth Dickinson

What do we mean by setting a man free? You cannot free a man who dwells in a desert and is an unfeeling brute. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

Oman overall has great animal and plant biodiversity because it has mountains, desert, coastal areas and rich coral reefs. ~ Saadi

I am sympathetic to developing countries' concerns: because of our emissions it's their crops that will disappear; because of our inaction, it's their fields that turn to desert. ~ John F. Kerry

As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
"Love has no ending.

"I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,

"I'll love till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.

"The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world."

But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
"O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.

"In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.

"In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
Tomorrow or today.

"Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver's brilliant bow.

"O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you've missed.

"The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the be ~ W.H. Auden

What a splendid king you'd make of a desert island - you and you alone. ~ Sophocles

Must not a poet hunt the unicorn through bush and bramble, through snow and fire, over desert and mountain, through thickets and over long barren roads even though he suspects sometimes that the unicorn does not exist- or exists only in his imagination? ~ May Sarton

If the desert is holy, it is because it is a forgotten place that allows us to remember the sacred. Perhaps that is why every pilgrimage to the desert is a pilgrimage to the self. There is no place to hide and so we are found. ~ Terry Tempest Williams

One bee does not make a swarm.
One wasp does not make a nest.
One wolf does not make a pack.
One bull does not make a herd.
One dog does not make a litter.
One sheep does not make a flock.
One lion does not make a pride.

One branch does not make a tree.
One pebble does not make a hill.
One rock does not make a mountain.
One dune does not make a desert.
One spark does not make a flame.
One finger does not make a hand.
One color does not make a rainbow.

One leaf does not make a plant.
One flower does not make a garden.
One seed does not make a forest.
One drop does not make an ocean.
One cloud does not make a sky.
One star does not make a galaxy.
One world does not make a universe. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

There is a certain fine simplicity in a landscape from which the element of water, with all the varied life it brings in it murmuring train, is entirely absent. ~ Gertrude Bell

I'm most suspicious of scripts that have a lot of stage direction at the top of the page ... sunrise over the desert and masses of ... a whole essay before you get to the dialogue. ~ Anthony Hopkins

Well, let's just suppose for the sake of argument that I decided to take Holly travelling to some ancient Indian burial ground in the middle of the desert. I've considered it, from time to time… anyway, he would be using the Black Arts to invoke fallen spirits, spirits that would generally be unwilling, uncooperative… so, there would be an explicit contest of wills. Holly would have to heap conjuration upon conjuration, precisely because spirits and demons are often reluctant to be summoned, and if they were summoned, they would do everything in their power to escape Holly's control, threaten him and deceive him. To gain the upper hand in the game, Holly would have to wield a horrible amount of power… which he does indeed have, and it would be quite spectacular to watch, no doubt. Thousands of ghouls and skeletons rising up from the ground, rushing forth against the wind on deceased white horses towards the crashing waves of the sea, and considering that Holly has more in common with demons himself than he will ever care to admit, he probably wouldn't be able to stop once he started. We would have radical weather patterns and rising sea levels on our hands for days, perhaps even weeks… if he ever tried it, it would probably kill him, but hell's bells, it would be a really captivating show to see! ~ Rebecca McNutt

Compared to forest or aquatic ecosystems, grassland is unstable. It requires rather precise geological and climatic conditions, and if these conditions are not maintained
if too much rain falls, or too little
it quickly turns into forest or desert, both of which are dominated by woody plants. This instability is reflected in the spectacular but brief careers of various grassland faunas. Humanity, with its dazzling symbioses, preadaptations, and neoteny, is the most spectacular of these
and may well be the briefest. ~ David Rains Wallace

He keeps going, going, going on; his people groan and fall one after the other, but he keeps on going, going and in the end, perishes himself, but still remains the despot and tsar of the desert because the cross over his grave is visible to caravans thirty-forty miles away and reigns over the wasteland. ~ Anton Chekhov

I've always wanted to go to the desert. It's so vast. Uncaring of the rest of the world. It's just there, no matter what else happens. Golden sands and towering rocks. Coyotes that roam the land, free. ~ Ted Dekker

The names of the cerros and the sierras and the deserts exist only on maps. We name them that we do not lose our way. Yet it was because the way was lost to us already that we have made those names. The world cannot be lost. We are the ones. And it is because these names and these coordinates are our own naming that they cannot save us. They cannot find for us the way again. ~ Cormac McCarthy

A desert is a lot like an ocean, if you replace all of the water with air. It stretches out and out in unfathomable distance and, in the absence of sunlight, turns to pure black. Sounds become secrets, impossible to verify as true until the light returns. It is not empty merely because you cannot see all of it. And you know in your heart that it isn't - that it is the opposite of empty once it is dark, because things that do not like to be watched emerge when all of the light is gone. There is no way to know the shape of them, though, until your hand is on them. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

What of ourselves? In actuality the monk's journey is everyone's journey, though in our frenetic world of activity and distraction we often miss the fact that we are also desert wanderers. Who or what leads us? In this day and age, we are dangerously out of touch with the nonhuman world around us, leaving our hearts dulled and our vision blurred. Nothing impresses us anymore, and we travel farther into a disharmonious cavern of individualism, with ourselves as guides. We arrogantly "process" reality through preconceived notions that are sterile and cold. Our world is stripped of a profound and compelling mystery. ~ Monks Of New Skete

She was the most beautiful woman I'd ever known. It was the beauty of a desert at dawn: a loveliness that filled my eyes, and crushed me into silent, unbreathing awe. ~ Gregory David Roberts

Is a pale desert of gigantic water-lilies. They sigh one unto the other in that solitude. And stretch towards the heaven their long and ghastly necks. And nod to and fro their everlasting heads. And there is an indistinct murmur which cometh out from among them like the rushing of subterrene water. And they sigh unto the other ... And the tall primeval trees rock eternally hither and thither with a crashing and mighty sound. And from their high summits, one by one, drop everlasting dews. And at the roots strange poisonous flowers lie writhing in perturbed slumber. And overhead, with a rustling loud noise, the gray clouds rush westwardly forever, until they roll, a cataract, over the fiery wall of the horizon ... ~ Edgar Allan Poe

The pyramid once passed there was still a short way to go before we confronted the Sphinx, in the middle of what our contemporaries have left him of his desert. ~ Pierre Loti

They had come all at once, scientists being pack animals. Their leader was a nice man named Carlos, who had started dating Cecil, the presenter of the local radio station, after a near-death experience a few years before involving a brutal attack from a tiny civilization living under lane 5 of the Desert Flower Bowling Alley and Arcade Fun Complex. It was an ordinary enough way to begin a relationship, as these things go. ~ Joseph Fink

I am totally lost in the folds of Love,
totally free of worry and care.

I have passed beyond the four qualities.
My heart has torn away the veil of pretense.

There was a time I circled with the nine spheres, rolling with the stars across the sky.
There was a time I stayed by his side -
I lived in his world
and he gave me everything.

With the best of intentions
I became a prisoner in this form.
How else did I get here?
What crime did I commit?
But I'd rather be in a prison with my Friend
than in a rosegarden all alone.

I came to this world
To have a sight of Joseph's purity.
Like a baby born of its mother's womb,
I was brought here with blood and tears.

People think they are born only once
But they have been here so many times.

In the cloak of this ragged body
I have walked countless paths.
How many times I have worn out this cloak!

With ascetics in the desert
I watched night turn into day.
With pagans in the temple
I slept at the foot of idols.

I've been a charlatan and a king;
I've been a healer, and fraught with disease.

I've been on my death-bed so many times. . . . Floating up like the clouds
Pouring down like the rain.

As a darvish I sought the dust of annihilation
but it never touched my robe.
So I gathered armfuls of roses
in this faded ga ~ Rumi

The Santa Anas blew in hot from the desert, shriveling the last of the spring grass into whiskers of pale straw. Only the oleanders thrived, their delicate poisonous blooms, their dagger green leaves. We could not sleep in the hot dry nights, my mother and I. ~ Janet Fitch

Take deep breaths often.
You are going
to be okay.
The desert valley
has a river
for wellness
in the wait:
water living,
moving,
keeping the hearts that hunt
for better days. ~ Morgan Harper Nichols

I think that in the darkness beneath the stars the desert evokes even more loneliness than the sea. ~ Howard Andrew Jones

The deity who stalked the deserts of the Middle East millennia ago-and who seems to have abandoned them to bloodshed in his name ever since-is no one to consult on questions of ethics. ~ Sam Harris

Lie down beside these waters
That bubble from the spring;
Hear in the desert silence
The desert sparrow sing;

Draw from the shapeless moment
Such pattern as you can;
And cleave henceforth to Beauty;
Expect no more from man.

Man, with his ready answer,
His sad and hearty word,
For every cause in limbo,
For every debt deferred,

For every pledge forgotten,
His eloquent and grim
Deep empty gaze upon you, -
Expect no more from him. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

In the desert there is no sign that says, Thou shalt not eat stones. - Sufi proverb ~ Margaret Atwood

A man abandoned by himself on a desert island would adorn neither his hut nor his person; nor would he seek for flowers, still less would he plant them, in order to adorn himself therewith. It is only in society that it occurs to him to be not merely a man, but a refined man after his kind (the beginning of civilization). For such do we judge him to be who is both inclined and apt to communicate his pleasure to others, and who is not contented with an object if he cannot feel satisfaction in it in common with others. Again, every one expects and requires from every one else this reference to universal communication of pleasure, as it were from an original compact dictated by humanity itself. ~ Immanuel Kant