Isabella L. Bird Quotes & Sayings

Everything suggests a beyond. — Isabella L. Bird

Yet, after all, they were not bad souls; and though he failed so grotesquely, he did his incompetent best. — Isabella L. Bird

There is also a dog, but he does not understand English, — Isabella L. Bird

I still vote civilization a nuisance, society a humbug and all conventionality a crime. — Isabella L. Bird

Truly a good horse, good ground to gallop on, and sunshine, make up the sum of enjoyable travelling. — Isabella L. Bird

I have found a dream of beauty at which one might look all one's life and sigh. — Isabella L. Bird

I sat down and knitted for some time - my usual resource under discouraging circumstances. — Isabella L. Bird

In traveling, there is nothing like dissecting people's statements, which are usually colored by their estimate of the powers or likings of the person spoken to, making all reasonable inquiries, and then pertinaciously but quietly carrying out one's own plans. — Isabella L. Bird

The scarcely audible whisper of soft airs through the trees morning and evening, rain drops falling gently, and the murmur of drowsy surges far below, alone break the stillness. — Isabella L. Bird

People live more happily than any that I have seen elsewhere. It is very cheerful to live among people whose faces are not soured by the east wind, or wrinkled by the worrying effort to "keep up appearances," which deceive nobody; — Isabella L. Bird

Most assuredly that spirit of envious rivalry and depreciating criticism in which many English travellers have written, is greatly to be deprecated, no less than the tone of servile adulation which some writers have adopted; but our American neighbours must recollect that they provoked both the virulent spirit and the hostile caricature by the way in which some of their most popular writers of travels have led an ungenerous onslaught against our institutions and people, and the bitter tone in which their newspaper press, headed by the Tribune, indulges towards — Isabella L. Bird

Oh! To be beyond the pale once more, out of civilization into savagery? I abhor civilization! — Isabella L. Bird

It is a strange life up here on the mountain side, but I like it, and never yearn after civilization. — Isabella L. Bird

I dreamt of bears so vividly that I woke with a furry death hug at my throat, but feeling quite refreshed. — Isabella L. Bird