Deserts Quotes & Sayings

He dreamed of deserts and great empty cities and imagined he could feel the minutes and hours of his life running through him, as though he were nothing but an hourglass of flesh and bone. — Laini Taylor

Whatever horrible things we shall meet on our way, hot deserts or furious oceans, at least we will know that we are on the way and we exist! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

That mighty Being, who heaped up these craggy rocks, and reared these stupendous mountains, and poured out these streams in all directions, and scattered immortal beings throughout these deserts - He is present, by the influence of his Holy Spirit, and accompanies the sound of the gospel with converting, sanctifying power. — Adoniram Judson

Work is something you can count on, a trusted, lifelong friend who never deserts you. — Margaret Bourke-White

As with the mountains, there'd been no deserts where I grew up, and though I'd gone on day hikes in a couple of them, I didn't really understand what deserts were. I'd taken them to be dry, hot, and sandy places full of snakes, scorpions, and cactuses. They were not that. They were that and also a bunch of other things. They were layered and complex and inexplicable and analogous to nothing. My new existence was beyond analogy, I realized on that second day on the trail. I was in entirely new terrain. — Cheryl Strayed

The mythology of your culture hums in your ears so constantly that no one pays the slightest bit of attention to it. Of course man is conquering space and the atom and the deserts and the oceans and the elements. According to your mythology, this is what he was BORN to do. — Daniel Quinn

Dare we let children grow up with no vital contact with the Saviour, never intentionally and consciously put into His arms? Not to bring them to Him, not to teach them to walk toward Him, as soon as they can walk toward anyone, is wronging a child beyond words. The terrible indictment uttered by the Lord, "Them that were entering in ye hindered," and the millstone warning for offending little ones, are close akin to the deserts of those who ruin a man's whole day of life by wronging his morning hours. Not to help a child to know the saving power of Christ is to hold back a man from salvation. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

It's a city where everbody mutinies but no one deserts. — Harry Hershfield

Sometimes a person can find theirself lost in the barren deserts of life. The only way out of these deserts is to stay ... positive. They can wander through them for a day or forty Years ... It's completely their choice. — Timothy Pina

From the world wars of Europe to the jungles of the Far East, from the deserts of the Middle East to the African continent, and even here in our own hemisphere, our veterans have made the world a better place and America the great country we are today. — John Hoeven

Some mothers in today's world feel "cumbered" by home duties and are thus attracted by other more "romantic" challenges. Such women could make the same error of perspective that Martha made. The woman, for instance, who deserts the cradle in order to help defend civilization against the barbarians may well later meet, among the barbarians, her own neglected child. — Neal A. Maxwell

We may seem competent, but by the end of next century there will be new deserts, new ruins. — Edward Bond

The only thing that really scales up apart from nuclear is solar power from other people's deserts. — David J. C. MacKay

No more light answers. Let our officers
Have note what we purpose. I shall break
The cause of our expedience to the Queen
And get her leave to part. For not alone
The death of Fulvia, with more urgent touches,
Do strongly speak to us, but the letters too
Of many our contriving friends in Rome
Petition us at home. Sextus Pompeius
Hath given the dare to Caesar and commands
The empire of the sea. Our slippery people,
Whose love is never linked to the deserver
Till his deserts are past, begin to throw
Pompey the Great and all his dignities
Upon his son, who - high in name and power,
Higher than both in blood and life - stands up
For the main soldier; whose quality, going on,
The sides o' th' world may danger. Much is breeding
Which, like the courser's hair, hath yet but life
And not a serpent's poison. — William Shakespeare

In recent weeks it has come to my attention that many caravans have met with disaster; they have not gotten through."
I grunted wisely. "Probably ran out of water. That's the thing about deserts. Dry."
"Indeed. A fascinating analysis. But survivors reaching Hebron report differently: monsters fell upon them in the wastes."
"What, fell upon them in a squashed-them kind of way?"
"More the leaped-out-and-slew-them kind. ( ... ) — Jonathan Stroud

And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity. — Andrew Marvell

In every landscape, the point of astonishment is the meeting of the sky and the earth, and that is seen from the first hillock aswell as from the top of the Alleghanies. The stars at night stoop down over the brownest, homeliest common, with all the spiritual magnificence which they shed on the Campagna, or on the marble deserts of Egypt. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Intolerance and superstition has always been the domain of the more stupid amongst the common folk and, I conjecture, will never be uprooted, for they are as eternal as stupidity itself. There, where mountains tower today, one day there will be seas; there where today seas surge, will one day be deserts. But stupidity will remain stupidity. Nicodemus de Boot, Meditations on life, Happiness and Prosperity — Andrzej Sapkowski

Texas liberals are the camels of good news. We can cross entire deserts between oases. — Molly Ivins

In a virtuous action, I properly am; in a virtuous act, I add to the world; I plant into deserts conquered from Chaos and Nothing, and see the darkness receding on the limits of the horizon. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Here was a stupendous possibility of achievement. If we could produce electric effects of the required quality, this whole planet and the conditions of existence on it could be transformed. The sun raises the water of the oceans and winds drive it to distant regions where it remains in a state of most delicate balance. If it were in our power to upset it when and wherever desired, this mighty life-sustaining stream could be at will controlled. We could irrigate arid deserts, create lakes and rivers and provide motive power in unlimited amounts. This would be the most efficient way of harnessing the sun to the uses of man. The consummation depended on our ability to develop electric forces of the order of those in nature. — Nikola Tesla

Anglesey has two deserts, one made by Nature, the other made by Man: Newborough and Parys Mountain. — Edward Greenly

Deserts are like nearly bald men having a haircut. The difference is absolutely crucial from within, but to the rest of us it's still a dusty scrubland with little in the way of plant life. — Nick Harkaway

We were all nomads once, and crossed the deserts and the seas on tracks that could not be detected, but were clear to those who knew the way. Since settling down and rooting like trees, but without the ability to make use of the wind to scatter our seed, we have found only infection and discontent. — Jeanette Winterson

I love all of the ecosystems - mountains, deserts, rainforests. They're beautiful, and nature has so many different flavors to it. — Louie Schwartzberg

Mountains and deserts, with their sparse life at the limit of existence, make one restless and disconsolate; one becomes an explorer in an intellectual realm as well as in a physical one. — George Schaller

Deprived of pain, and also deprived of danger, able to do what it wants, [Nature] does not need us, nor understands our deserts, and it cannot be angry. — Lucretius

The basic conviction of a Christian is that God intends good for us and that he will get his way in us. He does not treat us according to our deserts, but according to his plan. He is not a police officer on patrol, watching over the universe, ready to club us if we get out of hand or put us in jail if we get obstreperous. He is a potter working with the clay of our lives, forming and reforming until, finally, he has shaped a redeemed life, a vessel fit for a kingdom. A LONG OBEDIENCE — Eugene H. Peterson

It is all very well, when the pen flows, but then there are the dark days when imagination deserts one, and it is an effort to put anything down on paper. That little you have achieved stares at you at the end of the day, and you know the next morning you will have to scrape it down and start again. — Elizabeth Aston

Those eyes, seemingly without mystery, are like certain closed cities, such as Lyons and Zurich, and they hypnotize me as do empty theaters, deserted prisons, machinery at rest, deserts, for deserts are closed and do not communicate with the infinite. — Jean Genet

By the yard it's hard, but inch by inch, anything's a cinch
A journey of a thousand leagues begins with a single step

In addition, to keep your energy levels at their highest, be careful
about what you eat. Start the day with a high protein, low fat and
low carbohydrate breakfast. Eat saladswith fish or chicken at lunch.
Avoid sugar, salt, white flour products or deserts. Avoid soft drinks
and candy bars or pastries. Feed yourself as you would feed a world
class athlete before a competition, because in many respects, that's
what you are before starting work each day — Brian Tracy

There is a saying in the Middle East that goes something like this: "My grandfather rode a camel, my father drove a car, I travel on a jet, and my grandchild will ride a camel." Not necessarily. The deserts of the Middle East and North Africa have more solar potential per square inch than any other region in the world - more energy potential, in fact, than all of the oil ever extracted from deep beneath its sand dunes. The — Jeremy Rifkin

Should you see the light of your future, within the shadows of your present,
The resilience of life dancing over vast deserts of death,
Witness if you so shall, the majesty of Creation.
The connectedness of All was and always will be.
Entanglement? No. We call it Love." ~ Sargon of Akkad 2345 B.C.
Excerpt from Andulairah's upcoming book "The Erunisis Medallion — Andulairah

Do you know what you're going to do now?" she asked. "See the world," said Bod. "Get into trouble. Get out of trouble again. Visit jungles and volcanoes and deserts and islands. And people. I want to meet an awful lot of people. — Neil Gaiman

Where am I?" Magnus croaked.
"Nazca."
So Magnus was still in Peru. That indicated that he had been rather more sensible than he'd feared.
"Oh, so we went on a little trip."
"You broke into a man's house," Catarina said. "You stole a carpet and enchanted it to fly. Then you sped off into the night air. We pursued you on foot."
"Ah," said Magnus.
"You were shouting some things."
"What things?"
"I prefer not to repeat them," Catarina said. She was a weary shade of blue. "I also prefer not to remember the time we spent in the desert. It is a mammoth desert, Magnus. Ordinary deserts are quite large. Mammoth deserts are so called because they are larger than ordinary deserts."
"Thank you for that interesting and enlightening information, — Cassandra Clare

Life is a warfare; and he who easily desponds deserts a double duty
he betrays the noblest property of man, which is dauntless resolution; and he rejects the providence of that All-Gracious Being who guides and rules the universe. — Jane Porter

THE BEAR AND THE TRAVELLERS Two Travellers were on the road together, when a Bear suddenly appeared on the scene. Before he observed them, one made for a tree at the side of the road, and climbed up into the branches and hid there. The other was not so nimble as his companion; and, as he could not escape, he threw himself on the ground and pretended to be dead. The Bear came up and sniffed all round him, but he kept perfectly still and held his breath: for they say that a bear will not touch a dead body. The Bear took him for a corpse, and went away. When the coast was clear, the Traveller in the tree came down, and asked the other what it was the Bear had whispered to him when he put his mouth to his ear. The other replied, He told me never again to travel with a friend who deserts you at the first sign of danger. — Aesop

I want my prayers, and the prayers of my friends, to ricochet off the rock faces of mountains, reverberate down the corridors of shopping malls, sound ocean deeps, water arid deserts, find a foothold in fetid swamps, encounter poets as they search for the accurate word, mingle their fragrance with wildflowers in Alpine Meadows, sing with the looms of Canadian lakes. — Eugene H. Peterson

Here and there, set into the somber red, were rivers of bright yellow - incandescent Amazons, meandering for thousands of miles before they lost themselves in the deserts of this dying sun. Dying? No - that was a wholly false impression, born of human experience and the emotions aroused by the hues of sunset, or the glow of fading embers. This was a star that had left behind the fiery extravagances of its youth, had raced through the violets and blues and greens of the spectrum in a few fleeting billions of years, and now had settled down to a peaceful maturity of unimaginable length. All that had gone before was not a thousandth of what was yet to come; the story of this star had barely begun. — Arthur C. Clarke

Beauty is a creature which lives everywhere: Under the ocean, above the clouds, even in the remote deserts! Wherever the ugliness may be on this universe, beauty will also be there giving hope to our lives! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

There would be no call for ecological campaigning had nature not been exploited and abused. We experience the ground now bringing forth thistles as soil erosion devastates formerly arable land and deserts overtake fertile farms. Rivers and the atmosphere are polluted thoughtlessly and we are fearful of the consequences of a depleted ozone layer and the devastation of the greenhouse effect. We are not quite at home in our world, and somewhere in each of us there is a nostalgia for a paradise that has been lost. — Desmond Tutu

Soon enough his head would be swimming with tales of derring-do and high adventure, tales of beautiful maidens kissed, of evildoers shot with pistols or fought with swords, of bags of gold, of diamonds as big as the tip of your thumb, of lost cities and of vast mountains, of steam-trains and clipper ships, of pampas, oceans, deserts, tundra. — Neil Gaiman

The desert preserves. What other lands destroy, the desert keeps. It accepts dead things, holds them close, and draws away the rot that would destroy; given time, it mummifies or crystalizes. — Louis L'Amour

We will continue talking about the beauty of the deserts as long as the forests exist on Earth! But when the last forest is gone, no beauty of deserts will remain too! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

The devil-ache of loneliness seldom deserts the bones of the angry. — Lucy Freeman

People of deserts cannot know the importance of forests; to know this, one must first have sweet memories spent in the forests! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

We're like meridians, all beginning and ending in the same place. We spread out from the beginning and go our separate ways, over seas and mountains and islands and deserts, each telling our own story, as different as they could possibly be. But in the end we all converge and our ends are as much the same as our beginnings. — Neal Stephenson

He said that war had destroyed the country and that men believe the cure for war is war as the curandero prescribes the serpent's flesh for its bite. He spoke of his campaigns in the deserts of Mexico and he told them of horses killed under him and he said that the souls of horses mirror the souls of men more closely than men suppose and that horses also love war. Men say they only learn this but he said that no creature can learn that which his heart has no shape to hold. His own father said that no man who has not gone to war horseback can ever truly understand the horse and he said that he supposed he wished that this were not so but that it was so. — Cormac McCarthy

In America the vast spaces accentuate the vast spaces between people, deserts which stretch between human beings. It is a void which has to be spanned by the automobile. It takes an hour to reach a movie, two hours to reach a friend. So the coyotes howl and wail at the awful emptiness of mountains, deserts, hills. — Anais Nin

What is that big book?" said the little prince. "What are you doing?"
"I am a geographer," said the old gentleman.
"What is a geographer?" asked the little prince.
"A geographer is a scholar who knows the location of all the seas, rivers, towns, mountains, and deserts."
"That is very interesting," said the little prince. "Here at last is a man who has a real profession! — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Look at the kind of people who most object to the childishness and cheapness of celebrity culture. Does one really want to side with such apoplectic and bombastic bores? I should know, I often catch myself being one, and it isn't pretty. I will defend the absolute value of Mozart over Miley Cyrus, of course I will, but we should be wary of false dichotomies. You do not have to choose between one or the other. You can have both. The human cultural jungle should be as varied and plural as the Amazonian rainforest. We are all richer for biodiversity. We may decide that a puma is worth more to us than a caterpillar, but surely we can agree that the habitat is all the better for being able to sustain each. Monocultures are uninhabitably dull and end as deserts. — Stephen Fry

We will go out into the world and plant gardens and orchards to the horizons, we will build roads through the mountains and across the deserts, and terrace the mountains and irrigate the deserts until there will be garden everywhere, and plenty for all, and there will be no more empires or kingdoms, no more caliphs, sultans, emirs, khans, or zamindars, no more kings or queens or princes, no more quadis or mullahs or ulema, no more slavery and no more usury, no more property and no more taxes, no more rich and no more poor, no killing or maiming or torture or execution, no more jailers and no more prisoners, no more generals, soldiers, armies or navies, no more patriarchy, no more caste, no more hunger, no more suffering than what life brings us for being born and having to die, and then we will see for the first time what kind of creatures we really are. — Kim Stanley Robinson

Wicca's temples are flowered-splashed meadows, forest, beaches, and deserts. — Scott Cunningham

once we wrapped the globe in endless circles of wires crossing the deserts and beneath the oceans, decentralization was not only possible, but inevitable. — Kevin Kelly

We are far too used to the assumption that poetry and poets will be there when we want them, no matter how long they have been ignored, taken for granted, misused. After all, isn't poetry a form of prophecy, and aren't prophets known for their talent for flourishing in inhospitable deserts and other bleak surroundings? Maybe. But maybe not indefinitely. — Jan Clausen

Al Qaeda's vision of global jihad doesn't resonate in the rugged highlands and windswept deserts of southern Afghanistan. Instead, the major concern throughout much of the country is intensely local: personal safety. — Anand Gopal

Once in a lifetime, perhaps, one escapes the actual confines of the flesh. Once in a lifetime, if one is lucky, one so merges with sunlight and air and running water that whole eons, the eons that mountains and deserts know, might pass in a single afternoon without discomfort. — Loren Eiseley

Once in a lifetime, if one is lucky, one so merges with sunlight and air and running water that whole eons, the eons that mountains and deserts know, might pass in a single afternoon without discomfort.
...
You have probably never experienced in yourself the meandering roots of a whole watershed or felt your outstretched fingers touching, by some clairvoyant extension, the brooks of snow-line glaciers at the same time you were flowing toward the Gulf over the eroded debris of worn-down mountains. — Loren Eiseley

Ours is thus a realism of lush and leafy spaces rather than deserts, with science regularly revealing new thickets of canopy. Anyone is welcome to go on sharing Quine's aesthetic appreciation of deserts, but we think the facts now suggest that we must reconcile ourselves to life in the rainforest. — Anonymous

If we want a free and peaceful world, if we want to make the deserts bloom and man grow to greater dignity as a human being - we can do it. — Eleanor Roosevelt

As a camel beareth labor, and heat, and hunger, and thirst, through deserts of sand, and fainteth not; so the fortitude of a man shall sustain him through all perils. — Akhenaton

For, to make deserts, God, who rules mankind, Begins with kings, and ends the work by wind. — Victor Hugo

I envy cornerstone in empty deserts, because they are themselves, and for the same reason I envy rocks in the hills, where man has never set foot, and trees in the valleys that man has ever seen. — Orhan Pamuk

Sometimes I forget this insoluble mess and dream: he'll save me, we'll travel; we'll hunt in the deserts, we'll sleep on the pavements of strange cities, carelessly, without his guilt, without my pain. Or else I'm going to wake up and all the human laws and customs of this world will have changed - thanks to some magical power - or this world, without changing, will let me feel desire and be happy and carefree.
What did I want from him who hurt me more than I thought it was possible for two people to hurt each other? I wanted the adventures found in kids' books. He couldn't give me these because he wasn't able to. Whatever did he want from me? I never understood. He told me he was just average: average regrets, average hopes. What do I care about all that average shit that has nothing to do with adventure? — Kathy Acker

But a plant on the edge of a deserts is said to struggle for life against the drought, though more properly it should be said to be dependent upon the moisture. — Charles Darwin

The genus Drosophila is one of the great success stories. There's hundreds of species within the genus. They're on every continent except Antarctica, they're in tropical rain forests, they're in deserts, they've evolved many exotic mating behaviors, and they're capable of incredibly long-distance flights. — Michael Dickinson

And those who pray for dew on the deserts edge; shall bring forth the deluge. — Frank Herbert

The secret of seeing is, then the pearl of great price. If I thought he could teach me to find it and keep it forever I would stagger barefoot across a hundred deserts after any lunatic at all. But although the pearl may be found, it may not be sought. The literature of illumination reveals this above all: although it comes to those who wait for it, it is always, even to the most practiced and adept, a gift and a total surprise. I return from one walk knowing where the killdeer nests in the field by the creek and the hour the laurel blooms. I return form the same walk a day later scarcely knowing my own name. Litanies hum in my ears; my tongue flaps in my mouth. Ailinon, alleluia! — Annie Dillard

I have hitched and hiked over every state and half the nations, through blizzards and under rainbows, in deserts and cities, backward and side-ways, upstairs, downstairs and in my lady's chamber. — Tom Robbins

Calumny crosses oceans, scales mountains and traverses deserts, with greater ease than the Scythian Abaris, and like him, rides upon a poisoned arrow. — Charles Caleb Colton

There are stories told to him only at this time of year. Fantastic, magical stories, the old Hollier in the woods finding only three red berries, which peel back in the night to reveal gifts of frankincense, gold and myrrh, Christmas in hot deserts, dust-blown countries, the necklace of tears, and the story of the robin. — Sarah Hall

To this day, I enjoy nature, the luxury of undisturbed wilderness, forests, mountains, lakes, rivers and deserts and their wildlife. But I also know that the greatest danger to their perpetuity is the pressure of human population. — Norman Borlaug

I am an African. I owe my being to the hills and the valleys, the mountains and the glades, the rivers, the deserts, the trees, the flowers, the seas and the ever-changing seasons that define the face of our native land. — Thabo Mbeki

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

Deserts need trees; men need wisdom! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

There are deserts in every life, and the desert must be depicted if we are to give a fair and complete idea of the country. — Andre Maurois

Do not speak of God much. After a very little conversation on the highest nature, thought deserts us and we run into formalism. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

In Israel, a land lacking in natural resources, we learned to appreciate our greatest national advantage: our minds. Through creativity and innovation, we transformed barren deserts into flourishing fields and pioneered new frontiers in science and technology. — Shimon Peres

Virtue is our true wealth and the true reward of its possessor; it cannot be lost, it never deserts us until life leaves us. — Leonardo Da Vinci

... Have you ever reflected that posterity may not be the faultless dispenser of justice that we dream of? One consoles oneself for being insulted and denied, by reyling on the equity of the centuries to come; just as the faithful endure all the abominations of this earth in the firm belief of another life, in which each will be rewarded according to his deserts. But suppose Paradise exists no more for the artist than it does for the Catholic, suppose that future generations prolong the misunderstanding and prefer amiable little trifles to vigorous works! Ah! What a sell it would be, eh? To have led a convict's life - to have screwed oneself down to one's work - all for a mere delusion!...

"Bah! What does it matter? Well, there's nothing hereafter. We are even madder than the fools who kill themselves for a woman. When the earth splits to pieces in space like a dry walnut, our works won't add one atom to its dust. — Emile Zola

The fringes of their deserts were strewn with broken faiths. — T.E. Lawrence

When I was girl by Nilus stream
I watched the deserts stars arise;
My lover, he who dreamed the Sphinx,
Learned all his dreaming from eyes.
I bore in Greece a burning name,
And I have been in Italy
Madonna to a painter-lad,
And mistress to a Medici.
And have you heard (and I have heard)
Of puzzled men with decorous mien,
Who judged - the wench knew far too much -
And burnt her on the Salem green? — Adelaide Crapsey

Most people spend their whole lives waging war - against people they don't even know. And against themselves, whom they know least of all.
from BETWEEN TWO DESERTS — Germaine Shames

There is nothing absurd in the doctrine, that though man is justified by faith, he is himself not only not righteous, but the righteousness attributed to his works is beyond their own deserts. — John Calvin

A desert is a place without expectation. — Nadine Gordimer

He would measure the world against the rigid grid of his heart and put each man in charge of a domain no more and no less than his just deserts. — Ken Liu

To the desert go prophets and hermits; through deserts go pilgrims and exiles. Here the leaders of the great religions have sought the therapeutic and spiritual values of retreat, not to escape but to find reality. — Jon Krakauer

Cruelly unjust both in their act and their thought, accompanied by a feeling that they are helping the world to receive its deserts; men who are honest can blindly go on robbing others of their — Rabindranath Tagore

Secrecy of design, when combined with rapidity of execution, like me column that guided Israel in the deserts, becomes the guardian pillar of light and fire to our friends, a cloud of overwhelming and impenetrable darkness to our enemies. — Charles Caleb Colton

I'm sure that there are places in the deserts in Australia that could be similar to where we might want to go on Mars. — Buzz Aldrin

We take our bearings from the wrong landmark, wish that when young we had studied the stars - name the flowers for ourselves and the deserts after others. When the territory is charted, its eventual aspect may be quite other than what was hoped for. One can only say, it will be a whole - a region from which a few features, not necessarily those that seemed prominent at the start, will stand out in clear colours. Not to direct, but to solace us; not to fix our positions, but to show us how we came. — Shirley Hazzard

Deserts possess a particular magic, since they have exhausted their own futures, and are thus free of time. Anything erected there, a city, a pyramid, a motel, stands outside time. It's no coincidence that religious leaders emerge from the desert. Modern shopping malls have much the same function. A future Rimbaud, Van Gogh or Adolf Hitler will emerge from their timeless wastes. — J.G. Ballard

But the more shrewdly and earnestly we study the histories of men, the less ready shall we be to make use of the word 'artificial.' Nothing in the world has ever been artificial. Many customs, many dresses, many works of art are branded with artificiality because the exhibit vanity and self-consciousness: as if vanity were not a deep and elemental thing, like love and hate and the fear of death. Vanity may be found in darkling deserts, in the hermit and in the wild beasts that crawl around him. It may be good or evil, but assuredly it is not artificial: vanity is a voice out of the abyss. — G.K. Chesterton

There's a man in the world who is never turned down, whatever he chances to stray; he gets the glad hand in the populous town, or out where the farmers makes hay; he's greeted with pleasure on deserts of sand, and deep in the aisles of the woods; wherever he goes there's a welcoming hand-he's the man who delivers the goods. — Walt Whitman

Australia's arid western region, from the town of Alice Springs to the Indian Ocean coast, is a beautiful, haunting, but largely empty land. Dominated by the harsh, almost uninhabited Great Sandy and Gibson deserts, the region is known only to Australian Aborigines, a handful of white settlers, and the few travelers who motor across it. — Robyn Davidson

Is it anything to do with this?" she said. The thing she took out of her bag was battered and travel-worn as if it had been hurled into prehistoric rivers, baked under the sun that shines so redly on the deserts of Kakrafoon, half buried in the marbled sands that fringe the heady vapored oceans of Santraginus V, frozen on the glaciers of the moon of Jaglan Beta, sat on, kicked around spaceships, scuffed and generally abused, and since its makers had thought that these were exactly the sorts of things that might happen to it, they had thoughtfully encased it in a sturdy plastic cover and written on it, in large friendly letters, the words "Don't Panic. — Douglas Adams

The desert is an unpredictable place. One day you're sweating, the next you're freezing. One moment the air is damp and cloudy like when the tide is coming in, the next the entire world is orange and dusty. The desert must be a woman. — Dianna Skowera

Cultural wisdom says 'Don't quit your day job.' Yet I think these desires represent our psyche's stretch toward wholeness. And to be whole, as many religious tranditions teach, is to make manifest a unique face of God in the world. We don't want to be irresponsible, yet for every accountant who deserts his family and sails for Tahiti, ten American men have heart attacks at their desks, after hours. — Mary Rose O'Reilley

A man doesn't grow old because he has lived a certain number of years. A man grows old when he deserts his ideal. The years may wrinkle his skin, but deserting his ideal wrinkles his soul. — Brennan Manning

God is not an ascetic, otherwise there would be no flowers, there would be no green trees, only deserts. God is not an ascetic, otherwise there would be no song in life, no dance in life - only cemeteries and cemeteries. God is not an ascetic; God enjoys life. — Osho