Desert Quotations

I always have this image of a woman running across a desert carrying children, trying to find water and food, not knowing when they'll get that. And her feet are slashed up from the dry, hard earth... Even when I'm uncomfortable, sometimes in pain, or just cold... I think, 'Thank God for what I've got.'

You can't totally rebel, otherwise you have to go live on your own, on a desert island. It's as simple as that.

Sadly, it's much easier to create a desert than a forest.

I'd had no particular interest in the Southwest at all as a young girl, and I was completely surprised that the desert stole my heart to the extent it did.

You should not see the desert simply as some faraway place of little rain. There are many forms of thirst.

The desert has its holiness of silence, the crowd its holiness of conversation.

We've seen computers play chess and beat grand masters. We've seen computers drive a car across a desert. But interestingly, playing chess is easy, but having a conversation about nothing is really difficult for a computer.

Work is something you can count on, a trusted, lifelong friend who never deserts you.

I had to live in the desert before I could understand the full value of grass in a green ditch.

Victoria was just as much in love with me as I was with her. We could not bear to be apart for a single second. We were like two lovers shipwrecked on a desert island. There was no world outside our love.

Without music, life is a journey through a desert.

In Botswana in the Kalahari Desert there's a tented camp called Jack's Camp, which is like old Africa meets Ralph Lauren. The Oriental rugs, the old leather chairs - you feel like you've just jumped out of a Ralph Lauren ad.

The progress of science is strewn, like an ancient desert trail, with the bleached skeleton of discarded theories which once seemed to possess eternal life.

The magnificent army that fought in Desert Storm is a great army, and it still is a magnificent army today. But it was one we designed for the Cold War, and the Cold War has been over for ten years now.

The tropical rain forests are a telling example. Once cut down, they rarely recover. Rainfall drops, deserts spread, the climate warms.

Our knowledge is a receding mirage in an expanding desert of ignorance.

Ethnically, Tuareg describe themselves as white. And they don't look Arab or black. Many Tuareg have light skin, light eyes and sharp angular noses and cheekbones. They are cousins of the Berbers of North Africa. Some legends say the Tuareg are the decedents of an ancient Roman legion that disappeared into the desert two millennia ago.

They defended the grains of sand in the desert to the last drop of their blood.

The most frightening pages of history are those which reveal how easily conditions making a desert of the human spirit may come into existence, with the oozings away of incentive and kindliness in our natural social structure.

This creed of the desert seemed inexpressible in words, and indeed in thought.

Abraham, a simple farmer, at a word from the Invisible God, marched, with family and stock, through the terrible desert to a distant land to live among a people whose language he could neither speak nor understand! Not bad, that!

One meal I'm constantly reminded about is when I ate kangaroo tail in the desert in Australia; it wasn't necessarily my favorite, but I will always remember it.

Except when war is waged in a desert, noncombatants, also known as civilians or "the people," constitute the great majority of those affected.

As a matter of fact, an ordinary desert supports a much greater variety of plants than does either a forest or a prairie.

A movie I must have seen 10 times is 'Jonathan Livingston Seagull.' It's an old movie, but still such a beautiful message. If I had only one film I could take on my computer on a desert island, I would take 'Jonathan Livingston Seagull.'

I must explore desert ground and see what can grow. But there are limits. I know in my heart what I would never do.

I used to sleep in the desert once every week, now it is every two weeks, most of the time alone. It's beautiful. What I enjoy is taking my food and cooking for myself.

Somali is turning into a desert. Rwanda, you can hardly find a place to plant a potato, it's so crowded.

The Democratic Party will never desert the freedoms of our people under the guise of pretending to protect them.

Night comes to the desert all at once, as if someone turned off the light.

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.

It is as pleasant as it is unusual to see thoroughly good people getting their deserts.

The rules of survival never change, whether you're in a desert or in an arena.

I have this personal affinity for the desert. I am fascinated by the desert. I love it.

If I were planning to be stranded on a desert island, I wouldn't take Freud's books with me, because I've already read them all.

Being in the desert was brilliant and it was hard.

Official education was telling people almost nothing of the nature of all those things on the seashores, and in the redwood forests, in the deserts and in the plains.

Critical lice are like body lice, which desert corpses to seek the living.

There are people who travel because they want to push themselves to physical limits, people who walk across deserts or cycle across the Antarctic - like Ranulph Fiennes, who just does it because it's there. And then there are people like me, who are just genuinely curious about the world.

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

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

Desert Storm was seen by the military establishment and by some politicians as avenging Vietnam, but it left behind dangerous illusions. The victory was so decisive, and information about it so carefully managed, that the American public was never clearly informed that it was purchased at the price of approximately 100,000 Iraqi lives.

If you live for your children, they may be smitten down and leave you desolate, or, what is far worse, they may desert you and leave you worse than childless in a cold and unfeeling world.

Desert Storm created the pattern for the American way of war that eventually prevailed in Kosovo. America learned from Vietnam that unilateral use of force eventually forfeits international legitimacy and domestic support. Desert Storm demonstrated the political necessity of coalition warfare.

I always thought the desert was the antithesis of peace - something that attacks you. So you don't go to the desert for peace.

If you're cooking for a woman, make a good risotto and a salad. If you don't have time to make desert you can go and buy some macaroons to have afterwards.

The desert loves me. I love the desert. It's nice to be in the heat in Africa. I love it.

I started to draw desert islands. They were just rough, shapes in the middle of the page. Then I began drawing shapes within those shapes and I was amazed how quickly the islands got better. It took off from there.

Everyone should just drive out to the Mojave Desert and just experience it, and it's a fun place to live.

Sleeplessness is a desert without vegetation or inhabitants.

Just as Mars - a desert planet - gives us insights into global climate change on Earth, the promise awaits for bringing back to life portions of the Red Planet through the application of Earth Science to its similar chemistry, possibly reawakening its life-bearing potential.

A friend of mine has a big farm in the desert, and she picks up feathers and roadkill for me, then makes it into clothes. I think it's cool to wear roadkill. If I died and somebody wanted to wear my teeth around their neck to VMAs, I'd feel honored.

Use every man after his desert, and who should scape whipping?

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.

We were in the Arabian Desert for nine months. And I was having the time of my life. It could have been an archeological expedition, a military expedition.

Broadway is another monster. I've been touring since I was 12 years old and I love being on the road - one day you're here, next day it's snowing, and the next you are in a desert and it's 110 degrees. So I guess I'm kind of used to the madness physically that you go to when you are an entertainer. But it's been great.

Someone asked me, if I were stranded on a desert island what book would I bring... 'How to Build a Boat.'

The extremes of jungles, mountains, and deserts are inherently dangerous places.

On the one hand, I want to go off and live in the desert with my dog and sculpt things out of adobe.

My own grandfathers were a submarine commander and a 'desert rats' tank operator in the Second World War.

I have never been in a natural place and felt that it was a waste of time. I never have. And it's a relief. If I'm walking around a desert or whatever, every second is worthwhile.

Sarah Palin is brilliant. She is a media magnet and a media magnate. She creates headlines and draws crowds wherever she goes, whether it's 98 degrees in the desert of Arizona or below freezing in the snow of Wisconsin.

We are pleased to have Ken on board. He has had experience at both the high school and collegiate levels. He's been extremely successful as a coach, winning state championships in high school and coaching in the NCAA tournament. He is from the desert area (Phoenix) and will fit in well in El Paso.

In the desert there is no sign that says, Thou shalt not eat stones.

We're pleased with the acquisition of Desert Fire. This acquisition demonstrates our ongoing commitment to purchase successful companies that fit our lines of business in vibrant markets.

The high desert has an effect on people. The place has a way of swallowing you up.

For me the world is weird because it is stupendous, awesome, mysterious, unfathomable; my interest has been to convince you that you must assume responsibility for being here, in this marvelous world, in this marvelous desert, in this marvelous time. I want to convince you that you must learn to make every act count, since you are going to be here for only a short while, in fact, too short for witnessing all the marvels of it.

You've got to spread out as far as you can, cut down a whole forest, irrigate a whole desert, just to make sure that you won't accidentally stumble upon a place that's still in its natural state.

An oasis of horror in a desert of boredom.

The reduction of precipitation from clouds affected by desert dust can cause drier soil, which in turn raises more dust, thus providing a possible feedback loop to further decrease precipitation.

In every heart there should be one grief that is like a well in the desert.

But what I wanted back had never really been there. He was a temporary illusion, a mirage of water after walking in the desert. I had made him up. And he could have killed me. You've got to stop the ride sometimes. Stop it and get off.

Forests precede us and deserts dog our heels.

In five minutes the earth would be a desert, and you cling to books.

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste it's fragrance on the desert air.

We must go out into a desert of some kind (your backyard will do) and come into a personal experience of the awesome love of God.

The desert of virginity Aches in the hotness of her mouth.

My mother's English, and she always was fascinated by the desert.

When you're on a highway, viewing the western U.S. with the mountains and the flatness and the desert and all that, it's very much like my paintings.

If this were so; if the desert were 'home'; if our instincts were forged in the desert; to survive the rigours of the desert - then it is easier to understand why greener pastures pall on us; why possessions exhaust us, and why Pascal's imaginary man found his comfortable lodgings a prison.

I am not a collector of deserts!

A writer is someone who has a one-man tent in the desert and occasionally he sees the footprint of an other writer - in the form of a review or something.

Ideas don't desert you; ideas aren't treasonous to you, but people can be.

Nor waste their sweetness in the desert air.

most of my wandering in the desert i've done alone. not so much from choice as from necessity - i generally prefer to go into places where no one else wants to go. i find that in contemplating the natural world my pleasure is greater if there are not too many others contemplating it with me, at the same time.

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?

Why do I live in the desert? Because the desert is the *locus Dei*.

What draws us into the desert is the search for something intimate in the remote.

Saving the world was merely a hobby. My *vocation* has been that of inspector of desert water holes.

The extreme clarity of the desert light is equaled by the extreme individuation of desert life forms. Love flowers best in openness and freedom.

We desert those who desert us; we cannot afford to suffer; we must live how we can.

There are many areas in the desert where drinkable water lies within a few feet of the surface, indicated by the mesquite and the bunch grass.

So it's a celebration of our new release, and the fact that we're old. But desert plants are old and beautiful.

Mount Desert is a key member of our partnership. We would hate to see that partnership dissolve.

Right now in California we gain 40,000 new acres of desert every year, with all the building and the people coming in... housing going up like crazy.

Phenomena of a man alone on a desert island can be explained in terms of "mass psychology" - inasmuch as the mind of no man is a unit, but is a community of mental states that influence one another.

Nobody is going to desert this little boy at this time.

If they want to put down in some part of the desert surrounded by lions, jackals and other dangerous animals, then we will do it.

I am glad people are reading our editorials and paying attention to our coverage of Desert Hot Springs, ... We don't have issues with Desert Hot Springs. We do have an obligation to be a watchdog.

I believe the administration's policy to store the waste in a facility 2,000 feet below ground in the Nevada desert remains the best alternative,