Quotes from Arabian Sands

Wilfred Thesiger ·  347 pages

Rating: (3.9K votes)


“I had learnt the satisfaction which comes from hardship and the pleasure which derives from abstinence; the contentment of a full belly; the richness of meat; the taste of clean water; the ecstasy of surrender when the craving of sleep becomes a torment; the warmth of a fire in the chill of dawn.”
― Wilfred Thesiger, quote from Arabian Sands


“Yet I wondered fancifully if he had seen more clearly than they did, had sensed the threat which my presence implied – the approaching disintegration of his society and the destruction of ‘his beliefs. Here especially it seemed that the evil that comes with sudden change would far outweigh the good. While I was with the Arabs I wished only to live as they lived and, now that I have left them, I would gladly think that nothing in their lives was altered by my coming. Regretfully, however, I realize that the maps I made helped others, with more material aims, to visit and corrupt a people whose spirit once lit the desert like a flame.”
― Wilfred Thesiger, quote from Arabian Sands


“For this was the real desert where differences of race and colour, of wealth and social standing, are almost meaningless; where coverings of pretence are stripped away and basic truths emerge.”
― Wilfred Thesiger, quote from Arabian Sands


“In the desert I had found a freedom unattainable in civilization; a life unhampered by possessions, since everything that was not a necessity was an encumbrance.”
― Wilfred Thesiger, quote from Arabian Sands


“I tasted freedom and a way of life from which there could be no recall.”
― Wilfred Thesiger, quote from Arabian Sands



“I pondered on this desert hospitality and, compared it with our own. I remembered other encampments where I had slept, small tents on which I had happened in the Syrian desert and where I had spent the night. Gaunt men in rags and hungry-looking children had greeted me, and bade me welcome with the sonorous phrases of the desert. Later they had set a great dish before me, rice heaped round a sheep which they had slaughtered, over which my host poured liquid golden butter until it flowed down on to the sand; and when I protested, saying 'Enough! Enough!', had answered that I was a hundred times welcome. Their lavish hospitality had always made me uncomfortable, for I had known that as a result of it they would go hungry for days. Yet when I left them they had almost convinced me that I had done them a kindness by staying with them”
― Wilfred Thesiger, quote from Arabian Sands


“What use will money be to him in the Sands.”
― Wilfred Thesiger, quote from Arabian Sands


“I craved for the past, resented the present, and dreaded the future.”
― Wilfred Thesiger, quote from Arabian Sands


About the author

Wilfred Thesiger
Born place: in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Born date June 3, 1910
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