Wilfred Thesiger Quotes

#1. 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. I had found too, a comradeship inherent in the circumstances, and the belief that tranquility was to be found there.

Wilfred Thesiger

#2. I knew instinctively that it was the very hardness of life in the desert which drew me back there - it was the same pull which takes men back to the polar ice, to high mountains, and to the sea.

Wilfred Thesiger

#3. What use will money be to him in the Sands.

Wilfred Thesiger

#4. The harder the life, the finer the person

Wilfred Thesiger

#5. 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

#6. The meat smelt rank and was very tough, the soup was greasy and of a curious flavour, but it was a wonderful meal after all these hungry weeks.

Wilfred Thesiger

#7. I tasted freedom and a way of life from which there could be no recall.

Wilfred Thesiger

#8. I craved for the past, resented the present, and dreaded the future.

Wilfred Thesiger

#9. Hunger, thirst, heat and cold: I had tasted them in full

Wilfred Thesiger

#10. 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

#11. The deserts in which I have travelled had been blanks in time as well as space. They had no intelligible history, the nomads who inhabited them had no known past.

Wilfred Thesiger