The camel is an ugly animal, seen from above. Its shoulders slope formless like a sack, its silly little ears and fluff of bleached curls behind them have a respectable, boarding-house look, like some faded neatness that dresses for propriety but never dressed for love.

To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the most pleasant sensations in the world. You are surrounded by adventure.

From love one can only escape at the price of life itself; and no lessening of sorrow is worth exile from that stream of all things human and divine.

... there are few things that can reconcile us fully to our parting with a world of which the longest life can see so little and whose beauties have so extraordinary a variety.

What I find trying in a country which you do not understand and where you cannot speak, is that you can never be yourself.

The art of learning fundamental common values is perhaps the greatest gain of travel to those who wish to live at ease among their fellows.

A pen and a notebook and a reasonable amount of discrimination will change a journey from a mere annual into a perennial, its pleasures and pains renewable at will.