Life, to be happy at all, must be in its way a sacrament, and it is a failure in religion to divorce it from the holy acts of everyday, of ordinary human existence.

The true call of the desert, of the mountains, or the sea, is their silence - free of the networks of dead speech.

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.

I suspect anyone self-satisfied enough to refuse lawful pleasures: we are not sufficiently rich in our separate resources to reject the graces of the universe when offered.

The perpetual charm of Arabia is that the traveler finds his level there simply as a human being; the people's directness, deadly to the sentimental or pedantic, likes the less complicated virtues.

... it is a matter of civilizing everyone or not being civilized at all: the decay has always come from a partial civilization.

I do like people who have not yet made up their minds about everything, who in fact are still receiving