The essence of travel is diffuse. It is never there on the spot as it were, but always beyond: its symbol is the horizon, and its interest always lies over that edge in the unseen.

There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do.

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.

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.

The past is our treasure. Its works, whether we know them or not, flourish in our lives with whatever strength they had. From it we draw provision for our journey, the collected wisdom whose harvests are all ours to reap and carry with us, though we may never live again in the fields that grew them.

Christmas... is not an external event at all, but a piece of one's home that one carries in one's heart.

... I cannot think a civilization worth having that does not encourage and enable its subjects to spend something, not extorted by governments but freely given to keep wretchedness at least from the streets they walk through day by day.