Travel Writers

"What is this Charity, this clinking of money between strangers, and when did Charity cease to be a comforting and secret thing between one friend and another? ... The real Love knows her neighbour face to face, and laughs with him and weeps with him, and eats and drinks with him, so that at last, when his black day dawns, she may share with him, not what she can spare, but all that she has."

"Reason cannot remain a bare intellectual faculty; it must become a faculty of judgment dealing with the question of values."

"Nearly everybody in San Francisco writes poetry. Few San Franciscans would admit this, but most of them would rather like to have their productions accidentally discovered."

""Well, Ipsie, all I can say is..." But she never said anything more, so perhaps that really was all she could say."

"None of us wants to be average. That we are so is a melancholy fact borne in upon us in middle life, and we do not always relish it."

"He had always been sartorially unlucky; he had always suffered ... from the devilishness of clothes. A conspiracy of tailors and outfitters, as it seemed to him, caused him always to be nipped at the armpits by waistcoats, irked across the back by coats, deserted by studs, tortured by shoes, blistered by socks, betrayed by sock-suspenders and braces."

"The train ran like a struggling fish on an almost taut line; it jerked helplessly yet strongly from side to side; twitching and tugging, it was drawn through the rippling land towards the ruthless mountains."

"Cows in India occupy the same position in society as women did in England before they got the vote. Woman was revered but not encouraged. Her life was one long obstacle race owing to the anxiety of man to put pedestals at her feet. While she was falling over the pedestals she was soothingly told that she must occupy a Place Apart—and indeed, so far Apart did her place prove to be that it was practically out of earshot. The cow in India finds her position equally lofty and tiresome. You practically never see a happy cow in India."

"The first stone is love, and that shall fail you. The second stone is hate, and that shall fail you. The third stone is knowledge, and that shall fail you. The fourth stone is prayer, and that shall fail you. The fifth stone shall not fail you."

"Grief do I give you — grief and dreadful laughter. Sackcloth for banner, ashes in your wine. Go forth, go forth, nor ask me what comes after. The fifth stone shall not fail you, son of mine."

"We travel because we do not know. We know that we do not know the best before we start. That is why we start. But we forget that we do not know the worst either. That is why we come back."

"Los Angeles is a sophisticated city; it has no eccentricities and no heart."

"She specialised in feminism, and in her eyes to be a woman was in itself a good argument."

"Call no man foe, but never love a stranger. Build up no plan, nor any star pursue. Go forth with crowds; in loneliness is danger. Thus nothing Fate can send, And nothing Fate can do Shall pierce your peace, my friend."

"High and miraculous skies bless and astonish my eyes; All my dead secrets arise, all my dead stories come true. Here is the Gate to the Sea. Once you unlocked it for me; Now, since you gave me the key, shall I unlock it for you?"

"The more committees you belong to, the less of ordinary life you will understand. When your daily round becomes nothing more than a daily round of committees you might as well be dead."

"The gardener was one of those who are never surprised without being thunderstruck."

"Sometimes I pose, but sometimes I pose as posing."

"Islands are gregarious animals, they decorate the ocean in conveys."

"Twenty-three is said to be the prime of life by those who have reached so far and no farther. It shares this distinction with every age, from ten to three-score and ten."

"Family jokes, though rightly cursed by strangers, are the bond that keeps most families alive."

"Sometimes I think there are two kinds of people — the autobiographists and the biographists."

"Always there is a sort of dream of air between you and the hills of California, a veil of unreality in the intervening air. It gives the hills the bloom that peaches have, or grapes in the dew."

"Did Older and Wiser people ... ever shout and jump with joy in their pyjamas in the moonlight? Did they ever feel just drunk with being young, and in at the start? And were Older and Wiser people's jokes ever funny?"

"The dense and godly wear consistency as a flower, the imaginative fling it joyfully behind them."

"Curiosity needs food as much as any of us, and dies soon if denied it."

"Oh, bless your blindness, glory in your groping! Mock at your betters with an upward chin! And, when the moment has gone by for hoping, Sling your fifth stone, O son of mine, and win."

"It was young David mocked the Philistine. It was young David laughed beside the river. There came his mother — his and yours and mine — With five smooth stones, and dropped them in his quiver."

"The fifth stone is a magic stone, my David, Made up of fear and failure, lies and loss."

"The sun was like a word written between the sea and the sky, a word that was swallowed up by the sea before any man had time to read it."

"Y quiero volver con la pluma en la mano como el buen piloto lleva la sonda por el mar, descubriendo los bajos cuando siente que los hay, así haré yo en caminar a la verdad de lo que pasó."

"Science is for the laboratory. Other men, who stand alone and face the elemental forces of nature, know that science as a shining, world-conquering hero, is a myth. Science lives in concrete structures full of bright factory toys, insulated from the earth's great forces. The priesthood of this new cult are seldom called upon to stand and face the onslaught."

"Now there are many pleasures in life, Long conversations, and leisure, that delightful evil."

"But in the good there is every kind of wisdom."

"Trouble adds toil to grief."

"The black-winged Erinnys Will never enter those homes where the hands are lifted up in prayer, And the gods have accepted their offerings."

"The English have not by nature sufficient sociability in their dispositions to do without a visible fire. A cheerful blaze is necessary to thaw their innate shyness and reserve, and to form a central point of union. ... They cannot converse comfortably with their hands unemployed. Some excuse must be found for idleness; some reason for being in one part of the room in preference to another. The slightest appearance of formality terrifies them beyond measure, because it reminds them of their own defects. The same principle which makes a burnt child dread the fire, causes them to cling to it as an antidote. All manner of contrivances are employed to break the bug-bear form. In summer, ottomans, albums, and windows, supply in some measure the loss of the darling fire, and enable English men and women to try and talk to each other."

"In Ireland, all is either brilliant sunshine or dark shadow, and its scenery, its skies, and the countenances of its genuine sons, are all either smiles or tears."

"Moderation, the noblest gift of heaven."

"All our farinaceous plants contain abundance of , especially wheat, barley, oats, maize, rice, ; and the s differ from each other in size and form so decidedly, that they cannot well be mistaken by a careful observer. They are prepared for the microscope, and sold as polariscope objects, because the examination of a starch granule with shows it with a beautiful black cross, revolving with the polarizer; or, if over a selenite stage, a brilliant play of colours is obtained."

"THE ISLAND OF , separated from by , is not inhabited, except by rabbits burrowing in the heath, the wild bee in its rose-leaf cell, and the which rests and lives on its rocks. The late Governor, , to whom the belonged, built a cottage on it to shelter the fisherman or shipwrecked mariner; but it has fallen into decay. The stormy petrel, rarely found on the British coast, may be taken here with the hand; but it has the singular defence of ejecting a fetid fluid from its bill when alarmed or hurt, which often saves it from capture."

"There is felt by many seaside ramblers a want of some unscientific, easy to the s and contents of s on the English coast. There are most valuable works by }} and }} on the subject, but more expensive and more scientific than suits the minds of those who seek for health and rest in the sweet summer months by the seaside. To supply that want I purpose describing the Seaweeds, not exactly in the order arranged by Algælogists (though a systematic aid is given for the use of Collectors); but, taking the coast anywhere as a book, opening and closing as the great sea ebbs and flows, I shall begin with the first-tide pools, and find interest for my readers until the next range is uncovered, and more objects may be found. Then we shall take advantage of a gale of wind, and see what the waves cast up from depths unattainable by mortal hand."

"The enjoys such , and so much authority as to be almost a king in his inland territory. By his manorial rights he receives tithes of corn, apples, and lambs, he presides over the petty court which assembles three times a year, called, The Chief Pleas, at which, though he has no vote, yet his veto, or consent is necessary to all their decisions. By virtue of his patent (which however he never exerts,) he can prevent the building of any house without his leave, or the solemnization of any marriage without his consent, and the of the island is also in his gift."

", tittle-tattle, tale-bearing, are the very bindweed of society; as the bindweed destroys the flower, so do they choke every kindly feeling and every noble thought."

"... books, like Louisa Lane Clarke's The Microscope (1858) and 's A World of Wonders Revealed by the Microscope (1859), were directed to broader audiences in a drive to recruit more new microscopists from the general public."

"We have been occupied in planting a small avenue of neem trees in front of the house; unlike the air around the tamarind, that near a neem tree is reckoned wholesome – according to the Gujerati proverb, we had made no advance on our heavenward road until the avenue was planted, which carried us on one-third of the journey. No sooner were the trees in the ground, than the servants requested to be allowed to marry a neem to a young peepal tree (Ficus religiosa), which marriage was accordingly celebrated by planting a peepal and neem together, and entwining their branches. Some pooja was performed at the same time which, with the ceremony of the marriage, was sure to bring good fortune to the newly-planted avenue."

"Soon the men of the column began to see that though the scarlet line was slender, it was very rigid and exact."

"The spruce beauty of the slender red line."

"I have always remarked, that women, in all countries, are civil and obliging, tender and humane; that they are ever inclined to be gay and chearful, timorous, and modest; and that they do not hesitate, like men, to perform a generous action. Not haughty, not arrogant, not supercilious; they are full of courtesy, and fond of society: more liable in general to err than man, but in general also more virtuous, and performing more good actions than he. To a woman, whether civilized or savage, I never addressed myself in the language of decency and friendship, without receiving a decent and friendly answer. With man it has often been otherwise. In wandering over the barren plains of inhospitable Denmark, through honest Sweden, and frozen Lapland, rude and churlish Finland, unprincipled Russia, and the wide-spread regions of the wandering Tartar; if hungry, dry, cold, wet, or sick, the women have ever been friendly to me, and uniformly so: and to add to this virtue, (so worthy the appellation of benevolence), these actions have been performed in so free and so kind a manner, that if I was dry I drank the sweetest draught, and, if hungry, I eat the coarse morsel with a double relish."

"To say something of the Indians, there is now but few upon the Island, and those few no ways hurtful but rather serviceable to the English, and it is to be admired, how strangely they have decreast by the Hand of God, since the English first setling of those parts; for since my time, where there were six towns, they are reduced to two small Villages, and it hath been generally observed, that where the English come to settle, a Divine Hand makes way for them, by removing or cutting off the Indians, either by Wars one with the other, or by some raging mortal Disease."