travel-writers

"In a certain sense, many of us mutilate the mind and render it impotent, for there is in the nature of man an irresistible tendency to religion; it is founded in our wants and passions, in the extent of our faculties, in the quality of mind itself. 's description of the untired soul darting from world to world, is a noble image of the restless longing of the mind after God and immortality. The stronger his sensibility, the more exalted his imagination, the more pious will every man be. And in this inherent and essential quality of our minds can we alone account for the various absurd and demonstrably false dogmas believed so honestly and zealously by some. Men run headlong into superstition in the same way as young boys and girls run into matrimony."

"Dined at Gooden’s, where I met among others , the Secretary of the . He surprised me by saying that he knew Goethe only as a botanist, in which character he thought most highly of him, he being the author of the New System of Botany; and that this is now the opinion of the most eminent botanists both in France and England. I rejoice at this unexpected intelligence."

"Lamb was the first English writer of eminence whom Crabb Robinson tried to convince of the excellence of Goethe."

"Lamb had written to Coleridge about one of their old masters, who had been a severe disciplinarian, intimating that he hoped Coleridge had forgiven all injuries. Coleridge replied that he certainly had; he hoped his soul was in heaven, and that when he went there he was borne by a host of cherubs, all face and wing, and without anything to excite his whipping propensities!"

"There is a way in which the collective knowledge of mankind expresses itself, for the finite individual, through mere daily living: a way in which life itself is sheer knowing."

"The buffalo's powerful head darkening the yellow grass, like the lion's imperative roar and the elephant's long, somnambulistic stride, has more of the quintessential Africa in it for me than any other manifestation of all the scores of animals that I know and love."

"The educating of the parents is really the education of the child: children tend to live what is unlived in the parents, so it is vital that parents should be aware of their inferior, their dark side, and should press on getting to know themselves."

"Men are never alone because that which, acknowledged or unacknowledged, dreams through them is always by their side."

"Life is its own journey, presupposes its own change and movement, and one tries to arrest them at one's eternal peril."

"Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right."

"By chance (to use the only phrase we have for describing one of the most significant manifestations of life)."

"Sunt Angli graves ut Germani, magnifici domi forisque magna assectantium famulorum agnimi secum trahunt, quibus in sinistro brachio scuta ex argento facta appendunt, et non immerito vexantur illos caudas a tergo habere. In saltationibus et arte musica excellunt. Sunt enim agiles et alacres, licet crassiores corporibus quam Galli. Mediam capitis partem capillos detondent, utroque latere illaeso. Sunt boni nautae et insignes pyratae, astuti, fallaces, et furaces. Londini singulis annis ultra, sicuti vulgo fertur, suspenduntur. Decapitatio minoris apud ipsos est infamiae quam strangulatio. Ire prope murum honoratior est locus. Frequens falconum et accipitrum apud nobiles in venationibus usus. In edendo civiliores Gallis, parcius utuntur pane, carnibus vero largius, quas optime assant. In potum copiose immittunt saccarum. Tegumenta lectorum sunt tapetia, etiam apud rusticos. Laborant frequenter lepra, alba vulgo dicta, quam primis Normannorum temporibus in Angliam irrepsisse fama est. In aedibus duas plaerunque contignationes habent, excepto Londino, ubi tres, raro quatuor, reperiuntur. Aedificant ex ligno vel, qui lautioris sunt fortunae, ex coctis lateribus. Tecta habent depressioria, quae ditiores plumbo tegunt."

"In a profound sense every man has two halves to his being: he is not one person so much as two persons trying to act in unison. I believe that in the heart of each human being there is something which I can only describe as a "child of darkness" who is equal and complementary to the more obvious "child of light." Whether we know it or not we all have within us a natural instinctive man, a dark brother, to whom we are irrevocably joined as to our own shadow. However much our conscious reason may reject him, he is there for good or ill, clamouring for recognition and awareness and a fair share of life just as the less conscious black man of Africa is struggling and clamouring for life, light and honour in our societies. I need not emphasize how the rational, calculating, acutely reasoning and determined human being that Western man has made of himself has increasingly considered this side of himself not as a brother but as an enemy, capable, with his upsurges of rich emotion and colourful impulses, of wrecking conscious man's carefully planned and closely reasoned way of existence."

"Of all man's inborn dispositions there is none more heroic than the love in him. Everything else accepts defeat and dies, but love will fight no-love every inch of the way."

"What is most threatening and destructive in human society today is the human being who is split in his own nucleus: it is the fission in the modern soul which makes nuclear fission so dangerous — he is a split atom. He has got to heal himself, make himself whole."

"Sunt potentes in praeliis, undiquaque debellant adversarios, nullumque penitus patiuntur iugum servitutis. Delectantur quoque valde sonitibus, qui ipsis aures implent, uti explosionibus tormentorum, tympanis et campanarum boatu, ita ut Londini multi qui se inebriaverint turrem unam vel alteram exercitii causa ascendant et per horas aliquot campandis signum dent. Si quem exterum egregia forma et statura ornatum vident dolore dicunt quod non sit homo Anglicus, vulgo 'Englishmen'."

"The man of the Kalahari is Esau and we are Jacob, and there is a great gulf between us. This sense of property, of possession that we have is utterly foreign to the Esaus of the world. We have, he is."

"Somehow we should learn to know that our problems are our most precious possessions. They are the raw materials of our salvation: no problem — no redemption."

"Africa has always walked in my mind proudly upright, an African giant among the other continents, toes well dug into the final ocean of one hemisphere, rising to its full height in the graying skies of the other; head and shoulders broad, square and enduring, making light of the bagful of blue Mediterranean slung over its back as it marches patiently through time."

"It is the not-yet in the now, The taste of fruit that does not-yet exist Hanging the blossom on the bough."

"This is the story of a journey in a great wasteland and a search for some pure remnant of the unique and almost vanished First People of my native land, the Bushmen of Africa."

"We suffer from a hubris of the mind. We have abolished superstition of the heart only to install a superstition of the intellect in its place."

"The spirit of man is nomad, his blood bedouin, and love is the aboriginal tracker on the faded desert spoor of his lost self; and so I came to live my life not by conscious plan or prearranged design but as someone following the flight of a bird."

"The kingdome of Benin [has] a very proper towne of that name, and an haven called Gurte. The inhabitants live in idolatry, and are a rude and brutish nation; notwithstanding that their prince is served with such high reverence, and never commeth in sight but with great solemnity, and many ceremonies: at whose death his chiefe favorites count it the greatest point of honour to be buried with him, to the end (as they vainly imagine) they may doe him service in another world."

"The process in England...is to ring for the chambermaid; but in America there are no bells, and no chambermaids. You therefore walk to the bar and solicit the favor of being supplied with a candle, a request that is ultimately, though by no means immediately, complied with. You then explore the way to your apartment unassisted....Your number is 63, but in what part of the mansion that number is to be found you are of course without the means of probable conjecture. Let it be supposed, however, that you...at length discover the object of your search. If you are an Englishman, and too young to have roughed it under Wellington, you are probably what is called in this country 'almighty particular,' and rejoice in a couple of comfortable pillows to say nothing of a lurking prejudice in favor of multiplicity of blankets, especially with the thermometer some fifty degrees below the freezing point. Such luxuries, however, it is ten to one you will not find in the uncurtained crib in which you are destined to pass the night. Your first impulse is to walk downstairs and make known your wants to the landlord. This is a mistake. Have nothing to say to him. You may rely on it, he is too busy to have any time to throw away in humoring the whimsies of a foreigner; and should it happen, as it does sometimes, in the New England States, that the establishment is composed of natives, your chance of a comfortable sleep for the night is about as great as that of your gaining the Thirty Thousand pound prize in the lottery."

"There is a sort of republican plainness and simplicity in their address, quite in harmony with the institutions of their country. An American bows less than an Englishman; he deals less in mere conventional forms and expressions of civility; he pays few or no compliments; makes no unmeaning or overstrained professions; but he takes you by the hand with a cordiality which at once intimates, that he is disposed to regard you as a friend....Perhaps I was the more flattered by the kindness of my reception, from having formed anticipations of a less pleasing character. The Americans I had met in Europe had generally been distinguished by a certain reserve, and something even approaching to the offensive in manner, which had not contributed to create a prepossession in their favour. It seemed, as if each individual were impressed with the conviction that the whole dignity of his country was concentred in his person."

"The devout and politically free inhabitant of New England is a kind of Laocoön who makes not the least effort to escape from the serpents which are crushing him. Mammon is his idol which he adores not only with his lips but with the whole force of his body and mind. In his view the world is no more than a Stock Exchange, and he is convinced that he has no other destiny here below than to become richer than his neighbor. Trade has seized upon all his thoughts, and he has no other recreation than to exchange objects. When he travels he carries, so to speak, his goods and his counter on his back and talks only of interest and profit. If he loses sight of his own business for an instant it is only in order to pry into the business of his competitors."

"The ancient Africans were much addicted to idolatrie, even as certain of the Persians are at this day, some of whom worship the sunne, and others the fire, for their gods. For the saide Africans had in times past magnificent and most stately temples built and dedicated, as well to the honour of the sunne as of the fire. In these temples day and night they kept fire kindled, giving diligent heed that it might not at any time be extinguished."

"The fifteene kingdomes of the land of Negros knowen to us, are all situate upon the river of Niger, and upon other rivers which fall thereinto. And all the land of Negros standeth betweene two vast deserts, for on the one side lieth the maine desert betweene Numidia and it, which extendeth it selfe unto this very land: and the south side thereof adjoineth upon another desert, which stretcheth from thence to the maine Ocean: in which desert are infinite nations unknowen to us, both by reason of the huge distance of place, and also in regarde of the diversitie of languages and religions. They have no traffique at all with our people, but we have heard oftentimes of their traffique with the inhabitants of the Ocean sea shore."

"There is in the kingdom of Benin an ancient custom, observed to the present day, that when the king dies, the people all assemble in a large field, in the centre of which is a very deep well, wider at the bottom than at the mouth. They cast the body of the dead king into this well, and all his friends and servants gather round, and those who are judged to have been most dear to and favoured by the king (this includes not a few, as all are anxious for the honour) voluntarily go down to keep him company."

"No human vanity can be more pitiable than that of seeking to give an eternity of preservation to particles of dust, which were put into order and symmetry only for the fleeting purposes of this life."

"Then each was ordered to kill his own prisoners, and for those who did not wish to do so the king appointed others in their place. Then they took my companions and cut off their heads, and when it came to my turn, the king's son saw me and ordered that I should be left alive, and I was taken to the other boys, because none under twenty years of age were killed, and I was scarcely sixteen years old."

"They met near a city called Augury, where they fought desperately. Weyasit had quite thirty thousand men of White Tartary, whom he placed in the van at the battle. They went over to Temerlin; then they had two encounters, but neither could overcome the other. Now Tämerlin had thirty-two trained elephants at the battle, and ordered, after mid-day, that they should be brought into the battle. This was done, and they attacked each other; but Weyasit took to flight, and went with at least one thousand horsemen to a mountain. Tamerlin surrounded the mountain so that he could not move, and took him."

"A fat, fair and fifty card-playing resident of the Crescent."

"You will think us very unfortunate in having just reached Nice to see it captured; and you will, no doubt, be anxious to learn particulars. During our residence in Switzerland we heard rumours of an approaching war between France and his Sardinian Majesty; and as many of the Emigrants who resorted last winter to Nice were in fact Republicans sent to disseminate revolutionary principles among the People, we dreaded the event of such a war; especially as we had recently witnessed the misery of Savoy under the existing government, and too well knew the specious offers made by France to every Nation who complained either of real or imaginary grievances."

"I invariably rose at sunrise, when the days are at their most glorious, and the whole world is full of beauty and music and dreaming, waking from its slumbers under the mists. I made my toilet to a chorus of impatient twittering. It was a fastidious toilet, for throughout my life I have adhered to the simple but exact dictates of fashion as I left it, when Victoria was queen—a neat white blouse, stiff collar and ribbon tie, a dark skirt and coat, stout and serviceable, trim shoes and neat black stockings, a sailor hat and a fly-veil, and, for my excursions to the camps, always a dust-coat and a sunshade. Not until I was in meticulous order would I emerge from my tent, dressed for the day. My first greeting was for the birds."

"Every one of the natives whom I encountered on the east-west line had partaken of human meat, with the exception of Nyerdain, who told me it made him sick. They freely admitted their sharing of these repasts and enumerated those killed and eaten by naming the waters, and drawing a line with the big toe on the sand as they told over in gruesome memory the names they dared not mention. My first words to them were always “No more man-meat.” From the weekly supply train, I would procure part of a bullock or sheep and show them the game food areas, mallee-hen’s eggs, rabbits and so on, that must be their meats now, with as many dampers as I could provide, and a drink of sweetened tea. One morning very early, the news came that Nyan-ngauera had left the camp, taking a fire-stick and accompanied by her little girl. No one would follow her or help to track her. For twelve miles I followed the track unsuccessfully, but Nyan-ngauera doubled many times and gave birth to a child a mile west of my camp, where she killed and ate the baby, sharing the food with the little daughter. Later, with the help of her sons and grandsons, the spot was found, nothing to be seen there save the ashes of a fire. "The bones are under the fire", the boys told me, and digging with the digging-stick we came upon the broken skull, and one or two charred bones, which I later sent to the Adelaide Museum."

"The Australian native can withstand all the reverses of nature, fiendish droughts and sweeping floods, horrors of thirst and enforced starvation—but he cannot withstand civilization."

"By this time I was a confirmed wanderer, a nomad even as the aborigines. So close had I been in contact with them, that it was now impossible for me to relinquish the work. I realized that they were passing from us. I must make their passing easier. Moreover, all that I knew was little in comparison with all there was yet to learn. I made the decision to dedicate the rest of my life to this fascinating study."

"No man or woman, who tries to pursue an ideal in his or her own way, is without enemies."

"There are a few fortunate races that have been endowed with cheerfulness as their main characteristic, the Australian Aborigine and the Irish being among these."

"A glorious thing it is to live in a tent in the infinite—to waken in the grey of dawn, a good hour before the sun outlines the low ridges of the horizon, and to come out into the bright cool air, and scent the wind blowing across the mulga plains. My first thought would be to probe the ashes of my open fireplace, where hung my primitive cooking-vessels, in the hope that some embers had remained alight. Before I retired at night, I invariably made a good fire and covered the glowing coals with the soft ash of the jilyeli, having watched my compatriots so cover their turf fires in Ireland. I would next readjust the stones of the hob to leeward of the morning wind, and set the old Australian billy to boil, while I tidied my tent, and transformed it from bedroom to breakfast-room. As the sun came up, it changed that plain white room into the most exquisitely-frescoed pergola, with a patterning far surpassing the best of Grinling Gibbon’s handiwork. In a constant play of leafy light and shadow, I would eat my tea and toast in absolute content, while outside the blue smoke of the fire changed to grey in the bright sunlight. The mornings were spent in wandering from camp to camp, attending to the bodily needs of the scattered flock. I knew every bush, every pool, every granite boulder, by its age-old prehistoric name, with its legends and dream-time secrets, and its gradual inevitable change. There was no loneliness."

"Our road is the Road of Yesterday and the Road of Today, for Yesterday and Today are still the same."

"Surely the world we live in is but the world that lives in us?"

"Your true gentlewoman does not sit down and weep and say "I've never done such things"—she simply "does" and no more about it."

"Never, perhaps, was any Object in itself, abstractedly considered, less valuable, nor less worthy of public Attention, than the Falkland Islands: yet, the Manner in which Spain acted on the Occasion, displayed so much Arrogance, as to compromise the Honor of the British Crown, and to demand a Reparation no less public than the Affront."

"Eloquence, transcendent eloquence, formed the foundation and the key-stone of Pitt's Ministerial greatness. Every other quality in him was accessory."

"He...was highly favoured by nature, and his address exceeded even his figure. At every period of his life queens, duchesses, and countesses have showered on him their regard. The Duke of Dorset, recently sent ambassador to France, being an intimate friend of Mr. Whitworth, made him known to the queen, who not only distinguished him by flattering marks of her attention, but interested herself in promoting his fortune, which then stood greatly in need of such patronage."

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

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