In the last few years we’ve found ourselves drawn more and more to the deserts of this world. On our recent two year trip we spent six months in the deserts of Jordan, Israel and the American Southwest. There’s just something about them. The wide open spaces, the silence, and of course the incredible sunrises and sunsets.
We’ve put together a series of quotes to inspire you to get out into the wilds of the desert.
The most Inspirational Desert Quotes
“The desert, when the sun comes up. I couldn't tell where heaven stopped and the Earth began.“
- Tom Hanks
“But in the desert, in the pure clean atmosphere, in the silence – there you can find yourself.”
- Father Dioscuros
“If a flower can flourish in the desert, you can flourish anywhere.”
- Matshona Dhliwayo
“The desert is a natural extension of the inner silence of the body.”
- Jean Baudrillard
“All you have to do is contemplate a simple grain of sand, and you will see in it all the marvels of creation.”
- Paulo Coelho
“A rose in a desert can only survive on its strength, not its beauty.”
- Matshona Dhliwayo
“A desert is a place without expectation.”
- Nadine Gordimer
“Water is a desert’s gold.”
- Matshona Dhliwayo
“What draws us into the desert is the search for something intimate in the remote.”
- Edward Abbey
“The desert is so huge, and the horizon so distant, that they make a person feel small, and as if he should remain silent.”
- Paulo Coelho
“What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well.”
- Antoine de Saint
“Like water in the desert is wisdom to the soul.”
- Edward Counsel
“A flower blooming in the desert proves to the world that adversity, no matter how great, can be overcome.”
- Matshona Dhliwayo
“The desert tells a different story every time one ventures on it.”
- Robert Edison Fulton JR
“Night poured over the desert. It came suddenly, in purple. In the clear air, the stars drilled down out of the sky, reminding any thoughtful watcher that it is in the deserts and high places that religions are generated. When men see nothing but bottomless infinity over their heads they have always had a driving and desperate urge to find someone to put in the way.”
- Terry Pratchett
"Night comes to the desert all at once, as if someone turned off the light."
- Joyce Carol Oates
“The desert is so vast that no one can know it all. Men go out into the desert, and they are like ships at sea; no one knows when they will return.”
- Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio
"I love the desert and its incomparable sense of space."
- Robyn Davidson
"You can't fight the desert. You have to ride with it.”
- Louis L'Amour
“This creed of the desert seemed inexpressible in words, and indeed in thought.”
-T. E. Lawrence
“This is the sense of the desert hills, that there is room enough and time enough.”
- Mary Hunter Austin
“If seeds waited for perfect conditions to grow, there would be no plants in the desert.”
- Matshona Dhliwayo
“The desert could not be claimed or owned- it was a piece of cloth carried by winds, never held down by stones, and given a hundred shifting names.”
- Michael Ondaatje
“I would not sacrifice a single living mesquite tree for any book ever written. One square mile of living desert is worth a hundred ‘great books’ – and one brave deed is worth a thousand.”
- Edward Abbey
“Desert… is a very good place to find yourself. Or lose yourself”.
- Maynard James Keenan
“There were no lies here. All fancies fled away. That's what happened in all deserts. It was just you, and what you believed.”
- Terry Pratchett
“The desert does not mean the absence of men, it means the presence of God”.
- Carlo Carretto
“In the empire of desert, water is the king and shadow is the queen.”
- Mehmet Murat Ildan
“Drifting across the vast space, silent except for wind and footsteps, I felt uncluttered and unhurried for the first time in a while, already on desert time.”
- Rebecca Solnit
“Magic of the shadows can best be seen in the deserts.”
- Mehmet Murat Ildan
“For all the toll the desert takes of a man it gives compensations, deep breaths, deep sleep, and the communion of the stars.”
- Mary Hunter Austin
"What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
“The magic of the desert is hard to define.”
- Henno Martin
“On your journey to your dream, be ready to face oasis and deserts. In both cases, don't stop”
- Paulo Coelho
“If the desert is holy, it is because it is a forgotten place that allows us to remember the sacred. Perhaps that is why every pilgrimage to the desert is a pilgrimage to the self. There is no place to hide and so we are found.”
- Terry Tempest Williams
"I don't see the desert as barren at all; I see it as full and ripe. It doesn't need to be flattered with rain. It certainly needs rain, but it does with what it has, and creates amazing beauty."
- Joy Harjo
“Life is a desert of shifting sand dunes. Unpredictable. Erratic. Harmony changes into dissonance, the immediate outlives the profound, esoteric becomes cliched. And vice versa.”
- Ella Leya
“The thing about tears is that they can be as quiet as a cloud floating across the desert sky.”
- Benjamin Alire Saenz
“Polish comes from the cities; wisdom from the desert.”
-Frank Herbert
“Stars are brighter / In the desert sky / No need to wonder or justify”
- Amanda Marshall - Dark Horse lyrics
