Freya Stark
Freya Stark
Dame Freya Madeline Stark, Mrs Perowne, DBEwas a British explorer and travel writer. She wrote more than two dozen books on her travels in the Middle East and Afghanistan, as well as several autobiographical works and essays. She was one of the first non-Arabians to travel through the southern Arabian Deserts...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionMemoirist
Date of Birth31 January 1893
CityParis, France
believe hands voice
I have met charming people, lots who would be charming if they hadn't got a complex about the British and everyone has pleasant and cheerful manners and I like most of the American voices. On the other hand I don't believe they have any God and their hats are frightful. On balance I prefer the Arabs.
fashion artist hands
not wholly consciously, but not quite unconsciously, as far as I can remember, I determined to fashion my future as a sculptor his marble, and there was in it the same mixture of foresight and the unknown. The thing in the mind of the artist takes its way and imposes its form as it wakens under his hand. And so with life.
self hands shooting
On the other hand, there is a certain advantage in traveling with someone who has a reputation for shooting rather than being shot: as Keram said, in a self-satisfied way, they might kill me, but they would know that, if I was with him, there would be unpleasantness afterwards.
faith strong hands
If we are strong, and have faith in life and its richness of surprises, and hold the rudder steadily in our hands. I am sure we will sail into quiet and pleasant waters for our old age.
deals learning love pleasant since universal
Love of learning is a pleasant and universal bond, since it deals with what one is and not what one has.
broken miracle world
Love, like broken porcelain, should be wept over and buried, for nothing but a miracle will resuscitate it: but who in this world has not for some wild moments thought to recall the irrecoverable with words?
circles race soul
Few are the giants of the soul who actually feel that the human race is their family circle.
alone english-writer feelings quite town
To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.
carries english-writer eternal event home piece
Christmas... is not an eternal event at all, but a piece of one's home that one carries in one's heart.
art ingredients absence
Absence is one of the most useful ingredients of family life, and to dose it rightly is an art like any other.
moving heart thinking
To think to keep things as they are, is to let them move unpredictably, since nothing but death will still the beat of the heart or keep the universe from its perpetual motion.
acceptance personality style
Style is something peculiar to one person; it expresses one personality and one only; it cannot be shared.
travel home feelings
The true fruit of travel is perhaps the feeling of being nearly everywhere at home.
discipline solitude ordinary
Solitude, I reflected, is the one deep necessity of the human spirit to which adequate recognition is never given in our codes. It is looked upon as a discipline or penance, but hardly ever as the indispensable, pleasant ingredient it is to ordinary life, and from this want of recognition come half our domestic troubles.