Isabelle Eberhardt > Quotes

“Now more than ever do I realize that I will never be content with a sedentary life, that I will always be haunted by thoughts of a sun-drenched elsewhere.”
― Isabelle Eberhardt, The Nomad: Diaries of Isabelle Eberhardt

“For those who know the value of and exquisite taste of solitary freedom (for one is only free when alone), the act of leaving is the bravest and most beautiful of all.”
― Isabelle Eberhardt, The Nomad: Diaries of Isabelle Eberhardt

“A nomad I will remain for life,
in love with distant and uncharted places.”
― Isabelle Eberhardt

“A subject to which few intellectuals ever give a thought is the right to be a vagrant, the freedom to wander. Yet vagrancy is a deliverance, and life on the open road is the essence of freedom. To have the courage to smash the chains with which modern life has weighted us (under the pretext that it was offering us more liberty), then to take up the symbolic stick and bundle and get out.”
― Isabelle Eberhardt

“The cowardly belief that a person must stay in one place is too reminiscent of the unquestioning resignation of animals, beasts of burden stupefied by servitude and yet always willing to accept the slipping on of the harness. There are limits to every domain, and laws to govern every organized power. But the vagrant owns the whole vast earth that ends only at the non-existent horizon, and her empire is an intangible one, for her domination and enjoyment of it are things of the spirit.”
― Isabelle Eberhardt

“Crime, particularly among the poor and downtrodden, is often a last gesture of liberty.”
― Isabelle Eberhardt, The Oblivion Seekers

“We are, all of us, poor wretches, and those who prefer not to understand this are even worse off than the rest of us.

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― Isabelle Eberhardt

“But the vagrant owns the whole vast earth that ends only at the nonexistent horizon, and his empire is an intangible one, for his domination and enjoyment of it are things of the spirit.”
― Isabelle Eberhardt, The Oblivion Seekers

“The way I see it, there is no greater spiritual beauty than fanaticism, of a sort so sincere it can only end in martyrdom.”
― Isabelle Eberhardt

“I study life by being close to it, this "native life" about which so little is known, and which is so disfigured by the descriptions of those who, not knowing it, insist on describing it anyway.”
― Isabelle Eberhardt, The Oblivion Seekers

“No prayers, no medicines, merely the ineffable happiness of dying.”
― Isabelle Eberhardt, The Oblivion Seekers

“Tout le grand charme poignant de la vie vient peut-être de la certitude absolue de la mort. Si les choses devaient durer, elles nous sembleraient indignes d'attachement.”
― Isabelle Eberhardt

“To have a home, a family, a property or a public function, to have a definite means of livelihood and to be a useful cog in the social machine, all these things seem necessary, even indispensable, to the vast majority of men, including intellectuals, and including even those who think of themselves as wholly liberated. And yet such things are only a different form of slavery that comes of contact with others, especially regulated and continued contact.”
― Isabelle Eberhardt

“Never give your soul to a creature, because it belongs to God alone; see in all creatures a motive for rejoicing, in homage to the Creator; never seek yourself in another, but discover yourself in yourself”
― Isabelle Eberhardt, Isabelle Eberhardt: Brieven, dagboeken en verhalen

“To be alone, to have few needs, to be unknown, everywhere a foreigner and at home, and to walk grandly and solitarily in conquest of the world.
Is not the sturdy vagabond, sitting beside the road, contemplating the wide and open horizon before him, the absolute master of lands, waters, and even the skies?
What lord of the manor can rival him in power and opulence?
His fiefdom has no limits and his empire no law.
No servitude demeans his bearing, no labor bends his spine to the earth, the earth that he possesses and which gives itself to him in its entirety, in goodness and in beauty.”
― Isabelle Eberhardt, Writings from the Sand, Volume 1: Collected Works of Isabelle Eberhardt

“O ato de partir é o mais corajoso e o mais belo. Estar só, ser livre de necessidades, ser ignorada, estrangeira e nativa em todos os lugares e caminhar, solitária e grande, à conquista do mundo.”
― Isabelle Eberhardt, The Nomad: Diaries of Isabelle Eberhardt

“Quand mon coeur souffrait, il commençait à vivre.”
― Isabelle Eberhardt, In the Shadow of Islam

“Сейчас более чем когда-либо я понимаю, что я никогда не будет довольствоваться оседлый образ жизни, что я всегда буду преследуют мысли о залитые солнцем в другом месте.”
― Isabelle Eberhardt, The Nomad: Diaries of Isabelle Eberhardt

“Souvent, depuis que j’ai quitté Slimane, j’ai ressenti un désir torturant de franchir la distance qui nous sépare, le besoin absolu, intime, de l’avoir près de moi, lui et rien que lui, et l’irrémédiable désespoir d’être exilée, de ne pouvoir courir à lui ; une soif âpre douloureuse d’entendre sa voix, de voir son regard se poser sur le mien, de sentir sa présence, d’éprouver encore cette sensation d’absolue sécurité qui nous est commune.
Combien durera l’exil ?”
― Isabelle Eberhardt

“O ato de partir é o mais corajoso e o mais belo. Estar só, ser livre de necessidades, ser ignorado, estrangeiro e nativo em todos os lugares e caminhar, solitário e grande, à conquista do mundo.”
― Isabelle Eberhardt, Notes de route: Maroc - Algérie - Tunisie

“El mundo se dirige hacia la tumba como la noche hacia el alba.”
― Isabelle Eberhardt

“Excités par une jument noire, née sous le ciel brûlant de la lointaine In-Salah, les étalons piaffaient, frémissaient et hennissaient, courbant avec grâce leurs cous puissants sous la lourde crinière libre.”
― Isabelle Eberhardt