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Portrait of Freya Stark

Freya Stark

131 quotes in 804 categories

Freya Stark writes about how we might need a new body when we reach thirty, and how the world can feel crowded like an over‑furnished room. She also says love can cost a life, that surprise waits around every corner, and that words are the arteries that carry our thoughts.

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Freya Stark was a British‑Italian explorer and travel writer who authored over two dozen books about the Middle East and Afghanistan.

Quick Facts About Freya Stark

Notable works: Ionia, a quest

About Freya Stark

Born Freya Madeline Stark, she earned the title Dame for her achievements. In addition to more than two dozen travel books about the Middle East and Afghanistan, she wrote autobiographies and essays. She was one of the first non‑Arabs to cross the southern Arabian Desert in modern times.

Quotes by Freya Stark

All our acts have sacramental possibilities.

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Nearly all trouble comes from mis-timing.

Mistake

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Who dares to be intellectual in the presence of death?

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We love those people who give with humility, or who accept with ease.

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There is generosity in giving, but gentleness in receiving.

Generosity

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One life is an absurdly small allowance.

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Curiosity is the one thing invincible in Nature.

Curiosity

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The world has become too full of many things, an over furnished room.

Furnished

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advertisement ... has brought our disregard for truth into the open without even a figleaf to cover it.

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The true call of the desert, of the mountains, or the sea, is their silence - free of the networks of dead…

Communication

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Fair and unfair are among the most influential words in English and must be delicately used.

Fair

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This is excellence - the following of anything for its own sake and with its own integrity.

Excellence

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... freshness trembles beneath the surface of Everyday, a joy perpetual to all who catch its opal lights beneath the dust of habit.

Beneath the surface

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... it is a matter of civilizing everyone or not being civilized at all: the decay has always come from a partial civilization.

Civilization

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... the thwarting of the instinct to love is the root of all sorrow and not sex only but divinity itself is…

Divinity

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The true fruit of travel is perhaps the feeling of being nearly everywhere at home.

Feelings

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Few - very few - of our attainments are so profound that they are valid for always; even if they are so,…

Adaptability

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On the whole, age comes more gently to those who have some doorway into an abstract world-art, or philosophy, or learning-regions where…

Abstract

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Most people, after accomplishing something, use it over and over again like a gramophone record till it cracks, forgetting that the past…

Accomplishing something

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Love, like broken porcelain, should be wept over and buried, for nothing but a miracle will resuscitate it: but who in this…

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the main necessity on both sides of a revolution is kindness, which makes possible the most surprising things. To treat one's neighbor…

Both sides

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Once divested of missionary virus, the cult of our gods gives no offence. It would be a peaceful age if this were…

Age

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You will, if you're wise and know the art of travel, let yourself go on the stream of the unknown and accept…

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... there are few things that can reconcile us fully to our parting with a world of which the longest life can…

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One is so apt to think of people's affection as a fixed quantity, instead of a sort of moving so with the…

Affection

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Every victory of man over man has in itself a taste of defeat… There is no essential difference between the various human…

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I have met charming people, lots who would be charming if they hadn't got a complex about the British and everyone has…

America

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Christmas, in fact, is not an external event at all, but a piece of one's home that one carries in one's heart:…

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not wholly consciously, but not quite unconsciously, as far as I can remember, I determined to fashion my future as a sculptor…

Artist

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Perhaps the best function of parenthood is to teach the young creature to love with safety, so that it may be able…

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The past is our treasure. Its works, whether we know them or not, flourish in our lives with whatever strength they had.…

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The tourist travels in his own atmosphere like a snail in his shell and stands, as it were, on his own perambulating…

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... except in the eyes of a few fanatics (untrustworthy as all lovers) an unmitigated expanse of water is dull even when…

Blue

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“To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world. You are surrounded by adventure.…

Adventure

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words are but drops pressed out of the lives of those who lived them.

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“The beckoning counts, not the clicking latch behind you”

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The beckoning counts, and not the clicking of the latch behind you.

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It is only the unexpected that ever makes a customs officer think.

Culture

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Risk is the salt and sugar of life.

Inspirational

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Words are the only arteries of thought our poor human body possesses.

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Freya Stark by topic

Life (17) Humans (14) World (13) Travel (13) Thinking (12) People (12) Art (12)