The only thing for a pacifist to do is to find a substitute for war. Freya Stark More Quotes by Freya Stark More Quotes From Freya Stark 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. Freya Stark faith inspirational funny All our acts have sacramental possibilities. Freya Stark possibility One life is an absurdly small allowance. Freya Stark allowance life-is ... freshness trembles beneath the surface of Everyday, a joy perpetual to all who catch its opal lights beneath the dust of habit. Freya Stark dust light joy In one form or another, conscious or unconscious, we have all become propagandists; integrity alone can keep us truthful. Freya Stark truthful conscious integrity 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. Freya Stark self would-be hands It is better to be passionate than to be tolerant at the expense of one's soul. Freya Stark passionate passion soul The beckoning counts, and not the clicking of the latch behind you. Freya Stark latches behind-you travel Constancy, far from being a virtue, seems often to be the besetting sin of the human race, daughter of laziness and self-sufficiency, sister of sleep, the cause of most wars and practically all persecutions. Freya Stark daughter sleep war Pain and fear and hunger are effects of causes which can be foreseen and known: but sorrow is a debt which someone else makes for us. Freya Stark pain causes sorrow 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. Freya Stark voice believe hands it is a lean employment of time to brood on what might have happened along some other turning. Freya Stark employment regret might From love one can only escape at the price of life itself; and no lessening of sorrow is worth exile from that stream of all things human and divine. Freya Stark streams sorrow divine 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. Freya Stark discipline solitude ordinary Christmas, in fact, is not an external event at all, but a piece of one's home that one carries in one's heart: like a nursery story, its validity rests on exact repetition, so that it comes around every time as the evocation of one's whole life and particularly of the most distant bits of it in childhood. Freya Stark christmas home heart The essence of travel is diffuse. It is never there on the spot as it were, but always beyond: its symbol is the horizon, and its interest always lies over that edge in the unseen. Freya Stark unseen essence lying I first noticed how the sound of water is like the talk of human voices, and would sometimes wake in the night and listen, thinking that a crowd of people were coming through the woods. Freya Stark voice night thinking The portion we see of human beings is very small: their formats and faces, voices and words.... beyond these, like an immense dark continent, lies all that has made them. Freya Stark voice dark lying What I find trying in a country which you do not understand and where you cannot speak, is that you can never be yourself. Freya Stark being-yourself trying country ... except in the eyes of a few fanatics (untrustworthy as all lovers) an unmitigated expanse of water is dull even when blue: not in a small boat, where you are part of the winds and currents and tides and are allowed to hold the tiller now and then; but from those decks which the shipping companies with subconscious insight try to make as suburban as possible so that the impact of the monster outside may be lessened, and where the unrecognized boredom is so deep that a wispy smear of smoke on the horizon will queue up a crowd as if for a Valkyrie passing. Freya Stark impact eye blue
