Isabelle Eberhardt

“ربما يكمن كل السحر المؤلم في اليقين المطلق للموت. لو كانت الأشياء أزلية لبدت لنا غير جديرة بالتعلق بها.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

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