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Isabelle Eberhardt

Isabelle Eberhardt Quotes

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Famous Isabelle Eberhardt Quotes

“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.”

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Author:Isabelle Eberhardt
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“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.”

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Book:Writings from the Sand, Volume 1: Collected Works of Isabelle Eberhardt
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“Civilization, that great fraud of our times, has promised man that by complicating his existence it would multiply his pleasures. ... Civilization has promised man freedom, at the cost of giving up everything dear to him, which it arrogantly treated as lies and fantasies. ... Hour by hour needs increase and are nearly always unsatisfied, peopling the earth with discontented rebels. The superfluous has become a necessity and luxuries indispensable.”

MenNeedsGivingEarthLyingHoursPleasureExistenceFantasyCivilizationCostGiving UpIncreaseDearTreatedLuxuryOur TimeFraudRebelIndispensableSuperfluousUnsatisfied
Author:Isabelle Eberhardt
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“I will only ever be drawn to people who suffer from that special and fertile anguish called self-doubt, or the thirst for the ideal, and desire for the soul's mystical fire. Self-satisfaction because of some material accomplishment will never be for me. The truly great are those who quest for better spiritual selves.”

PeopleSoulSelfSpiritualDesireSufferingDoubtFireSpecialMaterialsIdealsSatisfactionAccomplishmentQuestsThirstMysticalAnguishFertileSelf-doubtSelf-satisfaction
Book:The Nomad: The Diaries of Isabelle Eberhardt
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“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.”

PersonsEndsWholeEarthLawSpiritBeliefAnimalAcceptingWillingLimitsBurdenEnjoymentBeastOrganizedEmpiresHorizonDominationDomainResignationCowardlyServitudeHarnessSlippingIntangibleVagrantsBeast Of Burden
Author:Isabelle Eberhardt
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“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.”

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Author:Isabelle Eberhardt
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