161 Quotes by Freya Stark

A part of all art is to make silence speak. The things left out in painting, the note withheld in music, the void in architecture – all are as necessary and as active as the utterance itself.

The artist’s business is to take sorrow when it comes. The depth and capacity of his reception is the measure of his art; and when he turns his back on his own suffering, he denies the very laws of his being and closes the door on everything that can ever make him great.

The true call of the desert, of the mountains, or the sea, is their silence – free of the networks of dead speech.

Whatever the advantages of the machine may be – and they are many – the very ease of its use is bound to make away with intimacy – the intercourse of human beings, of animals, or of that which we still think of as the natural world.

You will, if you’re wise and know the art of travel, let yourself go on the stream of the unknown and accept whatever comes in the spirit in which the gods may offer it.

I suspect anyone self-satisfied enough to refuse lawful pleasures: we are not sufficiently rich in our separate resources to reject the graces of the universe when offered...

This is one of the charms of the desert, that removing as it does nearly all the accessories of life, we see the thin thread of necessities on which our human existence is suspended...

It is better to be passionate than to be tolerant at the expense of one’s soul.

The art of advertising – untruthfulness combined with repetition.