78 Quotes by Isabella Bird

An Englishman bears with patience any ridicule which foreigners cast upon him. John Bull never laughs so loudly as when he laughs at himself; but the Americans are nationally sensitive and cannot endure that good-humoured raillery which jests at their weaknesses and foibles.

The Malays can hardly be said to have an indigenous literature, for it is almost entirely derived from Persia, Siam, Arabia, and Java. Arabic is their sacred language.

To a person sitting quietly at home, Rocky Mountain traveling, like Rocky Mountain scenery, must seem very monotonous; but not so to me, to whom the pure, dry mountain air is the elixir of life.

A traveller must buy his own experience, and success or failure depends mainly on personal idiosyncrasies.

Baghdad is altogether built of chrome-yellow kiln-dried bricks.

I lived among the Japanese, and saw their mode of living, in regions unaffected by European contact.

If Japanese tea 'stands,' it acquires a coarse bitterness and an unwholesome astringency. Milk and sugar are not used.

It is extremely interesting to live in a private house and to see the externalities, at least, of domestic life in a Japanese middle-class home.

Poverty brings one blessing in Turkey - the poor man is of necessity a monogamist.