Richard Francis Burton Quotes

Little islands are all large prisons: one cannot look at the sea without wishing for the wings of a swallow.

Seagulls . . . slim yachts of the element.

We all have wings, but they have not been of any avail to us and if we could tear them off, we would do so.

Every time I slip into the ocean, it's like going home.

Every time we walk along a beach some ancient urge disturbs us so that we find ourselves shedding shoes and garments or scavenging among seaweed and whitened timbers like the homesick refugees of a long war.

Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground.

The sea-road is good for wanderers and landless men. There is quenching of thirst on the grey paths of the winds, and the flying clouds to still the sting of lost dreams.

Meet me where the sky touches the sea. Wait for me where the world begins.

Thou little bird, thou dweller by the sea, Why takest thou its melancholy voice, And with that boding cry Along the waves dost thou fly? Oh! rather, bird, with me Through this fair land rejoice!

I am restless. I am athirst for faraway things. My soul goes out in a longing to touch the skirt of the dim distance. O Great Beyond, O the keen call of thy flute! I forget, I ever forget, that I have no wings to fly, that I am bound in this spot evermore.

O for a horse with wings!

Yes, it was too late, and Sabina knew she would leave Paris, move on, and on again, because were she to die here they would cover her up with a stone, and in the mind of a woman for whom no place is home the thought of an end to all flight is unbearable.

I wish we had all been born birds instead.

I'm like a bird, I'll only fly away...

The mountains are so beautiful they make me ache inside because the moment I look away I know I shall need to see them again. And I cannot spend the rest of my life standing on the spot starting at shifting sunlight and mist and shadows across the sea.

In every message she spoke of birds, of flight, of the world away. Even back then, she flew against what was presented to her. I wanted to cling to her wings and soar, no matter how intimidated I was.

Do you ever dangle your toes over the precipice, dare the cliff to crumble, defy the frozen deity to suffer the sun, thaw feather and bone, take wing to fly you home?

I have had my dance with Folly, nor do I shirk the blame; I have sipped the so-called Wine of Life and paid the price of shame; But I know that I shall find surcease, the rest my spirit craves, Where the rainbows play in the flying spray, 'Mid the keen salt kiss of the waves.

When I was young, I wanted to find the Great Dark Man. When I said that I realise now that people thought that by 'dark' I meant black, and that by 'great' I meant big. Whereas I only meant a strong, mysterious person; someone who would 'take me away from all this.'

Everything, even herself, was now unbearable to her. She wished that, taking wing like a bird, she could fly somewhere, far away to regions of purity, and there grow young again.

Don't wanna sleep, don't wanna die, just wanna go a-travellin' through the pastures of the sky

I'd stare up at the sky and just dream a lot. Still do. I dreamed that I didn't belong here, that I was going to travel a lot.

When this is over...we will got to the rainforest, or a beach as white as bone. We will eat grapes from the vine, we will swim with sea turtles, we will walk miles on cobblestone streets. We will laugh and talk and confess. We will.

We ran as if to meet the moon.