Quotes by Dervla Murphy - Page 1

Each human spirit is immortalfor time cannot destroy
Dervla Murphy / Cyclist
Time
Humans
Spirit
Copy Quote
... strong bonds are forged in high emotional temperatures.
Dervla Murphy / Cyclist
Emotional
Strong
Temperature
Copy Quote
poverty denotes a lack of necessities and simplicity a lack of needs.
Dervla Murphy / Cyclist
Needs
Poverty
Simplicity
Copy Quote
Buying a bicycle is a momentous event, akin to marriage: you are acquiring a partner.
Dervla Murphy / Cyclist
Buying
Events
Partners
Copy Quote
apartheid still hangs in the air like a poisonous cloud left over from chemical warfare.
Dervla Murphy / Cyclist
Air
Clouds
Racism
Copy Quote
hatred, however apparently justifiable, excusable or inevitable, always damages the hater.
Dervla Murphy / Cyclist
Damage
Hate
Hatred
Copy Quote
one of the advantages of cycling is that it automatically prevents a journey from becoming an Expedition.
Dervla Murphy / Cyclist
Journey
Becoming
Cycling
Copy Quote
On my tenth birthday a bicycle and an atlas coincided as presents and a few days later I decided to cycle to India.
Dervla Murphy / Cyclist
Inspirational
Atlas
India
Copy Quote
The Irish have a flair for wringing from death the last drop of emotion and they do not quite understand those who react otherwise.
Dervla Murphy / Cyclist
Emotion
Flair
Lasts
Copy Quote
It is far easier to explain to a three-year-old how babies are made than to explain the processes whereby bread or sugar appear on the table.
Dervla Murphy / Cyclist
Baby
Tables
Years
Copy Quote
... I know a number of Western children who would benefit greatly if only someone were primitive enough to inhibit the development of their personalities.
Dervla Murphy / Cyclist
Children
Numbers
Personality
Copy Quote
Undoubtedly the Afghans must be, by our standards, the best-looking people in the world. They have everything; height, proportions, carriage, features and complexion.
Dervla Murphy / Cyclist
Height
People
World
Copy Quote
Sunnis consider Shias a pack of unwholesome fanatics and Shias consider Sunnis a gang of lukewarm no-goods - there's nothing like religion for spreading brotherly love!
Dervla Murphy / Cyclist
Brotherly Love
Gang
Shia
Copy Quote
Is this something else our age does - on the one hand make communication easier than ever before, while on the other hand widening the gulf between those who are 'developed' and those who are not?
Dervla Murphy / Cyclist
Age
Communication
Hands
Copy Quote
Whatever the theologians might say about heaven being in a state of union with God, I knew it consisted of an infinite library; and eternity was simply what enabled one to read uninterruptedly for ever.
Dervla Murphy / Cyclist
Heaven
Library
Unions
Copy Quote
I wonder if those experts who tell us that our sexual appetite is the strongest know what real thirst feels like; I can imagine the desire for water driving someone to commit a crime to which sexual desire could never drive them.
Dervla Murphy / Cyclist
Desire
Real
Water
Copy Quote
[On Addis Ababa:] Among the city's handicaps are an immaturity for which no one can be blamed, as it was founded only eighty years ago, and a proliferation of architectural excesses for which many people can and should be blamed.
Dervla Murphy / Cyclist
Cities
People
Years
Copy Quote
There are two phases of enjoyment in journeying through an unknown country - the eager phase of wondering interest in every detail, and the relaxed phase when one feels no longer an observer of the exotic, but a participator in the rhythm of daily life.
Dervla Murphy / Cyclist
Country
Details
Two
Copy Quote
On my tenth birthday a bicycle and an atlas coincided as gifts, and a few days later I decided to cycle to India...However, I was a cunning child so I kept my ambition to myself, thus avoiding the tolerant amusement it would have provoked among my elders.
Dervla Murphy / Cyclist
Ambition
Children
India
Copy Quote
With our mad lust for Uniformity and a Higher Standard of Living and Expanding Markets, we go to a country like Afghanistan and cruelly try to jerk her forward two thousand years in two decades, giving no thought to the profound shock this must be to her national psychology.
Dervla Murphy / Cyclist
Country
Two
Years
Copy Quote
The more I see of life in these 'undeveloped countries' and of the methods adopted to 'improve' them, the more depressed I become. It seems criminal that the backwardness of a country like Afghanistan should be used as an excuse for America and Russia to have a tug-of-war for possession.
Dervla Murphy / Cyclist
War
America
Country
Copy Quote
perhaps there is something more than courtesy behind the dissembling reticence of childhood. ... Most artists dislike having their incomplete work considered and discussed and this analogy, I think, is valid. The child is incomplete, too, and is constantly experimenting as he seeks his own style of thought and feeling.
Dervla Murphy / Cyclist
Artist
Children
Thinking
Copy Quote
Without evading the grimness of life in much of modern Africa, one can recognize that this continent is not yet sick as our continent is sick. Most Africans remain plugged into reality. In contrast we have become disconnected from it, reduced to compulsively consuming units, taught to worship 'economic growth' - the ultimate unreality in a finite world.
Dervla Murphy / Cyclist
Growth
Reality
Sick
Copy Quote
To me writing was not a career but a necessity. And so it remains, though I am now, technically, a professional writer. The strength of this inborn desire to write has always baffled me. It is understandable that the really gifted should feel an overwhelming urge to use their gift; but a strong urge with only a slight gift seems almost a genetic mistake.
Dervla Murphy / Cyclist
Mistake
Strong
Writing
Copy Quote
the sudden violent dispossession accompanying a refugee flight is much more than the loss of a permanent home and a traditional occupation, or than the parting from close friends and familiar places. It is also the death of the person one has become in a particular context, and every refugee must be his or her own midwife at the painful process of rebirth.
Dervla Murphy / Cyclist
Home
Loss
Occupation
Copy Quote
This is a city of absolute enchantment in the literal sense of the word. It loosens all the bonds binding the traveller to his own age and sets him free to live in a past that is vital and crude but never ugly. Herat is as old as history and as moving as a great epic poem - if Afghanistan had nothing else it would have been worth coming to experience this.
Dervla Murphy / Cyclist
Epic
Moving
Past
Copy Quote
one feels guilty on behalf of Western civilisation. What damage are we doing, blindly and swiftly, to those races who are being taught that because we are materially richer we must be emulated without question? What compels us to infect everyone else with our own sick urgency to change, soften and standardise? How can we have the effrontery to lord it over peoples who retain what we have lost - a sane awareness that what matters most is immeasurable?
Dervla Murphy / Cyclist
Race
Sick
What Matters
Copy Quote

Related Cyclist Authors

Victoria Pendleton
Cyclist
Wednesday, Sep 24, 1980
Tim Gould
Cyclist
Saturday, May 30, 1964
Sven Nys
Cyclist
Thursday, Jun 17, 1976
Rebecca Twigg
Cyclist
Tuesday, Mar 26, 1963
Pat Mcquaid
Cyclist
Monday, Sep 05, 1949
Miguel Indurain
Cyclist
Thursday, Jul 16, 1964
Mark Renshaw
Cyclist
Friday, Oct 22, 1982
Major Taylor
Cyclist
Tuesday, Nov 26, 1878
Tuesday, Jun 21, 1932
Lori-Ann Muenzer
Cyclist
Saturday, May 21, 1966
Johnny G
Cyclist
Jean De Gribaldy
Cyclist
Tuesday, Jul 18, 1922
Friday, Jan 02, 1987
Jacques Anquetil
Cyclist
Monday, Jan 08, 1934
Wednesday, Nov 18, 1987
Graeme Obree
Cyclist
Saturday, Sep 11, 1965
Gino Bartali
Cyclist
Saturday, Jul 18, 1914
Friday, May 05, 2000
Fausto Coppi
Cyclist
Monday, Sep 15, 1919
Saturday, Jan 02, 1960

View All Cyclist Quotes

Top Authors

Benjamin Franklin
Founding Father Of The United States
Sunday, Jan 17, 1706
Saturday, Apr 17, 1790
Paulo Coelho
Lyricist
Sunday, Aug 24, 1947
Jordan Peterson
Psychologist
John C. Maxwell
Author
Thursday, Feb 20, 1947
Oscar Wilde
Writer
Monday, Oct 16, 1854
Friday, Nov 30, 1900
Tyler, The Creator
Rapper
Wednesday, Mar 06, 1991
Francis Of Assisi
Saint
Thursday, Jun 24, 1182
Saturday, Oct 03, 1226
Napoleon Bonaparte
Military Commander
Tuesday, Aug 15, 1769
Saturday, May 05, 1821
Oprah Winfrey
Media Proprietor
Friday, Jan 29, 1954
Dolly Parton
Singer-Songwriter
Saturday, Jan 19, 1946
Voltaire
Writer
Sunday, Nov 21, 1694
Saturday, May 30, 1778
Les Brown
Author
Saturday, Feb 17, 1945
Lucy Larcom
Poet
Friday, Mar 05, 1824
Monday, Apr 17, 1893
Leonardo Da Vinci
Painter
Thursday, Apr 15, 1452
Friday, May 02, 1519
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Poet
Saturday, Aug 05, 1809
Thursday, Oct 06, 1892

View All Authors

Dervla Murphy Quotes - Page 1

Picture Quotes Maker

Related Cyclist Authors

Popular Topic Tags

Top Authors

Share This Page

Stay Connected

Picture Quotes Maker

Related Cyclist Authors

Popular Topic Tags

Top Authors

Share This Page