# Quote — Wilfred Thesiger, Arabian Sands

> I knew that I had made my last journey in the Empty Quarter and that a phase in my life was ended. Here in the desert I had found all that I asked; I knew that I should never find it again.  But it was not only this personal sorrow that distressed me. I realized that the Bedu with whom I had lived and travelled, and in whose company I had found contentment, were doomed.  Some people maintain that they will be better off when they have exchanged the hardship and poverty of the desert for the security of a materialistic world.  This I do not believe.  I shall always remember how often I was humbled by those illiterate herdsmen who possessed, in so much greater measure than I, generosity and courage, endurance, patience, and light-hearted gallantry.  Among no other people have I felt the same sense of personal inferiority.

- Author: [Wilfred Thesiger](https://www.leafyquotes.com/wilfred-thesiger.md)
- Book: [Arabian Sands](https://www.leafyquotes.com/wilfred-thesiger/arabian-sands.md)
- Page: 310
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wilfred_Thesiger#Arabian_Sands_(1959)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/wilfred-thesiger/arabian-sands/i-knew-that

## More from this book

> Strike a Bedu and he will kill you either then or later.  It is easy for strangers to give offence without meaning to do so.  I once put my hand on the back of bin Kabina’s neck and he turned on me and asked furiously if I took him for a slave.  I had no idea that I had done anything wrong.

p. 148 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/wilfred-thesiger/arabian-sands/strike-a-bedu.md)

> In the deserts, however arid, I have never felt homesick for green fields and woods in spring, but now that I was in England I longed with an ache that was almost physical to be back in Arabia.

p. 187 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/wilfred-thesiger/arabian-sands/in-the-deserts.md)

> Now I had crossed it [the Empty Quarter].  To others my journey would have little importance.  It would produce nothing except a rather inaccurate map which no one was ever likely to use.  It was a personal experience, and the reward had been a drink of clean, nearly tasteless water.  I was content with that.

p. 138 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/wilfred-thesiger/arabian-sands/now-i-had.md)