The charm of the East is the absence of intellectual life there, the freedom one’s mind gets from anxiety in looking forward or pain in looking back. Nobody here thinks of the past or the future, only of the present; and till the day of one’s death comes, I suppose the present will always be endurable.
Lady Anne Blunt
Damascus, Syria, 1878
Source: Lady Anne Blunt, A Pilgrimage to Nejd Vol.1, London: John Murray, Albemarle St, 1881
Further links:
https://archive.org/details/apilgrimagetone06blungoog
https://blogs.loc.gov/maps/2016/03/lady-anne-blunt/
http://cmkarabians.com/2008/11/21/lady-anne-blunt-in-the-london-times/
Lady Anne Blunt, Rosemary Archer & James Fleming (Eds), Lady Anne Blunt Journals and Correspondance 1878 - 1915, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire: A.Heriot, 1986
Lisa Lacy, Lady Anne Blunt in the Middle East: Travel, Politics and the Idea of Empire, I.B. Taurus & Co. Ltd, 2017
