Mademoiselle De Lafontaine _ in right of her father, who was a German, assumed to be psychological, metaphysical and something of a mystic _ now declared that when the moon shone with a light so intense it was well known that it indicated a special spiritual activity. The effect of the full moon in such a state of brilliancy was manifold. It acted on dreams, it acted on lunacy, it acted on nervous people; it had marvelous physical influences connected with life. Mademoiselle related that here cousin, who was mate of a merchant ship, having taken a nap on deck on such a night, lying on his back, with his face full in the light of the moon, had wakened, after a dream of an old woman clawing him by the cheek, with his features horribly drawn to one side; and his countenance had never quite recovered its equilibrium.
So they drove again, Vivien sitting up and looking now, but as navigator only, letting the desert scratch its own thorny poetry on the enormous moon.
Quote Detail
So they drove again, Vivien sitting up and looking now, but as navigator only, letting the desert scratch its own thorny poetry on the enormous moon.
Quick Answer
What this quote page tells you
This canonical quote page keeps the full saying, the attributed author, any linked work, and the topic tags together so the quote can be cited from one stable URL.
Related Quotes
More quote cards from the same area
It was so awful! And he kept on looking at me and I knew I must get out of bed or he'd come and touch me. I did, too, but when I got out I wasn't me-I was a little white bunny. And he started out of the room and I had to go with him for fear he'd touch me. It felt so horrid, going out with him and looking back at mother there asleep."We went into the main part of the house, and one of the big front doors was open, and we went out through it. And then he gave a big jump, and so did I, and it took us clear up into the sky. We couldn't fly, but we kept jumping and jumping."Sometimes we stayed in the sky a little while, jumping from cloud to cloud, and the moon would get closer and closer and bigger and bigger, and its face would change and get horrible and grin at us until it seemed like its mouth was a mile wide and open, to swallow us up. And then we'd come down again and jump from one cliff to another, and the sea would be roaring down under us, and the waves all grey and cold and moving around and boiling like they were mad or afraid."We went all over the island and sometimes we jumped over the sea to the mainland and back again; and sometimes I tried to get away and run back to Mother - I thought she'd know me even if I was a bunny - but always, whichever way I turned, the hare was there in front of me, and his teeth were shining."We kept it up all night, and I was so tired and cold and miserable, and so scared. I didn't know whether he would ever let me go home or whether he would take me to Aunt Sarai. Then finally I did get away and the hare chased me!"She broke off, her voice rising again to a wail."It was so awful! I ran all over the island, into all sorts of queer little places that I never knew were there before - it seems so different after dark - and finally, when two or three times I'd been so tired that I thought I just couldn't go any farther, before he caught me, I saw the house in front of me and the front door still open and I started to run in, and then I thought - what if they'd planned it that way, and Aunt Sarai had come down from her portrait and was inside there in the dark, waiting for me?
...nobody ever takes from the desert anything but aridity and monsters...
Even if everybody is looking at the same light bulb, the unique composition of an individual will dictate how they interpret and see things. Some people will only see things with their left eye (mind/moon), while others will use only their right (heart/sun). Some people are completely void of light and repel it immediately. For instance, a beetle will chase after an opening of light, while a cockroach will scatter at a crack of it. How are we different than the insects? Nobody is purely good or purely evil. Most of us are in-between. There are moths that explore the day and butterflies that play at night. Polarity is an integral part of nature _ human or not human.
They were the men and the women of the sand, of the wind, of the light, of the night. They appeared as in a dream, at the crest of a dune, as if they were born of the cloudless sky.
Beyond the wall of the unreal city _ there is another world waiting for you. It is the old true world of the deserts, the mountains, the forests, the islands, the shores, the open plains. Go there. Be there. Walk gently and quietly deep within it. And then __ay your trails be dim, lonesome, stony, narrow, winding and only slightly uphill. May the wind bring rain for the slickrock potholes fourteen miles on the other side of yonder blue ridge. May God's dog serenade your campfire, may the rattlesnake and the screech owl amuse your reverie, may the Great Sun dazzle your eyes by day and the Great Bear watch over you by night.