Quotes by Jan Morris

Brooded over by mist more often than swirled about by cloud, drizzled rather than storm-swept, on the western perimeter of Europe lies the damp, demanding and obsessively interesting country called by its own people Cymru and known to the rest of the world, if it is known at all, as Wales.

I told him everything and it was from him that I learned what my future would be.

Its origins are ancient but it burgeons with brash modernity, and it lounges upon its delectable shore, halfway between the Israelis and the Syrians, in a posture that no such city, at such a latitude, in such a moment of history, has any reasonable excuse for assuming.

Its smallness is not petty; on the contrary, it is profound.

The language of economics is seldom limpid, but in H Street they usually manage to remove from it the very last flickering colophon of charm.

There it stands, with a toss of curls and a flounce of skirts, a Carmen among the cities. the last of the Middle Eastern fleshpots. a junction of intrigue and speculation.

To the stern student of affairs, Beirut is a phenomenon, beguiling perhaps, but quite, quite impossible.

Travel seems not just a way of having a good time, but something that every self-respecting citizen ought to undertake, like a high-fiber diet, say, or a deodorant.

Travel, which was once either a necessity or an adventure, has become very largely a commodity, and from all sides we are persuaded into thinking that it is a social requirement, too.

Worldwide travel is not compulsory. Great minds have been fostered entirely by staying close to home. Moses never got further than the Promised Land. Da Vinci and Beethoven never left Europe. Shakespeare hardly went anywhere at all-certainly not to Elsinore or the coast of Bohemia.