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1 " I have found a dream of beauty at which one might look all one's life and sigh. "
― Isabella Lucy Bird , Adventures in the Rocky Mountains
2 " I sat down and knitted for some time - my usual resource under discouraging circumstances. "
― Isabella Lucy Bird , A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains
3 " Everything suggests a beyond. "
4 " In traveling, there is nothing like dissecting people's statements, which are usually colored by their estimate of the powers or likings of the person spoken to, making all reasonable inquiries, and then pertinaciously but quietly carrying out one's own plans. "
5 " Truly a good horse, good ground to gallop on, and sunshine, make up the sum of enjoyable travelling. "
― Isabella Lucy Bird , Unbeaten Tracks in Japan
6 " I still vote civilization a nuisance, society a humbug and all conventionality a crime. "
― Isabella Lucy Bird
7 " Yet, after all, they were not bad souls; and though he failed so grotesquely, he did his incompetent best. "
8 " There is also a dog, but he does not understand English, "
― Isabella Lucy Bird , Six Months in the Sandwich Islands: Among Hawaii's Palm Groves, Coral Reefs and Volcanoes
9 " people live more happily than any that I have seen elsewhere. It is very cheerful to live among people whose faces are not soured by the east wind, or wrinkled by the worrying effort to “keep up appearances,” which deceive nobody; "
10 " The scarcely audible whisper of soft airs through the trees morning and evening, rain drops falling gently, and the murmur of drowsy surges far below, alone break the stillness. "
11 " It is a strange life up here on the mountain side, but I like it, and never yearn after civilization. "
12 " Oh! To be beyond the pale once more, out of civilization into savagery? I abhor civilization! "
13 " I dreamt of bears so vividly that I woke with a furry death hug at my throat, but feeling quite refreshed. "
14 " Americans specially love superlatives. The phrases "biggest in the world", "finest in the world", are on all lips. Unless president Hayes is a strong manthey will soon come to boast that their government is composed of the "biggest scoundrels" in the world. "
15 " Most assuredly that spirit of envious rivalry and depreciating criticism in which many English travellers have written, is greatly to be deprecated, no less than the tone of servile adulation which some writers have adopted; but our American neighbours must recollect that they provoked both the virulent spirit and the hostile caricature by the way in which some of their most popular writers of travels have led an ungenerous onslaught against our institutions and people, and the bitter tone in which their newspaper press, headed by the Tribune, indulges towards "
― Isabella Lucy Bird , Englishwoman in America
16 " A little longer, and I too should say, like all who have made their homes here under the deep banana shade,-- “We will return no more, . . . . our island home Is far beyond the wave, we will no longer roam. "
17 " One of the most painful things in the Western States and Territories is the extinction of childhood. I have never seen any children, only debased imitations of men and women, cankered by greed and selfishness, and asserting and gaining complete independence of their parents at ten years old. The atmosphere in which they are brought up is one of greed, godlessness, and frequently of profanity. "
18 " By sunlight or moonlight, its splintered grey crest is the one object which, in spire of wapitu and bighorn, skunk and grizzli, unfailingly arrests the eyes. From it come all storms of snow and wind, and the forked lightnings play around its head like a glory. It is one of he noblest of mountains, but in one's imagination it grows to be much more than a mountain. It becomes invested with a personality. "
19 " For the benefit of other lady travelers, I wish to explain that my "Hawaiian riding dress" is the "American Lady's Mountain Dress," a half-fitting jacket, a skirt reaching to the ankles, and full Turkish trousers gathered into frills falling over the boots,—a thoroughly serviceable and feminine costume for mountaineering and other rough traveling, as in the Alps or any other part of the world. I. L. B. (Author's note to the second edition, November 27, 1879.) Once "
20 " No more hunters' tales told while the pine knots crack and blaze; no more thrilling narratives of adventures with Indians and bears; and never again shall I hear that strange talk of Nature and her doings which is the speech of those who live with her and her alone. Already the dismalness of a level land comes over me. "
