Quotes from Jan Morris

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.

There is always a sneer in Las Vegas. The mountains around it sneer. The desert sneers. And arrogant in the middle of its wide valley, dominating those diligent sprawling suburbs, the downtown city sneers like anything.

This was my introduction to mountaineering, and clumsy indeed were my movements as we moved off.

God and the Soldier all men adore, In time of trouble and no more, For when war is over And all thing righted, God is neglected, And the Old Soldier slighted.

I believe in Kindness. Well, you may retort, who doesn't? But I believe in it rather as religious people believe in God. I think it is the answer to almost all of our problems: from the miseries of divorce to nuclear proliferation. If humanity learnt to gauge its every action by the simple criterion of kindness - always to ask if it is, on balance, the kindest thing to do? - the world would be much happier.

that the simplest and easiest of virtues, Kindness, can offer all of us not only a Way through the imbroglio, but a Destination too.

I accept the idea of helping men, and of being cherished by them. I've always had that feeling. If I could have my life over I suppose I would have been happiest being someone's second-in-command. Lieutenant to a really great man – that's my idea of happiness.

nobody really knows how anybody else feels - you may think you are feeling as a woman, or as a man, but you may simply be feeling as yourself.

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

Kashmir has always been more than a mere place. It has the quality of an experience, or a state of mind, or perhaps an ideal.

Indians love to reduce the prosaic to the mystic