Isabella Bird

“If Japanese tea 'stands,' it acquires a coarse bitterness and an unwholesome astringency. Milk and sugar are not used.”

“The Japanese look most diminutive in European dress. Each garment is a misfit and exaggerates the miserable physique and the national defects of concave chests and bow legs. The lack of 'com...”

“The word 'aloha,' in foreign use, has taken the place of every English equivalent. It is a greeting, a farewell, thanks, love, goodwill. Aloha looks at you from tidies and illuminations; it...”

“If one's memories of Baghdad women were only of those to be seen in the streets, they would be of leathery, wrinkled faces, prematurely old, figures which have lost all shape, and henna-stai...”

“Everyone acknowledges that dinner parties are equally dull in London and Paris, in Calcutta and in New York, unless the next neighbour happens to be peculiarly agreeable.”

“Four hours after leaving Kornah, we passed the reputed tomb of Ezra the prophet. At a distance and in the moonlight it looked handsome. There is a buttressed river wall, and above it some lo...”

“Surely one advantage of traveling is that, while it removes much prejudice against foreigners and their customs, it intensifies tenfold one's appreciation of the good at home, and, above all...”

“It is extremely interesting to live in a private house and to see the externalities, at least, of domestic life in a Japanese middle-class home.”

“Malacca fascinates me more and more daily. There is, among other things, a mediaevalism about it. The noise of the modern world reaches it only in the faintest echoes; its sleep is almost dr...”

“There are eight or nine leading varieties of rice grown in Japan, all of which, except an upland species, require mud, water, and much puddling and nasty work. Rice is the staple food and th...”

“The Malays, like the Japanese, have a most rigid epistolary etiquette and set forms for letter writing. Letters must consist of six parts and are so highly elaborate that the scribes who ind...”

“The breadfruit is a superb tree, about 60 feet high, with deep green, shining leaves, a foot broad, sharply and symmetrically cut, worthy, from their exceeding beauty of form, to take the pl...”

“Leh has few of what Europeans regard as travelling necessaries. The brick tea which I purchased from a Lhassa trader was disgusting. I afterwards understood that blood is used in making up t...”

“The rush of a herd of bellowing yaks at a wild gallop, waving their huge tails, is a grand sight.”

“The kimono, haori, and girdle, and even the long hanging sleeves, have only parallel seams, and these are only tacked or basted, as the garments, when washed, are taken to pieces, and each p...”

“Other lands may have their charms, and the sunny skies of other climes may be regretted, but it is with pride and gladness that the wanderer sets foot again on British soil, thanking God for...”

“Grandeur and sublimity, not softness, are the features of Estes Park. The glades which begin so softly are soon lost in the dark primaeval forests, with their peaks of rosy granite and their...”

“Yokohama does not improve on further acquaintance. It has a dead-alive look. It has irregularity without picturesqueness, and the grey sky, grey sea, grey houses, and grey roofs, look harmon...”

“The Tibetans are dirty. They wash once a year and, except for festivals, seldom change their clothes till they begin to drop off. They are healthy and hardy; even the women can carry weights...”

“A traveller must buy his own experience, and success or failure depends mainly on personal idiosyncrasies.”