The Inspiration

“To have a house , a family, a property, or a public function, to have a definite means of livelihood and to be a useful cog in the social machine, all these things seem necessary, even indispensable to the vast majority of men, including intellectuals, and including even those who think of themselves as wholly liberated. And yet such things are only a different form of slavery that comes of contact with others, especially regulated and continued contact.

Not to feel the torturing need to know and see for oneself what is there beyond the mysterious blue wall of the horizon, not to find the arrangements of life monotonous and depressing, to look at the white road leading off into the unknown distance without feeling the imperious necessity of giving in to it and following it obediently across mountains and valleys! The cowardly belief that a man must stay in one place is too reminiscent of the unquestioning resignation of animals, beasts of burden stupefied by servitude and yet always willing to accept the slipping on of the harness.

There are limits to every domain and laws to govern every organised power. But the vagrant owns the whole vast earth that ends at the non-existent horizon, and his empire is an intangible one, for his domination and enjoyment of it are things of the spirit”

Isabelle Eberhardt – The Oblivion Seekers