The Cruel Way Quotes

“But the intensity of my desire to help her had spoilt my intention. That intensity had brought with it a kind of effort that had tired me. Had goodness been part of me I should have helped her with detachment, quite simply because I could not do otherwise—as the sun shines, or as one give a hand to a tumbling child; I should not have vitiated the movement by thinking: "I must succeed I have to succeed!”
― Ella K. Maillart, The Cruel Way: Switzerland to Afghanistan in a Ford, 1939

“The Nazis would not have turned their backs on the ideas of freedom and Christian love which alone can help man get along, if these ideas had not put up such a miserable show during the last centuries.”
― Ella K. Maillart, The Cruel Way: Switzerland to Afghanistan in a Ford, 1939

“But I have often notices that Westerners have an inborn tendency to minimize or ridicule whatever Persians do--not because it is badly done, but simply because they are exasperated by the pride of the Persian who boasts that what he has done is "the best in the world." They do not see that among Asiatics this attitude is the inevitable reaction to the condescension with which Westerners brought their mechanical progress to the East as if it were a revealed religion capable of healing all ills.”
― Ella K. Maillart, The Cruel Way: Switzerland to Afghanistan in a Ford, 1939

“I think that this sudden growth of transport facilities, especially in Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Russia, Manchoukuo, China, countries I have visited, discloses the background of our time: fear of too mighty neighbors.”
― Ella K. Maillart, The Cruel Way: Switzerland to Afghanistan in a Ford, 1939

“Before he became Amir, Abdur Rahman had been defeated by Shir Ali in Kabul. He took refuge in Samarkand where he spent ten years. Taking him for a country bumpkin, the Russians used to discuss all their political affairs before him, convinced that he did not understand them. But the future Amir had studied Russian secretly and learned much about Asiatic politics. Walking through the empty halls of Jahnama, I thought of him—bearded, shrewd, wearing the astrakhan kola,”
― Ella Maillart, The Cruel Way: Switzerland to Afghanistan in a Ford, 1939

“The youths all cried out as he disappeared, but a moment later he returned, altered in complexion, changed in figure, and said that a legion of beings clothed in green had seized him and carried him in a circle upwards. ‘They showed me strange things of a celestial character and on your cries reaching us they lowered me down to the earth’​”
― Ella Maillart, The Cruel Way: Switzerland to Afghanistan in a Ford, 1939

“We travelled with a bookshelf fixed above the back of our seat. The poor books were shaken madly during all these days, but we rejoiced to be able to lay our hand on the right volume at the right moment. Rubbing against each other were Marco Polo, Pelliot, Evans-Wentz, Vivekananda, Maritain, Jung, a life of Alexander the Great, Grousset, the Zend-Avesta. I picked The Darvishes by John P. Brown and H. A. Rose, and read aloud a passage about Jalal-ud-din Rumi.”
― Ella Maillart, The Cruel Way: Switzerland to Afghanistan in a Ford, 1939

“But with exceptional people who identify themselves almost entirely with their mind, who know that thought is foremost because where there is no thought there can be neither body nor object, the question is less important: the mind has no sex, or rather, it comprises both sexes alternately or even simultaneously. The body may grumble now and then at being forgotten, but since it is conditioned by the mind of which it is only a temporary tool, it will be unable to upset that mind. For such people it cannot be of grave consequence if they disobey the laws of nature: they can be said to have transcended them.”
― Ella Maillart, The Cruel Way: Switzerland to Afghanistan in a Ford, 1939

“In 1936 the Inland Exploration Company of New York obtained a concession over more than two hundred thousand square miles of Western Afghanistan; the same “interests” had also secured a concession on Persian soil, thus insuring that no rival could tap their underground naphtha from across the border. But could the boring machines be brought so far and the oil be piped to Chahbar on the Indian Ocean across more than a thousand miles of desert? A five-year contract had promised twenty per cent of the benefits to the Afghans; but two years later the company had suddenly given up its claim. Some people say that the Americans were frightened by the oil-expropriation that took place in Mexico.”
― Ella Maillart, The Cruel Way: Switzerland to Afghanistan in a Ford, 1939

“Even pain is joy to be more alive. . . . But don’t you think that so long as you wallow in pain you are bound by it? Pain can only be great if it is transcended, if it has made you aware of your depths, I feel sure of that . . .” Calmly, as a doctor speaks about an anonymous patient, Christina said that as a rule people take a drug to sharpen or widen their consciousness. But she took it only to forget her torment and this was a very limited experience. Then why was it that she took to it again and again after having been off it for months? “One day you will face your fear boldly: in it, through it, you will grasp your real being,” I replied. Then I read aloud this passage from Sri Aurobindo Ghose’s Thoughts and Glimpses: “Consciousness of being and Delight of being are the first parents. Also they are the last transcendences”
― Ella Maillart, The Cruel Way: Switzerland to Afghanistan in a Ford, 1939

“We were both travellers—she always running away from an emotional crisis (not seeing that she was already wishing for the next), I always seeking far afield the secret of harmonious living, or filling up time by courting risk, caught by the clean sharp “taste” it gives to life. Both of an active type, but while I repeatedly challenged myself to convince myself that I am not a worm, she on the contrary felt so unimpeachable that she could not imagine how any excess or experiment could touch either her health or her innocence. “How can a drug tried out of curiosity ever harm me, Christina?” That is what she had said in Berlin years ago.”
― Ella Maillart, The Cruel Way: Switzerland to Afghanistan in a Ford, 1939

“Christina was also in a gay mood: the paymaster had addressed her as Monsieur! The further we moved eastward, the more often was she taken for a boy. And this not only by Asiatics: in Delhi smart Major Gastrell spoke to her for fifteen minutes before suspecting that she was a woman.”
― Ella Maillart, The Cruel Way: Switzerland to Afghanistan in a Ford, 1939

“Impassivity was quite natural to her concern for perfect form: she could never have displayed an untidy face like mine. It was partly because of this strange tense serenity that a friend of ours used to call her the “Fallen Angel”. Her subtle body, her pensive face lighted by the pale brow, put forth a charm that acted powerfully on those who are attracted by the tragic greatness of androgyny. She spoke, determined to allay my fears: “Kini: I must go away.”
― Ella Maillart, The Cruel Way: Switzerland to Afghanistan in a Ford, 1939