Camel Hump Quotes

Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.

The camel has a big dumb ugly hump. But in the desert, where prettier, more streamlined beasts die quickly of thirst, the camel survives quite nicely. As legend has it, the camel carries its own water, stores it in its stupid hump. If individuals, like camels, perfect their inner resources, if we have the power within us, then we can cross any wasteland in relative comfort and survive in arid surroundings without relying on the external. Often, moreover, it is our "hump" - that aspect of our being that society finds eccentric, ridiculous, or disagreeable - that holds our sweet waters, our secret well of happiness, the key to our equanimity in malevolent climes.

The most important thing we've learned, So far as children are concerned, Is never, NEVER, NEVER let Them near your television set -- Or better still, just don't install The idiotic thing at all. In almost every house we've been, We've watched them gaping at the screen. They loll and slop and lounge about, And stare until their eyes pop out. (Last week in someone's place we saw A dozen eyeballs on the floor.) They sit and stare and stare and sit Until they're hypnotised by it, Until they're absolutely drunk With all that shocking ghastly junk. Oh yes, we know it keeps them still, They don't climb out the window sill, They never fight or kick or punch, They leave you free to cook the lunch And wash the dishes in the sink -- But did you ever stop to think, To wonder just exactly what This does to your beloved tot? IT ROTS THE SENSE IN THE HEAD! IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD! IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND! IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND! HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE! HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE! HE CANNOT THINK -- HE ONLY SEES! 'All right!' you'll cry. 'All right!' you'll say, 'But if we take the set away, What shall we do to entertain Our darling children? Please explain!' We'll answer this by asking you, 'What used the darling ones to do? 'How used they keep themselves contented Before this monster was invented?' Have you forgotten? Don't you know? We'll say it very loud and slow: THEY ... USED ... TO ... READ! They'd READ and READ, AND READ and READ, and then proceed To READ some more. Great Scott! Gadzooks! One half their lives was reading books! The nursery shelves held books galore! Books cluttered up the nursery floor! And in the bedroom, by the bed, More books were waiting to be read! Such wondrous, fine, fantastic tales Of dragons, gypsies, queens, and whales And treasure isles, and distant shores Where smugglers rowed with muffled oars, And pirates wearing purple pants, And sailing ships and elephants, And cannibals crouching 'round the pot, Stirring away at something hot. (It smells so good, what can it be? Good gracious, it's Penelope.) The younger ones had Beatrix Potter With Mr. Tod, the dirty rotter, And Squirrel Nutkin, Pigling Bland, And Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and- Just How The Camel Got His Hump, And How the Monkey Lost His Rump, And Mr. Toad, and bless my soul, There's Mr. Rat and Mr. Mole- Oh, books, what books they used to know, Those children living long ago! So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, Go throw your TV set away, And in its place you can install A lovely bookshelf on the wall. Then fill the shelves with lots of books, Ignoring all the dirty looks, The screams and yells, the bites and kicks, And children hitting you with sticks- Fear not, because we promise you That, in about a week or two Of having nothing else to do, They'll now begin to feel the need Of having something to read. And once they start -- oh boy, oh boy! You watch the slowly growing joy That fills their hearts. They'll grow so keen They'll wonder what they'd ever seen In that ridiculous machine, That nauseating, foul, unclean, Repulsive television screen! And later, each and every kid Will love you more for what you did.

a one hump camel makes a one hump poop, and a two hump camel makes a two hump poop

I am the Love Camel of Llama Land. Come, hop on my hump and let me lead you to water.

Despina can be reached in two ways: by ship or by camel. The city displays one face to the traveler arriving overland and a different one to him who arrives by sea. When the camel driver sees, at the horizon of the tableland, the pinnacles of the skyscrapers come into view, the radar antennae, the white and red wind-socks flapping, the chimneys belching smoke, he thinks of a ship; he knows it is a city, but he thinks of it as a vessel that will take him away from the desert, a windjammer about to cast off, with the breeze already swelling the sails, not yet unfurled, or a steamboat with its boiler vibrating in the iron keel; and he thinks of all the ports, the foreign merchandise the cranes unload on the docks, the taverns where crews of different flags break bottles over one another’s heads, the lighted, ground-floor windows, each with a woman combing her hair. In the coastline’s haze, the sailor discerns the form of a camel’s withers, an embroidered saddle with glittering fringe between two spotted humps, advancing and swaying; he knows it is a city, but he thinks of it as a camel from whose pack hang wine-skins and bags of candied fruit, date wine, tobacco leaves, and already he sees himself at the head of a long caravan taking him away from the desert of the sea, toward oases of fresh water in the palm trees’ jagged shade, toward palaces of thick, whitewashed walls, tiled courts where girls are dancing barefoot, moving their arms, half-hidden by their veils, and half-revealed. Each city receives its form from the desert it opposes; and so the camel driver and the sailor see Despina, a border city between two deserts.

Every act of will is an act of self-limitation. To desire action is to desire limitation. In that sense, every act is an act of self-sacrifice. When you choose anything, you reject everything else... Every act is an irrevocable selection and exclusion. Just as when you marry one woman you give up all the others, so when you take one course of action you give up all the other courses… Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame. If you draw a giraffe, you must draw him with a long neck. If, in you bold creative way, you hold yourself free to draw a giraffe with a short neck, you will really find that you are not free to draw a giraffe. The moment you step into the world of facts, you step into a world of limits. You can free things from alien or accidental laws, but not from the laws of their own nature. You may, if you like, free a tiger from his bars; but do not free him from his stripes. Do not free a camel from the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel. Do not go about as a demagogue, encouraging triangles to break out of the prison of their three sides. If a triangle breaks out of its three sides, its life comes to a lamentable end. Somebody wrote a work called “The Loves of the Triangles”; I never read it, but I am sure that if triangles ever were loved, they were loved for being triangular. This is certainly the case with all artistic creation, which is in some ways the most decisive example of pure will. The artist loves his limitations: they constitute the thing he is doing.

The camel's hump is an ugly lump, Which well you might see at the zoo. But uglier yet is the hump we get, For having to little to do.

The Eye-Mote Blameless as daylight I stood looking At a field of horses, necks bent, manes blown, Tails streaming against the green Backdrop of sycamores. Sun was striking White chapel pinnacles over the roofs, Holding the horses, the clouds, the leaves Steadily rooted though they were all flowing Away to the left like reeds in a sea When the splinter flew in and stuck my eye, Needling it dark. Then I was seeing A melding of shapes in a hot rain: Horses warped on the altering green, Outlandish as double-humped camels or unicorns, Grazing at the margins of a bad monochrome, Beasts of oasis, a better time. Abrading my lid, the small grain burns: Red cinder around which I myself, Horses, planets and spires revolve. Neither tears nor the easing flush Of eyebaths can unseat the speck: It sticks, and it has stuck a week. I wear the present itch for flesh, Blind to what will be and what was. I dream that I am Oedipus. What I want back is what I was Before the bed, before the knife, Before the brooch-pin and the salve Fixed me in this parenthesis; Horses fluent in the wind, A place, a time gone out of mind. --written 1959

What we call debt is a hump on our backs; it is an awkward load that crushes one; and loads are carried only by stupid animals, by camels, mules, and donkeys; the back of an intelligent person is flat!

Camels can go many weeks without drinking anything at all. The notion that they cache water in their humps is pure myth—their humps are made of fat, and water is stored in their body tissues. While other mammals draw water from bloodstreams when faced with dehydration, leading to death by volume shock, camels tap the water in their tissues, keeping their blood volume stable. Though this reduces the camel’s bulk, they can lose up to a third of their body weight with no ill effects, which they can replace astonishingly quickly, as they are able to drink up to forty gallons in a single watering.” (pp.69-70)

The boy stood on the highest knoll of the low country in the Western Kingdom of the Ring, looking north, watching the first of the rising suns. As far as he could see stretched rolling green hills, like camel humps, dipping and rising in a series of valleys and peaks. The burnt-orange rays of the first sun lingered in

In 1800, at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, most people everywhere were poor. The average income was equivalent to that in the poorest countries in Africa today (about $500 a year in international dollars), and almost 95 percent of the world lived in what counts today as “extreme poverty” (less than $1.90 a day). By 1975, Europe and its offshoots had completed the Great Escape, leaving the rest of the world behind, with one-tenth their income, in the lower hump of a camel-shaped curve.20 In the 21st century the camel has become a dromedary, with a single

The doctor says, What’s this? That’s an application to join the White Fathers, missionaries to the nomadic tribes of the Sahara and chaplains to the French Foreign Legion. Oh, yeh? French Foreign Legion, is it? Do you know the preferred form of transportation in the Sahara Desert? Trains? No. It’s the camel. Do you know what a camel is? It has a hump. It has more than a hump. It has a nasty, mean disposition and its teeth are green with gangrene and it bites. Do you know where it bites? In the Sahara? No, you omadhaun. It bites your shoulder, rips it right off. Leaves you standing there tilted in the Sahara.

Among the loose animals, the Keeper’s sick camel, a lady of brittle temper, had bobbed her tassels and sunk her yellow teeth three times into unguarded flesh; the dwarf ass brayed itself hoarse and the lion cubs, dear to Abernaci’s heart, had shambled off, humping their fat, sandy rumps, to feast among the spilled milk in the wrecked kitchens.

. . . it was these desperate inexperienced bitches, he thought, who never banded together but fought everyone and themselves and were like camels, they could go on for days without one sup of encouragement. Under their humps they had tanks of self-confidence so that they could cross any desert area of arid prickly pear without one compliment, or dewdrop as they called it in his family, to uphold them.

You can free things from alien or accidental laws, but not from the laws of their own nature. You may, if you like, free a tiger from his bars; but do not free him from his stripes. Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump: you may be freeing him from being a camel. Do not go about as a demagogue, encouraging triangles to break out of the prison of their three sides. If a triangle breaks out of its three sides, its life comes to a lamentable end. Somebody wrote a work called “The Loves of the Triangles”; I never read it, but I am sure that if triangles ever were loved, they were loved for being triangular.

Let kings stack their treasure houses ceiling-high, and merchants burst their vaults with hoarded coin, and fools envy them. I have a treasure that outvalues theirs. A diamond as big as a man’s skull. Twelve rubies each as big as the skull of a cat. Seventeen emeralds each as big as the skull of a mole. And certain rods of crystal and bars of orichalcum. Let Overlords swagger jewel-bedecked and queens load themselves with gems, and fools adore them. I have a treasure that will outlast theirs. A treasure house have I builded for it in the far southern forest, where the two hills hump double, like sleeping camels, a day’s ride beyond the village of Soreev. “A great treasure house with a high tower, fit for a king’s dwelling—yet no king may dwell there.  Immediately below the keystone of the chief dome my treasure lies hid, eternal as the glittering stars. It will outlast me and my name, I, Urgaan of Angarngi. It is my hold on the future. Let fools seek it. They shall win it not. For although my treasure house be empty as air, no deadly creature in rocky lair, no sentinel outside anywhere, no pitfall, poison, trap, or snare, above and below the whole place bare, of demon or devil not a hair, no serpent lethal-fanged yet fair, no skull with mortal eye a-glare, yet have I left a guardian there. Let the wise read this riddle and forbear.

I wonder what in the hell I was thinking about?’ he said aloud to himself. ‘I wonder if I’m losing my mind?’ That was like a duck wondering why it flies south in the autumn or an old camel noticing one day that he has a hump on his back.

What used the darling ones to do? ‘How used they keep themselves contented Before this monster was invented?’ Have you forgotten? Don’t you know? We’ll say it very loud and slow: They . . . used . . . to . . . read! They’d read and read, And read and read, and then proceed To read some more. Great Scott! Gadzooks! One half their lives was reading books! The nursery shelves held books galore! Books cluttered up the nursery floor! And in the bedroom, by the bed, More books were waiting to be read! Such wondrous, fine, fantastic tales Of dragons, gypsies, queens, and whales And treasure isles, and distant shores Where smugglers rowed with muffled oars, And pirates wearing purple pants, And sailing ships and elephants, And cannibals crouching ’round the pot, Stirring away at something hot. (It smells so good, what can it be! Good gracious, it’s Penelope.) The younger ones had Beatrix Potter With Mr. Tod, the dirty rotter, And Squirrel Nutkin, Pigling Bland, And Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and— Just How The Camel Got His Hump, And How The Monkey Lost His Rump, And Mr. Toad, and bless my soul, There’s Mr. Rat and Mr. Mole— Oh, books, what books they used to know, Those children living long ago! So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, Go throw your TV set away, And in its place you can install A lovely bookshelf on the wall. Then fill the shelves with lots of books, Ignoring all the dirty looks, The screams and yells, the bites and kicks, And children hitting you with sticks— Fear not, because we promise you That, in about a week or two Of having nothing else to do, They’ll now begin to feel the need Of having something good to read. And once they start—oh boy, oh boy! You watch the slowly growing joy

The main herd of camels, consisting of six females, was led and ruled by Big Bill, a huge animal with overstuffed humps like a French arm-chair, great plus-fours of curls on his legs, and an expression of such sneering superiority that you longed for him to trip over something and fall down. He would stand towering over you, his belly rumbling, squeaking his long, greeny-yellow teeth together and staring at you with a disbelieving disgust as though you were a child murderer or something similarly obscene.

In a privately printed work entitled Paneros, author Norman Douglas cautions his readers against putting their trust . . . in Arabian skink, in Roman goose-fat or Roman goose tongues, in the Arplan of China . . . in spicy culinary dishes, erongoe root, or the brains of lovemaking sparrows . . . in pine nuts, the blood of bats mingled with asses’ milk, root of valerian, dried salamander, cyclamen, menstrual fluid of man or beast, tulip bulbs, fat of camel’s hump, parsnips, hyssop, gall of children, salted crocodile, the aquamarine stone, pollen of date palm, the pounded tooth of a corpse, wings of bees, jasmine, turtles’ eggs, applications of henna, brayed crickets, or spiders or ants, garlic, the genitals of hedgehogs, Siberian iris, rhinoceros horn, the blood of slaughtered animals, artichokes, honey compounded with camel’s milk, oil of champak, liquid gold, swallows’ hearts, vineyard snails, fennel-juice, certain bones of the toad, sulphurous waters and other aquae amatrices, skirret-tubers or stag’s horn crushed to powder: aphrodisiacs all, and all impostures.

Anyone with access to an armchair can sit down and generate what Rudyard Kipling called “just-so stories”—fantastical accounts of how the camel got a hump and the elephant got a trunk.

That Wasn't Very Christian of Them When you're picked as a child to play the camel in the Nativity, you get humped by the boy mob bearing pitchforks and torches.

The boy stood on the highest knoll of the low country in the Western Kingdom of the Ring, looking north, watching the first of the rising suns. As far as he could see stretched rolling green hills, dipping and rising like camel humps in a series of valleys and peaks. The burnt-orange rays of the first sun lingered in the morning mist, making them sparkle, lending the light a magic that matched the boy’s mood. He rarely woke this early or ventured this far from home—and never ascended this high—knowing it would incur his father’s wrath. But on this day, he didn’t care. On this day, he disregarded the million rules and chores that had oppressed him for his fourteen years. For this day was different. It was the day his destiny had arrived.

So Egypt, a country where nearly half the population lived on two dollars a day and at least 12 percent of the population, and far more young people, were unemployed, found itself suddenly competing in a world where a country half a world away could make its national icons into an ashtray or a honking-humped camel, ship them transcontinentally, and still make a profit more efficiently than Egyptians could.

The flat became more rolling, and the rolling became hills, and the hills became the Hoggar, its odd volcanic peaks and spires struggling through the almost irides- cent violet haze that seemed to emanate from them. They had never seen such a place, and rode enraptured. The camels stepped tenderly through the rocks, which had changed from smooth gravel to rough cobbles to razor-sharp stones, at first spaced well apart but then closer and hard to avoid. It slowed their progress, and at times the caravan stretched out over two kilometers, a great undulating jumble of humps and baskets and bags and winding through the men, craggy passages and long wadis. The camels groaned as if mortally wounded when they cut their feet, their cries returning in haunted echoes from the rock walls. They shifted themselves in exaggerated motions to favor their feet, sometimes losing their loads altogether or having them slip out of place until their tenders had to stop and ad- just them. In the worst places the men walked, leading their mounts by hand.

Mammon is the hump that prevents the camel from passing through the eye of the needle.

Do You Like Animals? is a wild animal menagerie of fun as children view pictures and read stories about elephants, lions, leopards, rhinos, hippos, zebras, giraffes, camels, kangaroos, penguins, and much more. The book helps children meet the animals up close and learn fun facts about how they live in the wild. The author/illustrator viewed the animals in the jungles, bush, and deserts of Africa, Australia, and South America before writing about them and painting them in forms that would be enjoyable and educational for children. For example, children will learn why elephants have trunks, why giraffes and leopards have spots, whether zebras’ stripes are black-on-white or white-on-black, how long hippos can hold their breath, the amazing characteristics of howler monkeys’ tails, why some kangaroos have a pouch, whether ostriches really bury their heads in the sand, the types of camels that have either one or two humps… Through stories that rhyme and pictures painted with punch this book is a must for children who like to have fun while they learn!

One camel does not make fun of the other camel’s hump.

The moment you step into the world of facts, you step into a world of limits. You can free things from alien or accidental laws, but not from the laws of their own nature. You may, if you like, free a tiger from his bars; but do not free him from his stripes. Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump: you may be freeing him from being a camel. Do not go about as a demagogue, encouraging triangles to break out of the prison of their three sides. If a triangle breaks out of its three sides, its life comes to a lamentable end.

You can free things from alien or accidental laws, but not from the laws of their own nature. You may, if you like, free a tiger from his bars; but do not free him from his stripes. Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump: you may be freeing him from being a camel. Do not go about as a demagogue, encouraging triangles to break out of the prison of their three sides. If a triangle breaks out of its three sides, its life comes to a lamentable end.

The boy stood on the highest knoll of the low country in the Western Kingdom of the Ring, looking north, watching the first of the rising suns. As far as he could see stretched rolling green hills, dipping and rising like camel humps in a series of valleys

Have you ever had that feeling that you're completely in this very moment, now, living, breathing, there with your whole being? I'm sitting on the hump of the Arabian camel. I feel the warm wind flowing around me like a never-ending stream. It's 48 degrees. I feel the heat on my skin, behold the endless, weightless, sandy open, and sense that I have fully arrived at this very moment. I'm here. I'm now. I'm alive. It is an incredible feeling, an incredibly full feeling of freedom and self-love, and love for the world, and I realize that everything is possible. I see the retrospective of my whole sensitivity, the odyssey of my life, my depression, my suffering, and loving until I have finally been able to arrive in this perfect marvellous moment, and I feel free. Simply free. Boundless and free. The first time I had that feeling that I'm totally present at this very moment had been at the age of fifteen when I read The Solitaire Mystery by Jostein Gaarder. A boy of fifteen years who travels the world with his father tells us the story of this feeling. He's lying in the loft bed. Above him, his father is snoring. It is night, and he cannot fall asleep because, in this very moment, he realizes that he's completely there, completely in this very moment, now, living, breathing, and marvelling at the miracle of his being. It's an overwhelming feeling. But at the age of fifteen, I hadn't been free. I knew that I existed, but I felt as if trapped in a cage with nowhere to hide. I was trapped in the cage of my own feelings. The cage of my depression. It had been an odyssey of many years into adulthood through trials and tribulations and self-inflicted and outward disappointments until I finally had been able to say that I can embrace the moment and feel alive. That I can be free. That I can be taken up at this very moment. That I love this life, I'm allowed to live. The moment I ultimately realized that I have made it through all of the trials and tribulations and obstacles of my life's journey to finally see my own true self was while riding on an Arabian camel in the Sahara desert. With the warm wind flowing around me. With myself within me. And that's also why I will never forget this journey and this country. And that's also why my love for this country is as vast and infinite as the Sahara desert. And that's why I will return there. Again and again and again. It is the place where I realized that I am free. That I made it. That everything, simply everything, is possible. So many people live their lives without ever experiencing something significant. Every day of their lives is the same. And then, at the end of their life's journey, they wonder why they cannot answer the question of whether they have lived at all. Because they never felt present as a whole. But without being wholly present and without the feeling of being existent in the present, within one's own true self, and now, one cannot know oneself, and one cannot recognize the precious gift of life. Because that's precisely what it is: a gift.

…the darkness brought him some hope, and he wondered if Samir was looking at the same stars, guiding them to their own versions of freedom — the night, cloaking them at the same time, bringing them close together. Jacob got the chills thinking about it, as the headlights briefly captured majestic silhouettes of camel caravans in the distance, their humps like small mountains blending into the dunes.

If it rains, winter provides the best grazing. This is when the Bedu disperse into small family groups, taking their herds deep into the desert. In spring the grass begins to wither, and by summer it is dead. Then the Bedu must congregate at deep, permanent wells where their camels will live off the fat that they have stored in their humps during the winter. If you are a tax collector or other government official, summer is when you know where to find the Bedu. Spring is the time of sandstorms and the harbinger of hot, dry, hard times to come. Whoever coined the term “Arab Spring” was clearly not a Saudi, for to the Bedu, autumn, not spring, is the season of hope, rain, and renewal.

Other than the hump, camels seemed comprised of nothing more than knees, flatulence, and ire.