Nice things said about Armenia
I was doing some research on Armenia yesterday and posted a quote I found about Armenia on the private members' forum on the British Guild of Travel Writer's site. Almost immediately some of my well-learned colleagues added a few more.
Here are my two favourites...
Here are my two favourites...
"If the scriptures are rightly understood it was in Armenia that Paradise was placed." - Lord Byron.
"I should like to see any power in the world destroy this race. This small tribe of unimportant people, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, literature is unread, music is unheard, and prayers are no more answered. Go ahead, destroy Armenia. See if you can do it. Send them into the deserts without food and water, burn their homes and churches. Then see if they will not laugh, sing and pray again. For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a new Armenia." - William Saroyan, Armenia American writer.
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Neatness, the comfort, the gentleness,the unaffected devotion, the accomplishments, and the virtues of the
brethren of the order, are well fitted
to strike the man of the world with
the conviction that there is another
and a better even in this life. — These men are the priesthood of an oppressed and a noble nation, which has partaken of the proscription and bondage of the Jews and of the Greeks, with out the sullenness of the former or
the servility of the latter. This people has attained riches without usury,and all the honours that can be awarded to slavery without intrigue. But they have long occupied, nevertheless, a part of the House of Bondage, who has lately multiplied her many
mansions. It would be difficult, perhaps, to find the annals of a nation less stained with crimes than those of the Armenians , whose virtues have been those of peace, and their vices those of compulsion. But whatever
may have been their destiny ֊ and it
has been bitter - whatever it may be in future, their country must ever be one of the most interesting on the
globe ; and perhaps their language
only requires to be more studied to
become more attractive. If the Scriptures are rightly understood, it was in Armenia that Paradise was placed. Armenia, which has paid as dearly as the descendants of Adam for that fleeting participation of its soil
in the happiness of him who was created from its dust. It was in Armenia that the flood first abated, and the dove alighted. But with the disappearance of Paradise itself may be dated
almost the unhappiness of the country ; for though long a powerful kingom, it was scarcely ever an independent one, and the satraps of Persia and the pachas of Turkey have alike
desolated the region where God created man in his own image.