The Rhine is not more impassable than the Nile or Euphrates, and the Arabian fleet might have sailed without a naval combat into the mouth of theThames. Perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pupils might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctityand truth of the revelation of Mahomet.

-Gibbon, Edward
^88  The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch.52.

To talk of diseases is a sort of Arabian Nights entertainment.

-Osler, Sir William
Quoted in Oliver Sacks The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, epigraph (1985).

For me, exploration was a personal venture. I did not go to the Arabian desert to collect plants nor to make a map; such things were incidental. At heart I knew that to write or even to talk of my travels was to tarnish the achievement. I went there to find peace in the hardship of desert travel and the company of desert people. I set myself a goal on these journeys, and, although the goal itself was unimportant, its attainment had to be worth every effort and sacrifice.

-Thesiger, Sir Wilfred Patrick
  Arabian Sands.