VA G A B O N D I N G

Rolf Potts

Favorite Travel Quotes

31

Wanting to travel

reflects a positive attitude.

You want to see, to grow in experience, and presumably to become more whole as a human being.
Ed Buryn, Vagabonding in Europe and North Africa
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2
A good traveler has no fixed plan, and is not intent on arriving.
Lao Tzu, The Way of Life
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I travel for travels sake.

this feather-bed of civilization, and FIND the globe granite underfoot and strewn with cutting flints.
Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels With a Donkey
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For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, BUT TO GO.

The great affair is to MOVE; to FEEL THE NEEDS and hitches of our life more nearly; to come down off

4
It is fatal to know too much at the outset:
boredom comes as quickly to the traveler who knows his route as to the novelist who is overcertain of his plot.
Paul Theroux, To the Ends of the Earth

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5
A lot of us first aspired to far-ranging travel and exotic adventure early in our teens; these ambitions are, in fact, adolescent in nature, which I find an inspiring idea.

Thus, when we allow ourselves to imagine as we once did, we know, with a sudden jarring clarity, that if we don't go right now, we're never going to do it. And we'll be haunted by our unrealized dreams and know that we have sinned against ourselves gravely. Tim Cahill, Lifes a Wild Trip
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6
That is the charm of a map. It represents the other side of the horizon where

everything is possible.
Rosita Forbes, From Red Sea to Blue Nile
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7
When you travel you experience, in a very practical way, the act of rebirth.
You confront completely new situations, the day passes more slowly, and on most journeys you don't even understand the language the people speak

You begin to be more accessible to others,

because they may be able to help you in difficult situations. Paulo Coelho, The Pilgrimage
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8
What I find is that you can do almost anything or go almost anywhere, if you're not in a hurry.
Paul Theroux, quoting Tony the beachcomber, in The Happy Isles of Oceania
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9
Travel can be a kind of monasticism on the move: On the road, we often live more simple, with no more possessions than we can carry, and surrendering ourselves to chance. This is what Camus meant when he said that what gives value to travel is fear disruption, in other words, (or emancipation) from circumstance, and all the habits behind which we hide.
Pico Iyer, Why We Travel
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10
Before the development of tourism, travel was conceived to be like study, and its fruits

were considered to be the adornment of the mind and the formation of the judgement. The traveler was a student of what he sought...
Paul Fussell, Abroad
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Reading old travel books or

novels set in faraway places, spinning globes, unfolding maps,
playing world music, eating in ethnic restaurants,
meeting friends in cafes...all these things are part of never-ending travel practice, not unlike doing scales on a piano, shooting free-throws, or meditating.
Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage

11
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Traveling hopefully
the way most people live their lives,
and the phrase itself seems to sum up human existence.

into the unknown with a little information: dead reckoning is

12

Paul Theroux, Fresh Air Fiend

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The practice of soulful travel is to discover the overlapping point between history and everyday life; the way to find the essence of every place, every day: in the markets, small chapels, out-of-the-way parks, craft shops.

Curiosity about the extraordinary in the ordinary moves the heart of the traveler

intent on seeing behind the veil of tourism.

13

Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage

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Traveler, there is no path paths are made by

walking

Antonio Machado, Cantores

14
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Those who visit foreign nations,

but associate only with their own countrymen, change their climate, but not their customs. They see new meridians, but the same men; and with heads as empty as their pockets,

return home with traveled bodies,

but untraveled minds.

15

Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon

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But the traveler's world is not the ordinary one, for

travel itself, even the most commonplace, is an implicit quest for anomaly.
16

Paul Fussell, Abroad

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We do not need to understand other people and their customs fully to interact with them and learn in the process;

it is making the effort

to interact without knowing all the rules, improvising certain situations,

that allows us to grow.

17

Mary Catherine Bateson, Peripheral Visions

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The art of learning

fundamental common values is perhaps the greatest gain of travel to those who wish to live at ease among their fellows.
Freya Starke, Perseus in the Wind

18
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LEAVING HOME is a kind of forgiveness, and when you get

among strangers, you're amazed at
how decent they seem. Nobody smirks

at you or gossips about you, nobody

resents your successes or relishes

your defeats. You get to start

over, a sort of redemption.

19

Garrison Keillor, Leaving Home

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EXPLORATION IS

not so much a covering of surface distance as A STUDY IN DEPTH:

a fleeting episode, a fragment of landscape or a remark overheard

that may provide the only means of understanding and interpreting areas which would otherwise remain barren of meaning.

20

Claude Levi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques

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Rise free from care

seek adventures.

before the dawn, and

21

Let the moon find thee by other lakes, and the night overtake thee everywhere at home. There are no larger fields than these, no worthier games than may here be played.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden
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The pleasure in traveling consists of the obstacles, the fatigue, and even the danger.
What charm can anyone find in an excursion when he is always sure of reaching his destination, of having horses ready waiting for him, a soft bed, an excellent supper, and all the eases and comfort he can enjoy in his own home!

22

One of the great misfortunes of modern life is the want of any sudden surprise,

EVERYTHING IS SO WELL ARRANGED.

and the absence of all adventures.

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Theophile Gautier Wanderings in Spain

THE USE 23 OF TRAVELING IS TO REGULATE IMAGINATION BY REALITY, AND INSTEAD OF THINKING HOW THINGS MAY BE, TO SEE THEM AS THEY REALLY ARE
Samuel Johnson from Anecdotes of Samuel Johnson
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Often I feel I go to some distant region of the

world to be reminded of who I really am

24

Stripped of your ordinary surroundings, your friends, your daily routines, your refrigerator full of your food, your closet full of your clothes, you are forced into direct experience.

Such direct experience inevitably

makes you aware of who it is that is having the experience. That's not always comfortable, but it is always invigorating.
Michael Crichton, Travels
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Travel is a CREATIVE act

NOT SIMPLY LOAFING AND INVITING YOUR SOUL,

25

but feeding on the imagination, accounting

for each fresh wonder, memorizing, and moving on ...AND THE BEST LANDSCAPES, APPARENTLY DENSE OR FEATURELESS, HOLD SURPRISES

if they are studied patiently,

in the kind of discomfort one can savor afterward.

Paul Theroux, To the Ends of the Earth

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Powerful men do not necessarily make the most eminent travelers; it is rather those who take the most interest in their work that succeed the best; as a huntsman says, it is the nose that gives speed to the hound.
Francis Galton, The Art of Travel

26

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LISTEN: we are

here on earth to fart around.

27

DON'T LET ANYBODY TELL YOU ANY DIFFERENT!

Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake
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WE TRAVEL
...

initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves. to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate.

28

to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. in essence, to become young fools again to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more.
Pico Iyer, Why We Travel
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If you really want to learn about a country,

Charles Kuralt, A Life on the Road

29

WORK THERE.
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People say that what we are all seeking is a meaning for life.

30

I don't think this is what we're really seeking.

I think what we're seeking

is an experience of BEING ALIVE.

Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth
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Round the world!

There is much in that sound to inspire proud feelings; but whereto does all that circumnavigation conduct?

31

Only through numberless perils to the very point whence we started, where those that we left behind secure were all the time before us.
Herman Melville, Moby Dick

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WANDER, EXPLORE, EMBRACE THE UNKNOWN

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