Taking Your Camera on the Road

Sitting in the seat next to you is one of the stranger sights you have thus far managed to encounter in this life: a vision in black. Black felt hat (or maybe it’s mink), black long coat, some kind of black vest with all sorts of strange white filly things streaming out of it, and other assorted layers below that – all this despite it being summer and quite warm. The apparel looks to be something out of the 17th century, possibly even the 16th, but the countenance seems to come straight from Mars – odd gaps amid sideburns and a beard, and strangest of all, springing out from the area around the ears are extremely long, curly ‘sidelocks’. Twice during the flight, this apparition joins several other similar types at the back of the plane and engages in what looks like praying. And never have you seen it done with quite such intensity, with everybody fervently chanting, swaying, and rocking back and forth. What is this? Culture Shock! Israel? Well, not exactly, because most Israelis also join you in not knowing exactly what this is.”
Culture Shock! Israel by Dick Winter

Please meet the Hassidim, the ultra-orthodox or “Hassidic” Jews. They dress this way because when their particular Jewish sect gained religious power in Eastern Europe 200 years ago, this was the way their leaders dressed. As each group of Jews, often segregated geographically, then later through language and cultural differences, managed to hang on to their beliefs and practices, their leaders tried to interpret the ancient texts and oral history in their own way. While the foundation stayed the same, the interpretation varied all over the map, literally. When a particular interpretation gained favor, many of the Jews would “keep the faith” by continuing to dress in the clothing of that time or as their leaders did. When Israel opened its doors, they brought their distinctive religious methods and fashion choices with them. One of the first laws passed by Israel was the freedom of religion and worship. Israel maybe a Jewish state, but they are determined to permit all the different religions to live together in peace. And for the most part, they have succeeded.

Only about 20-30% of Israelis consider themselves “observant Jews”. While the majority of the population is not strictly religious, the practices of the Jewish traditions guide the country. Many men wear kipas, a very small skull cap, in keeping with the Old Testament’s comment about covering the head in the eyes of God. Coming in all shapes, sizes, and colors, these bright little coasters are clipped to the hair with a broad silver hair clip and are often found sagging off the back of the head or skewed cockeyed somewhere on their head. Some of these men are religious, but some have a more moderate faith.

While the country honors these age-old Jewish traditions by the wearing of the kipa and honoring the Kosher and Sabbath laws, from there the divide is wide between what and how the different Jewish sects believe. Messianic Jews accept Christ as a prophet and practice a combination of Christian and Jewish traditions. Many of the ultra-orthodox Jews do not support the State of Israel because they believe the Messiah will establish Israel when He comes, some going far enough as to believe that the Holocaust is payment for the sin of the Zionist movement to create a State of Israel in violation of the Old Testament. Some groups treat men and women equally, but some require women to shave their heads or at least keep them completely covered by a scarf or a wig in public as the hair is seen as too sexual and tempting to other men, inviting “coveting”. Others just tolerate a simple head scarf. Each group has its own opinion about how to live in keeping with their traditions, no different from Methodists, Catholics, and other variations of Christianity.

Among themselves, you will often hear arguing over which way is the right way for a Jew to be a Jew. Even among the government’s religious department, the Rabbinate, there is fighting over which way is the right way and who is the more religious of the groups. There are often conflicts at the Walling Wall where one group yells and throws things at another, ridiculing their particular way of worship. Many Israelis are frustrated with the ultra-orthodox as they tend to make it uncomfortable for their unorthodox neighbors, slowly pushing them out of the neighborhood and claiming it as their own. The city of Safed, once a famous international artists colony making the most of the beautiful city and its creative atmosphere, is now home to a majority of ultra-orthodox, pushing the artists out of the city, leaving only a few determined artists in residence. Most Israelis honor the ultra-orthodoxy’s right to live in freedom in Israel, and they give a serious chunk of their tax money to support and encourage them, but many don’t appreciate the isolationism in such a socially interactive society.

Israel has never forgotten that it is a Jewish state, determined to keep its people and religion alive. Even with a small ultra-religious population, the citizens of Israel honor all aspects of Judiasm from the holidays to the worshiping practices. Synagogues are found in every neighborhood. Attempts to change the shabbat and kosher laws are defeated everytime. Israelis firmly believe that a portion of their population must remain “religious” in order to keep the “faith alive”.

Sabbath and Kosher Laws

In a country run by Jewish laws, two things influence the tourist: The Sabbath and the kosher laws. Thursday afternoon through Friday, until about one in the afternoon, is a time of crowds and panicked shoppers as they rush around trying to get food and purchases stocked up before everything closes for the Sabbath (Shabbat or Shabbas). Everything remains closed, save for shops in the Arab areas and a few cafes and tiny grocery stores in Tel Aviv, until Saturday night. The whole country becomes quiet and peaceful.

Honoring Sabbath also means that no Jew shall work or cause another to work, unless it is a matter of life and death, allowing Jews to spend the time praying and with their families. This means that the “observant Jews” will not pick up the telephone or turn on a light as to do so would be “work” or making work for someone else. They do not use the radio or television, do no cleaning, and elevators are turned off, including elevators in conservative hotels. Some will even turn off the electricity to their home or building. All public transportation, save for a few cabs, are halted until late Saturday night. Driving a car through an ultra-orthodox neighborhood can get you harsh stares or rocks thrown at you. Modern technology has made some of this easier with light sensors turning on and off the lights at specific times or when sensing movement, and voice mail works great when the telephone is turned off inside the home. As dependence upon technology increases, the rabbis have had a challenge deciding what is acceptable and what is not.

Kosher Laws

“These are the creatures that you may eat from among all the animals that are upon the earth. Everything among the animals that has a split hoof, which is completely separated into double hooves, and that brings up its cud – that one you may eat…This you may eat from everything that is in the water: everything that has fins and scales in the water, in the seas, and in the streams, those may you eat…Every teeming creature that teems upon the ground – it is an abomination, it shall not be eaten. Everything that creeps on its belly, and everything that walks on four legs, up to those with numerous legs, among all the teeming things that teem upon the earth, you may not eat them, for they are an abomination. Do not make yourselves abominable by means of any teeming thing; do not contaminate yourselves through them lest you become contaminated through them…This is the law of the animal, the bird, every living creature that swarms in the water, and for every creature that teems on the ground; to distinguish between the contaminated and the pure, and between the creature that may be eaten and the creature that may not be eaten.
Leviticus 11, Tanach (Stone Edition)

A favorite story of ours is how the ultra-orthodox handled the scud bombs landing on Israel from Iraq during the Gulf War. Radio was essential for getting the news out for Israelis to get to safety and put on the gas mask when the 90-second warning came through. In the beginning, the rabbis announced a special ruling that said that turning on the radio for the religious would be allowed if it was turned on before the Shabbat began and to not turn it off until it was over. It was a matter of life and death, the exception to the rule. But the people complained it was noisy and disruptive to their sleep. So they recommended putting it in a closet to muffle the noise. That made it difficult to hear, so they finally announced that one of the radio stations would become a “silent” station on the Sabbath so the radio could be left on with no sound, until the warning announcement.

Kosher laws are no less complex to understand. Without getting into details, the kosher laws permit only the consumption of meat from the animal with cloven (split) hooves, eliminating pork and most seafood. There must be a three to four hour delay between the consumption of meat and dairy products, the two to never mix. This means that that ice cream after dinner is a no-no, cheese and sausage or Canadian bacon pizzas are totally out, and the idea of a seafood cocktail as an appetizer is not even on the menu. Dominos Pizza is very popular here, yet we can’t stand their version of a pizza with no meat. For serious pizza lovers, pizzas featuring vegetables like corn, peas, cooked carrots, tuna (fish is okay),and other strange veggies just aren’t high on our list. Subway Sandwich bars are everywhere, but they don’t put cheese on their sandwiches. Bread comes with every meal, but don’t expect to find butter on the table after breakfast is over. The kosher laws come from the book of Leviticus in the Old Testament and includes a long list of things which can be eaten and what cannot, some items which scientists are still trying to identify.

In a land of equal opportunity for all, no matter their race or religion, Israel is no different from other countries, melding and melting into a united society. As Israel learns to live with its Arab neighbors, it also has to learn to live with the diversity within its own borders.

Tel Aviv, Israel

Posted in Israel, Telling Stories | 8 Comments

Jews Return to Israel

By Lorelle VanFossen | Published July 10, 2000

Of the 5,000 years of Jerusalem’s history, Jews represented a majority of the population for about 1100 years. Jewish rule and control over the city lasted about 600 years. In 1850, Jerusalem’s Jews were a small minority; less than 1,000 in a population of 25,000.

The dream for Jews to return began in 1878 with the first Zionist movement to Palestine. Millions left Russia to come to Palestine and elsewhere as anti-semitism rose in 1881. Thus began decades of Jews from around the world seeking refuge in Palestine, then under British Mandate, with another huge surge of refugees as war and anti-semitism broke out across Europe and Asia at the beginning of the century. Jews still hold Judah as their "homeland" as part of their religious beliefs. The Biblical story of Israel being promised to Abraham and Moses as the land of milk and honey was a deed from God for the Jews. For the millions of Jews having their land and property, and life, taken from them, the faith in the restoration of Judah or Israel, as God promised, was a shining light in the darkness. For many sects of the Jewish religion, it is taught that just to walk on the land of Israel or in Jerusalem is to gain a place in the "world to come" or heaven.

By 1947, most of the rest of the world was overwhelmed with the number of Jewish refugees flooding into their countries and they decided to grant the Jews their wish. They turned the frustrating area over to the United Nations which declared the former British Mandate, Palestine, an independent Jewish state, becoming Israel in 1948. The British, worn out from WWII and the years of fighting in the Middle East, gave up resisting and left. The day after the official state was declared, the war of independence began as the Palestinians, many whose families claim to have lived in the area for over 1000 years, declared war upon the new country. Thousands of European and Russian immigrants flooded the country and joined the fight, including many just out of the concentration camps of Europe, determined to fight back. Egypt, Jordan, Syria and other Middle Eastern countries joined the fight on the side the Arabs. While many European and North American countries talked about backing Israel, few actually helped. Israel won and occupied the boundaries as set up by the United Nations. After another war in 1967, the lines are finally drawn in the sand between the Palestinian refuges, the other neighboring countries, and Israel, where they basically remain today.

Israel will be open to Jewish immigration and the ingathering of exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its habitants irrespective of religion, race or sex…"
The 1948 Israel Declaration of Independence

Choosing a Language

There was a lot of debate when it came time to choose an official language for Israel. The major contenders were French and English, though many wanted Russian, as most of the first immigrants were Russian. The desire to revitalize the long dead language of Hebrew as the primary official language won out. English and Arabic are the other two official languages, posted on all major street signs. So how do you incorporate words that represent concepts and things not considered 2000 years ago? The biggest proponent of the Hebrew language was Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, who personally created thousands of Hebrew words to bring the language "up-to-date". Scholars and Hebrew speakers continue to take words from other languages, so Hebrew is a language shifting and evolving as it enters the second millennium after its demise.

The breadth of diversity in Israel is amazing. With the beginning of the Zionist’s political drive to bring the Jews back to Israel, the immigrants have arrived in what are called "waves" ever since. The first wave of "pioneers" mostly came from Russia and Eastern Europe. Huge waves of immigrants came from Germany and Poland, and other Nazi occupied countries, between World War I to after World War II. North Africans, Egyptians, Iranians, and others facing Arab oppression in the 1950s, sought freedom in Israel, bringing their distinctive influences to the already diverse country. More recently, Russians, Romanians, and Yugoslavians are arriving by droves daily to escape religious and ethnic persecution as well as economic hardship. The Russians make up the largest group of immigrants in Israel, with over 1 million here, about one-sixth of the entire population.

These diverse groups bring their traditions and practices of the Jewish faith with them. Long united only by the religious books, the Jewish faith, similar to Christianity, had become diverse in their practices and rituals, and sometimes their belief system. Whatever their beliefs, they brought with them their culture and culinary skills. The country abounds with restaurants and bakeries and other food sellers featuring traditional foods from Russia, Poland, Greece, Germany, Romania, England, and Ethiopia, and all are combined with the traditional Arabic food found here.

Traditional practices and menus are usually found in the home, and the parents and grandparents still call themselves Germans, Russians, Italians, Ethiopians, Iranians and so on. But their children become Israelis, a blend of new and old moving towards a unique future. Many of these children will not learn their parent’s language, though some do. By the second or third generation, most are speaking Hebrew and another language, often English, not the language of their grandparents. In this way, Israel and the United States have much in common as a giant melting pot of humanity. Most US citizens are not Norwegian, English, French, Mexican, Venezuelan, or German – they are just Americans.

In the fight to overcome the British’s restrictions on immigration during World War II, Israel quickly put laws in place to allow immigration by anyone of Jewish descent without restriction. Jewish immigrants make "aliya", which literally translated means "ascension", a process of indoctrinating the new immigrant into the language, politics and life of living in Israel, often with the help of previous immigrants. The government pays for some of their basic living costs and the expenses of training programs in Hebrew and other programs for the first few years, depending upon the process of immigration they choose. With each new group of immigrants, Israel improved the process of absorption, and over the past 50 years, they have developed quite the indoctrination program.

Israeli-Lebanese Border

As Israel fought to gain its independence after recognition by the Balfour Desicion of 1948, new borders were laid out, then tested in the 1967 War and many other times. This memorial honors the establishment of the border between Israel and Lebanon and the horrible cost in lives.

The inflow of such vast numbers of immigrants isn’t easy on such a resource-limited country. It has brought massive housing shortages, high unemployment, and a soaring cost for welfare, but the passion to provide a refuge for Jews overcomes the hardships. The one resource Israel has learned to honor and recognize is in the power of its people. Education has long been held in the highest of regard by Jews and the country offers some of the finest institutes of learning in the world. Many of the country’s residents are very well educated. Yet, there are only so many jobs for attorneys and doctors, so there are many qualified people taking whatever job they can find. As the immigrants struggle to pass tests and learn the language, they take any job they can find. Once every two weeks we have a man come in to clean the apartment. He is a doctor from Russia. A friend of ours is a lawyer from Romania who works in a juice bar on the waterfront during the summer and waits tables during the winter. Many of these over-educated and resourceful people become entrepreneurs, using their skills in ingenious ways as they struggle to find a place and income in Israel. This recognition of human ingenuity helped create a thriving Internet, E-commerce, and software development industry and other technological industries in Israel.

Not Everyone in Israel is a Jew

Defining Jew vs Jewish

What is the difference between being a Jew and being Jewish? And what is Hebrew? Hebrew is a modified form of a name given to Abraham and his family which meant "outsider" or foreigner. It became the name for Abraham’s descendents until their return to Canaan. It is now the name for the spoken language. After their return to Canaan, the Hebrews fought for control of the area, eventually establishing several tribes which became kingdoms, of which "Judea" or "Judah" was the one which encompassed Jerusalem. A person from the area was then called a Judean or "Jew". Traditional religious practices from the area came to be known as "Judaism" or being "Jewish".

As the people were exiled from the area, they took their heritage with them through their religious practices and teachings. They also kept alive the pride of being a descendent from the land of Judah, connecting themselves as a nation of people without a country to the land of Judah or Israel. By converting to Judaism, a person can join this "nation". Through matriarchal succession, a child born of a Jewish mother is a Jew even if they do not practice the religion or if the father is of another race or religion. If a woman converts to Judaism, her children become Jews, and if the daughter has a child, that child is a Jew, even if they do not practice the Jewish religion. In this unique way they keep their history and faith alive.

Approximately 20% of Israelis are non-Jews. Most are Muslim but Christians represent a very small minority, and many of those are Arabs. Among the more interesting of the non-Jews are the Bedouins and Druze. The Bedouins are the traditional desert wanderers, Arabs who move with their herds following the seasons and the water supply, and living in great tents. While some are beginning to stay in one place, courtesy of Israeli settlement projects, many still wander across the deserts of the Middle East, obeying few borders, though in Israel they tend to stay in the Negev desert. The Bedouins are renowned as great traders and fantastic hosts, making the greeting of feeding of guests a major ritual and an experience that can last for days.

The Druze are a fascinating and mysterious people in the Middle East who can trace their roots back over 900 years to Egypt. Living in the remote and isolated areas of Lebanon, Syria, and Israel, they keep their religious practices a secret from the rest of the world. It is believed to be a combination of Judaism, Islam, Christianity, and Sufism with a belief in reincarnation, but they keep the real facts to themselves. Long time residents of the Galilee, they have blended well into the Israeli society, more so than many of the other groups. One reason could be that they are willing to participate in the 2-3 year army service requirement, as the Bedouins do, whereas many Israeli-Arabs do not. Their traditional attire of men with huge bushy mustaches and white head dresses and black bloomers for pants makes for another distinctive and varied fashion statement in Israel.

Tel Aviv, Israel

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A Brief History of Israel

By Lorelle VanFossen | Published July 10, 2000

The “war” in the Middle East has been going on in different shapes and sizes for thousands of years, even before the history recorded in the Bible. Many consider the Middle East as the birthplace of man. It could also be considered the birthplace of war. They have been at it longer and more consistently than just about any area in the world. At the crossroads of Asia, Africa and Europe, Canaan has long been desired by greedy tribes and nations as a major trade route. In the pyramid of King Mycerinus at Giza, Egypt, built in the 26th century, BC, it is believed that many of the treasures it once housed passed through Israeli lands. A resource poor area, tourism has always been big business.

Researchers studying the history of man’s development have found evidence of ancient man going back not just to biblical times, but millions of years. Lucy, the famous skeletal remains of what might be the missing link between monkeys and humans, was found in Ethiopia, at the southern edge of the Middle East. Scientists have traced our DNA orgins to a tribe in Africa not much further south, and followed its evolution through the different “races” in the gene pool up through the Middle East and India to Australia to the south, and eventually, as the ice pulled back, upwards towards what is now Asia, Europe, and across into North America and further south to South America.

Archeologists are finding evidence to substantiate the stories in the Old Testament, but they have also found much that doesn’t fit. The debate between whose version of history should be recognized goes on. What we do know is that this area was a major trade route for east-west migration from Mesopotamia (Iraq) to Canaan (Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, and part of Syria), as well as north-south migration. According to Genesis, Abraham was a nomad from Mesopotamia who came to Canaan around 2000 BC. His family was poor and lived in what would now be called the “slums”. They were called the “Habiru” by the residents of the area, believed to mean “outsider” or “foreigner”, and the term eventually became “ivrit” or “Hebrew”, used to represent the descendents of Abraham. When famine struck, most of the people abandoned the area and headed to Egypt. When a new pharaoh came to power, confronted with the mass immigration from the lands of famine, he drove the migrants out of the country and enslaved those who remained. Moses led the descendents of these slaves back to Canaan in the 13th century BC.

Lost to History

Environmentalists keep a scoreboard for endangered species. Anthropologists keep a scoreboard for lost civilizations and “people”. As people found safety in numbers, creating tribes, these groups were often absorbed into other groups as power and control shifted in the world, becoming lost to history, such as the Ashkenazi Indians which melded into the Hopi. Little is known about many of them. Rarely in the history of humans has a group held onto a “location” in their religion and culture, even though that piece of land was lost to them over the centuries, like the Jews. There is a myth that the Jews are a race of people. Jews represent a wide variety of races. What bonds them is the fact that the religion once had a base in Judah (Israel), the location Jews still call “home”. Jews represent the nation of Israel, a nation without a country until recently, preserving their historical connection with Judah and Israel by observing their religious and lifestyle traditions. Author of the book, “Who is a Jew?”, Jacob Immanuel Schochet explains that converting to Judiasm is like immigrating to a country. You have to obey the laws and traditions of the country, and after you qualify, you become a citizen. In this case, you become a “citizen” of Israel, a place in spirit as much as land. When a child is born in the new country, that child automatically becomes a citizen of the country of its birth. In the Jewish tradition, a child born of a Jewish mother is a Jew, passing on the “claim to Israel”.

While the story of the return to Canaan tends to be a bit confusing in the Bible, archeologists have determined that the new immigrants fought the residents for the land and evenutally settled in four tribal regions: Rueben and Gad to the east; Dan in the north; Menasseh, Benjamin, and Ephraim in the center region; and Judah to the south. Judah, home of current Jerusalem, did not last long and was reconquered by another migrant group called the Jebusites, who gave it their name, Jebus.

After the return to Canaan and the long battles to claim the land, the migrants soon gave up their nomadic existence and turned to agriculture and tourism. It is believed by historians that the area did not unite until the establishment of the monarchy at the end of the 11th century BC. The united front did little to end the battles. The area continued to see fighting from all sides, including a constant civil war over the different regions as power and control changed. The Bible tells the story of how Samuel drove the Philistines from the mountain territories. Around the 10th century BC, David became king, making Jerusalem his capitol, beginning the construction of the first Jewish Temple. Prior to David’s conquest, Jerusalem had been inhabited by Canaanites, Amorites and Jebusites who, along with other Arab tribes.

The wars continued with many groups taking their turn destroying the cities and seizing control, then being tossed out themselves. For several hundred years, much of the fighting happened among the different tribes, with Judah to the south and Israel to the north, and many other groups waiting in the wings. Later, war came more from outside as Egyptians, Assyrians, and Phoenicians took their turn waging war on the battling kingdoms. In the 7th century BC, the Assyrians captured much of the area, and exiled the inhabitants, as was their practice. In the Bible, this is refered to as the “exile of the ten northern tribes” or the “First Diaspora”. The southern kingdom, Judah, managed to remain in power, but eventually fell to the Babylonians in 586 BC, resulting in the destruction of the First Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. Much of the population was exiled again, though some remained. The Babylonian empire was soon replaced by the Medes and Persians who reinstated a Judean king in Jerusalem. The Temple was eventually restored, beginning what is known as the Second Temple Period, with interference and argument from the northern kingdom of Israel. The tiny kingdom of Judah with Jerusalem as its capitol seems to have survived intact until the 3rd century BC.

History is pretty clear from here on out. Many exiles from the different wars over the centuries decided not to return to Judah, including the oldest and longest-lasting group of the Diaspora living in Iraq until 1951 AD. Many fled to Egypt and Africa and into Asia to the north, eventually making their way across Europe and Russia, following the expanding trade routes set up by their ancestors centuries before. Worried about the loss of traditional beliefs, Ezra the Scribe put together what is now known as the “Torah” and saw to it that the exiles should continue to observe its precepts. It was announced in Jerusalem that this would become the law by which the Judeans would rule themselves with the ritual laws and civil codes, establishing the foundation for the Jewish faith, lifestyle, and cultural practices that would continue no matter where the Judeans went, resulting in what is know known as the “kosher laws”.

Western or Wailing Wall

The Western Wall is also known as the Wailing Wall. It is named that for the tears shed for the fall of the Temple, and the losses of the Jewish people. It isn’t the actual wall of the Temple, as many believe, but it is the wall that surrounded the square in which the Temple stood. It is sacred to the Jews. For centuries, Jews have come to pray at the wall, but after Jordan won the area in the 1948 war, Jews and Israelis were not permitted access until the 1967 war. During this time, the significance and representation as a monument to the Jewish people grew to amazing levels never scene before. It continues to be a tribute of 5000 years of survival as a “people”. Today, tourists and residents stuff papers with prayers and wishes into the cracks of the wall, believing they are sending a message to God.

In the third century BC, once again the area was conquered, this time by the Greeks, adding their immense influence of art and culture to the mix. The area became known as Palestine, named for the Philistines who survived over the centuries nearby, and became the center of a tug-of-war between Syria and the Ptolemids of Egypt. The second Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed in AD 70 by the Romans, and that site has been occupied since AD 700 by the Mosque of Omar. Next to it, with its golden dome, the Dome of the Rock is a symbol of the city of Jerusalem. Inside this ornate construction is believed to be the stone Mohamed touched with his foot before ascending to heaven for a talk with God in a dream, though he never mentioned Jerusalem as the spot, and had never visited Jerusalem during his life time. The two Islamic buildings are built on the remains of the First and Second Temple, and the remains of the Western Wall of the Temple Square is now called the “Wailing Wall”.

And the fighting continued. After the Greeks, the Romans, Turks, and even Napoleon took turns waging war and control over Palestine. The Crusades brought much of Europe to wage a Holy War on Palestine for several hundred years. The Arabs fought amongst themselves over the area over and over again, fighting themselves as well as others, until the 17th century AD when the European community began to spread across Africa and parts of Asia, bringing vast trade opportunties as the Middle East once again became a major trade route. By the end of World War I, the British gained control of Palestine from the Turks (Ottoman Empire) when the Middle East and other areas were divided up between the European countries.

Tel Aviv, Israel

Posted in Israel, Telling Stories | 1 Comment

Website Taking Your Camera on the Road Widely Referenced on Internet

By Lorelle VanFossen | Published July 10, 2000

PRESS RELEASE
DATE: September 2003
SUBJECT: VanFossen Productions web site Widely Linked as Reference on the Internet

The Internet – The extensive web site, Taking Your Camera on the Road by Lorelle and Brent VanFossen, continues to recieve high praise across the Internet. Many educational organizations and sites are linked to the site as a reference tool. Some schools, teachers, and instructors use much of the material for their own classes and programs. The following is a recent list of web sites references the VanFossen’s work and web site:

• Union High School, Arkansas, Snowshoe Hare Project
• Speak Dutch? Our class notes from our program about the Internet are recommended in this discussion group
• RVAdvice for information on Recreational Vehicle Travel and Resources.
• A top 100 references for digital camera and Leica equipment references
• Reference on personal self defense and travel and photography
• Another couple who are starting their life on the road as nature photographers, and they site us as a good example of those who have gone before them.
• A Guide to The Web’s Top Nature and Landscape Photography Pages
• Poemhunter looks up words to help poets and our cat, Dahni, gets a reference under the word “Dahni” – WOW!
• A massive resource for the traveling and mobile office.
• WebFerrett gives us a nod for outstanding information on Internet Search Techniques and instructions
• The Knowledge Hound recommends us as a good reference for nature photography
• Treebeard (aka Marc Kummel) is a science teacher at Dunn Middle School in California and he listed us as a reference for nature photography on his weekly “Stumper” science page.
• Paul Ewing’s Hot List for Photography Sites
• Topphotos.net’s Top Photography web sites
• St. Louis Community College Photography References and Recommendations
• Road Trip America caught up with us on the road and did a story about USA, as we were preparing to hit the road in 1996.

For more information on who the VanFossens are and what are they doing as they take their camera on the road, visit their Doing Zone.

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Brent’s Computer Game – She’s Got a Thing for a Spring – Continues to Receive Acclaim

By Lorelle VanFossen | Published July 10, 2000

PRESS RELEASE
DATE: September 2003
SUBJECT: She’s Got a Thing for a Spring”, Interactive Fiction Game, Continues to Receive Acclaim

The Internet – “She’s Got a Thing for a Spring”, the award-winning computer software game designed and developed by Brent VanFossen, continues to receive high acclaim and notice around the world, especially on the Internet.

Dedicated to his wife, Lorelle, the interactive fiction (IF) game takes the player on an adventure/exploration of a wilderness area. The game features many highlights from their own adventures and travels as professional nature photographers. Using story-telling techniques, the player becomes Lorelle and explores the forest, fields and caves to help her accomplish her mission to meet up with her husband at a natural hot springs. The game won high praise and awards from the Interactive Fiction community and the online magazine, XYZZY, dedicated to this game genre, not only for its unique landscape and perspective in a world filled with science fiction adventure and war styled games, but also for its innovative use of a non-player character, Bob, an energetic and wise retired doctor living out the rest of his years in a log cabin deep in the forest.

Bob is unique because he is the genre’s first “self-sufficient” character, having a life of his own as he wanders around the game’s landscape on his own power and initiative. Bob has a vast vocabulary and interacts so extensively with the player, many go no further than their meeting with him. Brent and Bob won first place in the XYZZY Awards for the Best Character in an Interactive Fiction Game.

You can find more information about “She’s Got a Thing for a Spring” at the VanFossen’s web site at She’s Got a Thing for a Spring, and download your own copy of the game to play for free, and at the following web sites:

• Extensive review of “Spring”
• Reviewer gives “Spring” a 4-star rating
• Home of Verbose, Paul O’Brian’s Interactive Fiction Page. He gives “Spring” a score of 8.9 out of 10
• Baf’s Guide to the Interactive Fiction Archive – lists awards, reviews and ratings
• Recommended Reading List and Game Playing List for those wanting to improve their game writing and programming skills. It gives high marks to “Spring” as an example.
• The Best Free Interactive Fiction of the Century collected by Michael Feir, Editor of Audyssey, lists “Spring” as one of the 50 best.
• Sparkynet’s SPAG game reviews featuring “Spring” (SPAG – Society for the Promotion of Adventure Games)
• Transcript of the XYZZY Awards Ceremony giving high accolades to “Bob” and Brent
• Announcement of the IF Competition Awards naming “Spring” as a winner
• Announcement of IF Competition Awards in XYZZY News online mag
• Another “Best of” mention for “Spring”
• Article about the writing and development of a Non-Player Character (NPC) highlight “Spring” as an example of a good NPC

To play the game yourself, visit “She’s Got a Thing for a Spring” or visit an interactive web page to play the game online at Ifiction.org.

For more information on who the VanFossens are and what are they doing as they take their camera on the road, visit their Doing Zone.

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Quotes About Life and Living in the Moment

By Lorelle VanFossen | Published July 10, 2000

Quotes From Our Pages

• Nature and Photography Quotes
• Travel Quotes
• Being and Living Quotes

Lorelle has been collecting quotes since she first began to read, and has quite a collection. We have incorporated the most appropriate quotes from her collection and research into our pages where appropriate and enjoyable. We’ve had a lot of requests to share these, so we’ve gathered them together in a series of pages for you to peruse. The quotes from within our pages cover nature and photography, travel, and life in general. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do.

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…there is such a thing as perfection…and our purpose for living is to find that perfection and show it forth….Each of us is in truth an unlimited idea of freedom. Everything that limits us we have to put aside.
from Jonathan Livingston Seagull, by Richard Bach

All earthly pain is due to our inability to release what needs to be free. When you release what needs to be free, YOU are freed in the process.
Rusty Berkus, Appearances

Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they’re yours.
Richard Bach, from Illusions

Behind all your anger and fear, beneath all your sadness and loss is the need for love. How much love are you willing to accept from others? How much are you willing to give?
Rusty Berkus, Appearances

Can miles truly separate us from friends? If we want to be with someone we love, aren’t we already there?
Richard Bach, There’s No Such Place as Far Away

Did you know that you could experience love, pain, joy, anger, death and rebirth all at the same time and still be perfectly sane?
Rusty Berkus, Appearances

Disease is the soul screaming through the body, attempting to get the Truth out once and for all.
Rusty Berkus, Appearances

Do you love yourself enough to ask for what you need?
Rusty Berkus, Appearances

Don’t turn away from possible futures before you’re certain you don’t have anything to learn from them.
Richard Bach, from Illusions

Don’t be dismayed at good-byes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends.
Richard Bach, from Illusions

Every person, all the events of your life are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you.
Richard Bach, from Illusions

Here is the test to find whether your mission on earth is finished. If you’re alive, it isn’t.
Richard Bach, from Illusions

How would it be to know that when life doesn’t seem to be working, it is STILL working perfectly?
Rusty Berkus, Appearances

If error is corrected whenever it is recognized as such, the path of error is the path of truth.
Hans Reichenbach

If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats.
Richard Bach, from Illusions

If you know you are not your sports car, your grades, or your children’s grades, your color, your degrees or your spouses’s degrees, you age, your titles or your family’s titles, your body, your possessions or your parents’ possessions – Congratulations. You are Home again.
Rusty Berkus, Appearances

In order to live free and happily, you must sacrifice boredom. It is not always an easy sacrifice.
Richard Bach, Illusions

It’s better to lead with your dreams, than to be pushed by your problems.
John T. Dornbach

Live never to be ashamed if anything you do or say is published around the world – even if what is published is not true.
Richard Bach, from Illusions

Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
Berthold Auerbach

Not being known doesn’t stop the truth from being true. You are led through your lifetime by the inner learning creature, the playful spiritual being that is your real self. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly. Learning is finding out what we already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you. You are all learners, doers and teachers. The best way to pay for a lovely moment is to enjoy it.
Richard Bach, from Illusions

Not being known doesn’t stop the truth from being true.
Richard Bach

Our immune system is only as strong as the dosage of self-love, self-acceptance, and self-care that we administer to ourselves daily.
Rusty Berkus, Appearances

Question: Since you are here to remember who you are, why have you forgotten? Answer: Perhaps you have lived another’s dream and not your own.
Rusty Berkus, Appearances

Sometimes it takes great effort to discover that life was meant to be effortless.
Rusty Berkus, Appearances

That’s what learning is, after all: not whether we lose the game, but how we lose and how we’ve changed because of it, and what we take away from it that we never had before, to apply to other games. Losing, in a curious way, is winning.
Richard Bach, from Illusions

The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.
Richard Bach, from Illusions

The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other’s life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.
Richard Bach, from Illusions

The original sin is to limit the Is. Don’t.
Richard Bach, from Illusions

The dignity the world awards you is in exact proportion to the dignity you award yourself.
Rusty Berkus, Appearances

The only infallible, immutable, unlimited power that heals without question is Love.
Rusty Berkus, Appearances

There is a peaceful place inside that welcomes you. A space so safe, so still, that there is no forward or backward – only the eternal flow of NOW. Enter this radiance where the truth of your being resides, and remember who you are.
Rusty Berkus, Appearances

There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts.
Richard Bach, from Illusions

There is such a thing as perfection. . . and our purpose for living is to find that perfection and show it forth. . . .
Richard Bach, from Illusions

There is no one to compare yourself to, and no one to compete with. There never was. When the Rose and Lotus are side by side, is one more beautiful than the other?
Rusty Berkus, Appearances

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls a butterfly.
From Illusions by Richard Bach

What we wouldn’t give to know that it is okay not to feel okay and to know that it is okay to feel powerful, magnificent, deserving – even extraordinary.
Rusty Berkus, Appearances

When you know you are doing your very best within the circumstances of your existence, applaud yourself. Above all forgive yourself. …and, forgive everyone else.
Rusty Berkus, Appearances

When you awaken to who and what you are, everyone automatically awakens to who and what you are, without a word spoken.
Rusty Berkus, Appearances

Wherever you are in this moment, is exactly where you are supposed to be, no matter how things may seem to appear.
Rusty Berkus, Appearances

You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it come true. You may have to work for it, however.
Richard Bach, from Illusions

You are led through your lifetime by the inner learning creature, the playful spiritual being that is your real self.
Richard Bach, from Illusions

You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it come true
Richard Bach, from Illusions

You stand outside the circle and wonder why you feel left out, unaware that you need your OWN permission to join the others – not theirs. And sometimes there are those who love themselves enough to pull you into the circle.
Rusty Berkus, Appearances

Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself.
Richard Bach, from Illusions

Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years.
Richard Bach, from Illusions

Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness. Listen to it carefully.
Richard Bach, from Illusions

Your loneliness is your Self wanting to make friends with itself. Your loneliness is your Heart wanting to sing to itself. Your loneliness is your Being wanting to dance with itself.
Rusty Berkus, Appearances

…the ability to piece together work that will both satisfy and support us is the secret to surviving, even thriving.
Wendy Reid Crisp

“Nothing changes more constantly than the past; for the past that influences our lives does not consist of what happened, but of what men believe happened.
Gerald W. Johnston

‘Come to the edge,’ he said. They said, ‘We are afraid.’ ‘Come to the edge,’ he said. They came. He pushed them… And they flew.
Peter McWilliams

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What one can be, one must be.
Abraham Maslow

A man is the sum of his actions, of what he has done, of what he can do, nothing else.
Andre Malraux

A note of music gains significance from the silence on either side.
Anne Morrow Lindberg

A lot of words get spilled as the urge to be understood clashes with an aversion to being understood too well.
anonymous

A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a joke or worried to death by a frown on the right person’s brow.
Charles Brower

A wise man lowers a ladder before he jumps into a pit.
folk saying

A man learns to skate by staggering about making a fool of himself; indeed, he progresses in all things by making a fool of himself.
George Bernard Shaw

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
George Bernard Shaw

A year from now you may wish you had started today.
Karen Lamb

A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.
Mahatma Gandhi

A clay pot sitting in the sun will always be a clay pot. It has to go through the white heat of the furnace to become porcelain.
Mildred Witte Stouven

A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man too busy to take care of his health is like a mechanic too busy to take care of his tools.
Spanish proverb

A friend is someone who sees through you and still enjoys the view.
Wilma Askinas

About the time we can make ends meet, somebody moves the ends.
Herbert Hoover

Action is eloquence.
William Shakespeare

All men should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.
James Thurber

All prosperity begins in the mind and is dependent only on the full use of our creative imagination.
Ruth Ross

An unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.
W. Somerset Maugham

As we come around and take our places at the table, a moment to remember and reflect upon our wealth. Here’s to loving friends and family, here’s to being able to gather here together in good company and health. And may the light of Love be shining deep within your spirit, May the torch of Mercy clear the path and show the way, May the horn of Plenty sound so everyone can hear it, May the light of Love be with you every day.
from May the Light of Love by David Roth

As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.
Henry David Thoreau

As for disappointing them, I should not so much mind; but I can’t abide to disappoint myself.
Oliver Goldsmith

As great scientists have said and as all children know, it is above all by the imagination that we achieve perception, and compassion, and hope.
Ursula K. LeGuin

Attitudes are contagious. Are yours worth catching?
anonymous

Average isn’t awful, but it is as close to the bottom as it is to the top.
unknown

Be the master of your will and the slave of your conscience.
Hasidic saying

Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out.
James Bryant Conant

But he had let himself be bulldozed by the odds against him. He promised himself never again to pay any attention to the odds, but only the issues.
Robert A. Heinlein : Between Planets

Change is inevitable. Change for the better is a full-time job.
Adlai Stevenson

Change cannot be avoided….Change provides the opportunity for innovation. It gives you the chance to demonstrate your creativity.
Kesgavan Nair

Complete possession is proved only by giving. All you are unable to give possesses you.
Andre Gide

Contentment: The smother of invention.
Ethel Mumford

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.
Ambrose Redmoon

Courage is the price that Love exacts for granting peace.
Amelia Earhart

Courage: doing what you’re afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you’re scared.
Eddie Rickenbacker

Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all others.
Winston Churchill

Creativity: Take the obvious, add a cupful of brains, a generous pinch of imagination, a bucketful of courage and daring, stir well and bring to a boil.
Bernard Baruch

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.
Scott Adams

Diamonds are only chunks of coal that stuck to their jobs, you see.
Minnie Richard Smith

Do not let yourselves be discouraged or embittered by the smallness of the success you are likely to achieve in trying to make life better. You certainly would not be able, in a single generation, to create an earthly paradise. Who could expect that? But, if you make life ever so little better, you will have done splendidly, and your lives will have been worthwhile.
Arnold Toynbee

Do not attempt to do a thing unless you are sure of yourself; but do not relinquish it simply because someone else is not sure of you.
Stewart E. White

Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination; do not become the slave of your model.
Vincent van Gogh

Don’t walk in front of me, I may not follow; Don’t walk behind me, I may not lead; Walk beside me, and just be my friend.
Albert Camus

Don’t count the days, make the days count.
anonymous

Don’t compromise yourself. You’re all you’ve got.
Betty Ford (also attr. to Janis Joplin)

Don’t go through life, grow through life.
Eric Butterworth

Don’t fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have.
Louis E. Boone

Don’t throw away the old bucket until you know whether the new one holds water.
Swedish proverb

Dreams never hurt anybody if you keep working right behind the dreams to make as much of them become real as you can.
Frank W. Woolworth

Enjoyment is not a goal, it is a feeling that accompanies important ongoing activity.
Paul Goodman

Every accomplishment starts with the decision to try.
anonymous

Every difficulty slurred over will be a ghost to disturb your repose later on.
Frederic Chopin

Every one of us live this life just once; if we are honest, to live once is enough.
Greta Garbo

Every great and commanding movement in the annals of the world is the triumph of enthusiasm. Nothing great was ever achieved without it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of the language.
Samuel Johnson, Dictionary of the English Language, 1775

Everybody knows that if you are too careful you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something.
Gertrude Stein

Everyday happiness means getting up in the morning, and you can’t wait to finish your breakfast. You can’t wait to do your exercises. You can’t wait to put on your clothes. You can’t wait to get out–and you can’t wait to come home, because the soup is hot.
George Burns

Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.
Erica Jong

Everyone thinks his sack heaviest.
George Herbert

Everything, absolutely everything we see about us is the end result of decisions made, or not made, in all our yesterdays.
Perry Norton

Fear nothing, for every renewed effort raises all former failures into lessons, all sins into experiences.
Katherine Tingley

Finish what you begin. Public confidence in government isn’t guaranteed; it has to be earned. I know of no other way to earn the trust and cooperation of the public than first, to say what you intend to do, and second, to do it.
Neil Goldschmidt

For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin–real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way. Something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.
Fr. Alfred D’souza

For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of our tasks; the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.
Rainer Maria Rilke

Forget about likes and dislikes. They are of no consequence. Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness.
George Bernard Shaw

Frugality is one of the most beautiful and joyful words in the English language, and yet one that we are culturally cut off from understanding and enjoying. The consumption society has made us feel that happiness lies in having things, and has failed to teach us the happiness of not having things.
Elise Boulding

Good questions outrank easy answers.
Paul A. Samuelson

Great ideas need landing gear as well as wings.
C. D. Jackson

Great tranquility of heart is his who cares for neither praise nor blame.
Thomas a’ Kempis

Happiness is a matter of one’s most ordinary and everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self.
Iris Murdoch

Have you ever seen an inchworm crawl up a leaf or a twig, and then, clinging to the very end, revolve in the air, feeling for something, to reach something? That’s like me. I am trying to find something out there beyond the place on which I have footing.
Albert P. Ryder

He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils, for time is the greatest innovator.
Francis Bacon, Essays

He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery.
Harold Wilson

He is not worthy of the honeycomb that shuns the hive because the bees have stings.
Shakespeare

He that scattereth thorns must not go barefoot.
Thomas Fuller

He knew that insofar as one denies what is, one is possessed by what is not, the compulsions, the fantasies, the terrors that flock to fill the void.
Ursula K. LeGuin, The Lathe of Heaven

Heaven has a road, but no one travels it; Hell has no gate but men will dig to get there.
Chinese Proverb

Hope is a state of mind, not of the world….Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for…success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good.
Vaclav Havel

How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.
Marcus Aurelius

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
Douglas Adams

I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I do know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.
Albert Schweitzer

I try to avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep looking upward.
Charlotte Bronte

I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity.
Gilda Radner, 1946-1989

I am looking for a lot of men who have an infinite capacity to not know what can’t be done.
Henry Ford

I remember my grandfather telling me how each of us must live with a full measure of loneliness that is inescapable, and we must not destroy ourselves with our passion to escape this aloneness.
Jim Harrison, Dalva

I respect the man who knows distinctly what he wishes. The greater part of all mischief in the world arises from the fact that men do not sufficiently understand their own aims. They have undertaken to build a tower, and spend no more labor on the foundation than would be necessary to erect a hut.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I will not take’but’ for an answer.
Langston Hughes

I looked more widely around me, I studied the lives of the masses of humanity, and I saw that not two, or three, or ten, but hundreds, thousands, millions, had so understood the meaning of life that they were both able to live and to die. All these men were well acquainted with the meaning of life and death, quietly labored, endured privation and suffering, lived and died, and saw in all this, not a vain, but a good thing.
Leo Tolstoy

I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions.
Lillian Hellman

I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser than oneself.
Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992)

I look on that man as happy, who, when there is a question of success, looks into his work for a reply.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have learned more from my mistakes than from my successes.
Sir Humphry Davy

I went to a job interview the other day, the guy asked if I had any questions. I said yes, just one, if you’re in a car traveling at the speed of light and you turn your headlights on, does anything happen? He said he couldn’t answer that. I told him sorry, but I couldn’t work for him then.
Steven Wright

I certainly wasn’t happy. Happiness has to do with reason, and only reason earns it. What I was given was the thing you can’t earn, and can’t keep, and often don’t even recognize at the time; I mean joy.
Ursula K. LeGuin

I would rather be the man who bought the Brooklyn Bridge than the one who sold it.
Will Rogers

I am a true laborer: I earn that I eat, get that I wear, owe no man hate, envy no man’s happiness, glad of other men’s good, content with my harm.
WM. Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act III/Scene ii

I’d rather regret the things that I have done than the things that I haven’t.
Lucille Ball

I’m interested in the fact that the less secure a man is, the more likely he is to have extreme prejudice.
Clint Eastwood

If you think you’re too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito in the room.
Anita Koddick

If you haven’t any charity in your heart, then you have the worst kind of heart trouble.
Bob Hope

If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world, and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
E. B. White

If we don’t change, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow, we aren’t really living.
Gail Sheehy

If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we would find in each man’s life a sorrow and a suffering enough to disarm all hostility.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

If a person never contradicts himself, it must be that he says nothing.
Miguel de Unamuno

If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.
Peter Bender

If a man hasn’t discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr

If there be any truer measure of a man than by what he does, it must be by what he gives.
Robert South

If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?
Thomas Henry Huxley

In creating, the only hard thing’s to begin; A grass-blade’s no easier to make than an oak.
James Russell Lowell

In seeking wisdom thou are wise; in imagining that thou hast attained it thou are a fool.
Rabbi Ben-Azai

In order to live free and happily, you must sacrifice boredom. It is not always an easy sacrifice.
Richard Bach, Illusions

In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments–there are consequences.
Robert G. Ingersoll

In fine, nothing is said now that has not been said before.
Terence. 185-159

In the coming world they will not ask me,’Why were you not Moses?’ They will ask me,’Why were you not Zusya?’
Zusya

It is necessary for us to learn from others’ mistakes. You will not live long enough to make them all yourself.
Adm. Hyman G. Rickover

It is easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them.
Alfred Adler

It is not doing the things we like to do, but liking the thing we have to do that makes life blessed.
Goethe

It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: what are we busy about?
Henry David Thoreau

It is difficult to live in the present, ridiculous to live in the future, and impossible to live in the past. Nothing is as far away as one minute ago.
Jim Bishop

It is hard to let old beliefs go. They are familiar. We are comfortable with them and have spent years building systems and developing habits that depend on them. Like a man who has worn eyeglasses so long that he forgets he has them on, we forget that the world looks to us the way it does because we have become used to seeing it that way through a particular set of lenses. Today, however, we need new lenses. And we need to throw the old ones away.
Kenich Ohmae, “The Borderless World”

It is curious–curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare.
Mark Twain

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.
Seneca

Joy is not in things; it is in us.
Richard Wagner

Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength, mastering yourself is true power.
Lao-Tzu

Like farmers, we need to learn that we cannot sow and reap in the same day.
unknown

Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip.
Will Rogers

Love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction.
Antoine de Saint-Exupory

Love not what you are, but what you may become.
Cervantes

Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die.
Daniel Burnham

Maybe you’re right, boss. It all depends on the way you look at it….Look, one day I had gone to a little village. An old grandfather of ninety was busy planting an almond tree.’What, granddad!’ I exclaimed.’Planting an almond tree?’ and he, bent as he was, turned round and said, ‘my son, I carry on as if I should never die.’ I replied,’And I carry on as if I was going to die any minute.’ Which of us was right, boss?
Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek

More people would learn from their mistakes if they weren’t so busy denying they made them.
anonymous

Most people seek after what they do not possess and are enslaved by the very things they want to acquire.
Anwar El-Sadat

Most people, after accomplishing something, use it over and over again like a gramophone record till it cracks, forgetting that the past is just the stuff with which to make more future.
Freya Stark, French-English travel writer “The Journey’s Echo.

Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one’s own sunshine.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.
Jim Ryun

My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.
Charles F. Kettering

My problem lies in reconciling my gross habits with my net income.
Errol Flynn

My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me.
Henry Ford

Never do anything when you are in a temper, for you will do everything wrong.
Baltasar Gracian

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do, and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.
George S. Patton

Never cut what you can untie.
Joseph Joubert

Never give in! Never give in! Never, never, never, never–in nothing great or small, large or petty–never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.
Winston Churchill

No amount of sophistication is going to allay the fact that all your knowledge is about the past and all your decisions are about the future.
Ian E. Wilson

No one wants advice–only corroboration.
John Steinbeck

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.
Albert Camus

Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.
Samuel Ullman

None of us suddenly becomes something overnight. The preparations have been in the making for a lifetime.
Gail Godwin

Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
Martin Luther King, December 11, 1964

Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile.
Bertrand Russell

Nothing would be done at all if one waited until one could do it so well that no one could find fault with it.
Cardinal Newman

Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.
Mark Twain

Nothing is so strong as gentleness, and nothing is so gentle as true strength.
Ralph Sockman

Often people attempt to live their lives backwards; they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want, so they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want.
Margaret Young

Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not one’s better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on one’s ideas, to take a calculated risk–and to act.
Maxwell Maltz

Oh, you who are trying to learn the marvel of Love through the copy book of Reason, I’m very much afraid you will never really see the point.
Hafiz of Shiraz

On some hill of despair the bonfire you kindle can light the great sky–though it’s true, of course, to make it burn you have to throw yourself in.
Galway Kinnell

One man with courage makes a majority.
Andrew Jackson

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.
Bertrand Russell

One lie does not cost you one truth, but the truth.
Friedrich Hebbel

One who finds no satisfaction in himself seeks for it in vain elsewhere.
La Rochefoucauld

One may be in as just possession of truths as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender.
Sir Thomas Browne

Our deeds determine us as much as we determine our deeds.
George Eliot

Our lives improve only when we take chances–and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves.
Walter Anderson

Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.
William Shakespeare

Past: Our cradle, not our prison; there is danger as well as appeal in its glamour. The past is for inspiration, not imitation, for continuation, not repetition.
Israel Zangwill

Pay attention to minute particulars. Take care of the little ones. Generalization and abstraction are the plea of the hypocrite, scoundrel, and knave.
William Blake

Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.
Baruch Spinoza

People are always neglecting something they can do in trying to do something they can’t do.
Ed Howe

People think love is an emotion. Love is good sense.
Ken Kesey

People, like nails, lose their effectiveness when they lose direction and begin to bend.
Walter Savage Landor

Perfect courage is to do without witnesses what one would be capable of doing with the world looking on.
Francois, Duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) French writer, moralist

Perfect courage means doing unwitnessed what we would be capable of with the world looking on.
La Rochefoucauld

Perhaps the efforts of the true poets, founders, religions, literatures, all ages, have been, and ever will be, our time and times to come, essentially the same–to bring people back from their present strayings and sickly abstractions, to the costless, average, divine, original concrete.
Walt Whitman

Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after another.
Walter Elliott

Quality isn’t a thing. It is an event.
Robert Pirsig

Quality doesn’t improve by sitting on things.
Val Fitch

Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has plenty; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.
Charles Dickens

Should-haves solve nothing. It’s the next thing to happen that needs thinking about.
Alexandra Ripley

Some men give up their designs when they have almost reached the goal, while others, on the contrary, obtain a victory by exerting at the last moment more vigorous efforts than before.
Polybius

Someday is not a day of the week.
anonymous

Something we were withholding made us weak Until we found it was ourselves.
Robert Frost

Sometimes being pushed to the wall gives you the momentum necessary to get over it!
Peter de Jaeger

Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.
St. Francis of Assisi

That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions, and were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions.
George Santayana

The most exhausting thing in my life is being insincere.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh

The best parachute folders are those who jump themselves.
anonymous

The future lies before you, like paths of pure white snow. Be careful how you tread it, for every step will show.
Anonymous

The past is a ghost, the future a dream, all we ever have is now.
Bill Cosby

The man who never reads will never be read; he who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men’s brains proves that he has no brains of his own.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The mind cannot long act the role of the heart.
Francois de la Rochefoucauld

The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It’s for you I created the universe. I love you. There’s only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you’ll reach out and take it. Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too.
Frederick Buechner

The difference between a rut and a grave is the depth.
Gerald Burrill

The vast possibilities of our great future will become realities only if we make ourselves responsible for that future.
Gifford Pinchot

The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth–that the error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it is cured on one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one.
H. L. Mencken

The truth will set you free. But before it does, it will make you angry.
Jerry Joiner

The highest reward for a person’s toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.
John Ruskin

The only devils in the world are those running in our own hearts. That is where the battle should be fought.
Mahatma Gandhi

The longer the excuse, the less likely it’s the truth.
Robert Half

The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem.
Theodore Rubin

The only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth.
traditional

The best way to predict the future is to create it.
unknown

The worst-tempered people I’ve ever met were the people who knew they were wrong.
Wilson Mizner

There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity.
Gen. Douglas MacArthur

There are two kinds of light–the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures.
James Thurber

There are risks and costs to a programme of action, but they are far less than the long range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.
John F. Kennedy

There is hardly anybody good for everything, and there is scarcely anybody who is absolutely good for nothing.
Lord Chesterfield

There are two kinds of people: those who finish what they start, and so on.
Robert Byrne

There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.
Thornton Wilder

There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse; as I have found in travelling in a stage-coach, that it is often a comfort to shift one’s position and be bruised in a new place.
Washington Irving

There’s nothing wrong with having nothing to say–unless you insist on saying it.
anonymous

These days people seek knowledge, not wisdom. Knowledge is of the past, wisdom is of the future.
Vernon Cooper, Lumbee tribe (Native American)

Things turn out best for the people who make the best out of the way things turn out.
Art Linkletter

Think not forever of yourselves, O Chiefs, nor of your own generation. Think of continuing generations of our families, think of our grandchildren and of those yet unborn, whose faces are coming from beneath the ground.
Peacemaker, founder of the Iroquois Confederacy, ca. 1000 AD

This is as true in everyday life as it is in battle: we are given one life and the decision is ours whether to wait for circumstances to make up our mind, or whether to act, and in acting, to live.
Gen. Omar Bradley

This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.
William Shakespeare

Those who stand for nothing fall for anything.
Alexander Hamilton

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana

Those who do not plan for the future will have to live through it anyway.
Len Fisher

Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves. But deep down below the surface of the average conscience a still, small voice says to us, ‘something is out of tune.’
Carl Jung

To be in hell is to drift; to be in heaven is to steer.
George Bernard Shaw

To change your life; -Start immediately -Do it flamboyantly -No exceptions
William James

True silence is the rest of the mind. It is to the spirit what sleep is to the body–nourishment and refreshment.
William Penn

We cannot change our memories, but we can change their meaning and the power they have over us.
David Seamands

We learn the rope of life by untying its knots.
Jean Toomer

We have only one person to blame, and that’s each other.
Larry Breck of the NY Rangers, on who started a brawl during the Stanley Cup playoffs

We cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are.
Max DuPree

We must not allow other people’s limited perceptions to define us.
Virginia Satir

When you pray for potatoes, grab a hoe.
David Jamieson’s Mom

When you aim for perfection, you discover it’s a moving target.
George Fisher

When one finds oneself in a hole of one’s own making, it is a good time to examine the quality of the workmanship.
John Renmerde

When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.
Martin Luther King, Jr., 1929-1968

When you come right down to it all you have is yourself. The sun is a thousand rays in your belly. All the rest is nothing.
Pablo Picasso

When the stomach is full, it is easy to talk of fasting.
St Jerome

When they tell you to grow up, they mean to stop growing.
Tom Robbins

While one person hesitates because he feels inferior, another is busy making mistakes and becoming superior.
Henry C. Link

Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness.
Sophocles

With courage you will dare to take risks, have the strength to be compassionate and the wisdom to be humble. Courage is the foundation of integrity.
Kesgavan Nair

Without courage, wisdom bears no fruit.
Baltasar Gracian

Words that enlighten are more precious than jewels.
Hazrat Inayat Khan

You can’t hold someone down without staying down with them.
Booker T. Washington

You will never find time for anything. If you want time you must make it.
Charles Buxton

You cannot prevent the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can prevent them from building nests in your hair.
Chinese proverb

You can preach a better sermon with your life than with your lips.
Oliver Goldsmith

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Quotes about Travel

By Lorelle VanFossen | Published July 10, 2000

Quotes From Our Pages

• Nature and Photography Quotes
• Travel Quotes
• Being and Living Quotes

Lorelle has been collecting quotes since she first began to read, and has quite a collection. We have incorporated the most appropriate quotes from her collection and research into our pages where appropriate and enjoyable. We’ve had a lot of requests to share these, so we’ve gathered them together in a series of pages for you to peruse. The quotes from within our pages cover nature and photography, travel, and life in general. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do.

Wear a smile and have friends; wear a scowl and have wrinkles. What do we live for if not to make the world less difficult for each other?
George Eliot

Travel has a way of stretching the mind. The stretch comes not from travel’s immediate rewards, the inevitable myriad new sights, smells and sounds, but with the experiencing firsthand how others do differently what we have believed to be the right and only way.
— Ralph Crawshaw

Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.
Marie Curie

Information’s pretty thin stuff unless mixed with experience.
Clarence Day

We need only travel enough to give our intellects an airing.
Henry David Thoreau

It was a good place for getting lost in, a city no one ever knew, a city explored from the neutral heart outward, until after many years, it defined itself into a jumble of clearings separated by stretches of the unknown…
V S Naipaul In “An Area of Darkness,” by Andre, Deutsch, 1964.

To gain that worth having, it may be necessary to lose everything else.
Bernadette Devlin

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the thousands of breasts there is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it.
Charles Dickens

The average tourist wants to go to places where there are no tourists.
Sam Ewing In “Readers’ Digest.”

One of the hardest things in this world is to admit you are wrong. And nothing is more helpful in resolving a situation than its frank admission.
Benjamin Disraeli

The two elements the traveler first captures in the big city are extra human architecture and furious rhythm. Geometry and anguish.
Federico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936) Spanish poet, dramatist

Travel, instead of broadening the mind, often merely lengthens the conversation.
Elizabeth Drew

There are three wants which never can be satisfied: that of the rich, who wants something more; that of the sick, who wants something different; and that of the traveler, who says, ‘Anywhere but here.’
Ralph Waldo Emerson

People who travel are always fugitives.
Daphne DuMaurier

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

Our instructed vagrancy, which has hardly time to linger by the hedgerows, but runs away early to the tropics, and is at home with palms and banyans which is nourished on books of travel, and stretches the theatre of its imagination to the Zambesi.
George Eliot

A nomad I will remain for life, in love with distant and uncharted places.
Isabelle Eberhardt

We shall never cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
T. S. Eliot

If you want to make God laugh, tell him you have plans.
Sister Emerita

People only see what they are prepared to see.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Traveling is a fool’s paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am not much an advocate for traveling, and I observe that men run away to other countries because they are not good in their own, and run back to their own because they pass for nothing in the new places.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.
Edward Gibbon, in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning, and under every deep a lower deep opens.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Each man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbor. Then all goes well. He has changed his market-cart into a chariot of the sun.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
Susan Ertz

You are in the driver’s seat of your life and can point your life down any road you want to travel. You can go as fast or as slow as you want to go…. and you can change the road you’re on at any time.
Jinger Heath, President of Beauticontrol, US business executive

You define a good flight by negatives: you didn’t get hijacked, you didn’t crash, you didn’t throw up, you weren’t late, you weren’t nauseated by the food. So you’re grateful.
Paul Theroux, The Old Patagonian Express

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius–and a lot of courage–to move in the opposite direction.
Ernst F. Schumacher

Men trust their ears less than their eyes.
Herodotus

Beware of the person who can’t be bothered by details.
William Feather, Sr.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness – all foes to real understanding. Likewise, tolerance or broad, wholesome charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in our little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.
Mark Twain

The world is a book, and those who do not travel, read only a page.
Saint Augustine (354-430) Roman religious figure

Experience is what allows us to repeat our mistakes, only with more finesse!,
Derwood Fincher

Travel teaches toleration.
Benjamin Disraeli, Contarini Fleming

If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Way to Freedom

Travel is the frivolous part of serious lives, and the serious part of frivolous ones.
Anne Sophie Swetchine (1782-1857) Russian-French

Next week there can’t be any crisis. My schedule is already full.
Henry Kissinger

One that would have the fruit must climb the tree.
Thomas Fuller

If an ass goes travelling he will not come home a horse.
Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia

He who would be friends with God must remain alone or make the whole world his friend.
Mahatma Gandhi

Whoever wants to see a brick must look at its pores, and must keep his eyes close to it. But whoever wants to see a cathedral cannot see it as he sees a brick. This demands a respect for distance.
Jose Ortega y Gasset

The really happy person is the one who can enjoy the scenery, even when they have to take a detour.
anonymous

One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
Andre Gide

Some cause happiness wherever they go, others whenever they go.
Oscar Wilde

The best way to know God is to love many things.
Vincent Van Gogh

He who never leaves his country is full of prejudices.
Pamela Goldoni

The service we render to others is really the rent we pay for our room on this earth. It is obvious that man is himself a traveler; that the purpose of this world is not “to have and to hold” but “to give and serve.” There can be no other meaning.
Sir Wilfred T. Grenfell

Never measure the height of a mountain, until you have reached the top. Then you will see how low it was.
Dag Hammarskjold

Never look down to test the ground before taking your next step; only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find the right road.
Dag Hammarskjold

Some people make things happen, some watch while things happen, and some wonder ‘What happened?’
unknown

When preparing to travel, lay out all your clothes and all your money. Then take half the clothes and twice the money.
Susan Heller

Success and failure are both difficult to endure. Along with success come drugs, divorce, fornication, bullying, travel, meditation, medication, depression, neurosis and suicide. With failure comes failure.
Joseph Heller

The world does not need tourists who ride by in a bus clucking their tongues. The world as it is needs those who will love it enough to change it, with what they have, where they are.
Robert Fulghum

I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.
Ernest Hemingway

What you’ve done becomes the judge of what you’re going to do — especially in other people’s minds. When you’re traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don’t have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.
William Least Heat Moon, Blue Highways

Nonconformists travel as a rule in bunches. You rarely find a nonconformist who goes it alone. And woe to him inside a nonconformist clique who does not conform with nonconformity
Eric Hoffer

What you’ve done becomes the judge of what you’re going to do — especially in other people’s minds. When you’re traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don’t have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.
William Least Heat Moon, Blue Highways

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

The great thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are going.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I would not pass it around. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it. I don’t embrace trouble; that’s as bad as treating it as an enemy. But I do say: meet it as a friend, for you’ll see a lot of it, and had better be on speaking terms with it.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

Grant me the Serenity to prioritize things I cannot delegate, the Courage to say No when I need to, and the Wisdom to know when to go home.
unknown

The only way to entertain some folks is to listen to them.
Kin Hubbard

Experience is not what happens to you, it is what you do with what happens to you.
Aldous Huxley

Know most of the rooms of thy native country before thou goest over the threshold thereof.
Thomas Fuller, The Holy and the Profane States: Of Traveling

Only those who attempt the absurd achieve the impossible.
unknown

There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse; as I have found in travelling in a stage-coach, that it is often a comfort to shift one’s position and be bruised in a new place
Washington Irving

If I could tell you what it meant, there would be no point in dancing it.
Isadora Duncan

Ay, now am I in Arden; the more fool I: when I was at home, I was in a better place: but travellers must be content.
William Shakespeare,As You Like It

Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they’ve got a second. Give your dreams all you’ve got and you’ll be amazed at the energy that comes out of you.
William James

To travel hopefully is better than to arrive.
Sir James Jeans

The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.
Samuel Johnson

Obstacles are things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.
E. Joseph Cossman

Traveling, you realize that differences are lost: each city takes to resembling all cities, places exchange their form, order, distances, a shapeless dust cloud invades the continents.
Italo Calvino (1923-1985) Italian journalist

He who travels west travels not only with the sun but with history.
Hal Borland (1900-1978) US journalist

Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience. He that traveleth into a country, before he hath some entrance into the language, goeth to school, and not to travel.
Francis Bacon, Essays: Of travel

It is better to be prepared for an opportunity and not have one than to have an opportunity and not be prepared.
Whitney Young, Jr.

Life is a great big canvas; throw all the paint on it you can.
Danny Kaye

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
Helen Keller

Be assured that if you knew all, you would pardon all.
Thomas Kempis

A man travels the world over in search of what he needs, and returns home to find it.
George Moore (1852-1933) Irish author, poet, dramatist “The Brook Kerith.”

My purposes are the geography that marks out my line of travel toward the person I want to be.
Alice Koller

The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.
Henry Kissinger

Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel from coast to coast without seeing anything.
Charles Kuralt

Rail travel at high speeds is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia.
Dionysius Lardner

The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in determination.
Tommy Lasorda

A traveler to distant places should make no enemies.
Nigerian Proverb

The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.
Ursula K. LeGuin

It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
Ursula K. LeGuin

Most travel is best of all in the anticipation or the remembering; the reality has more to do with losing your luggage.
Regina Nadelson In ‘European Travel and Life.’

In traveling, a man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring home knowledge.
Samuel Johnson, in Boswell’s Life

One can never pay in gratitude, one can only pay ‘in kind’ somewhere else in life.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Total freedom is never what one imagines and, in fact, hardly exists. It comes as a shock in life to learn that we usually only exchange one set of restrictions for another. The second set, however, is self-chosen, and therefore easier to accept.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh

The more I traveled the more I realized that fear makes strangers of people who would be friends.
Shirley MacLaine

Of journeying the benefits are many: The freshness it bringeth to the heart, the seeing and hearing of marvelous things, the delight of new cities, the meeting of unknown friends, and the learning of high manners.
Sadi

I am sure that no traveler seeing things through author spectacles can see them as they are…
Harriet Martineau

In the world through which I travel, I am endlessly creating myself.
Frantz Fannon (1925-1961) “Black Skins, White Masks”

Do not lose your knowledge that man’s proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind, and a step that travels unlimited roads.
John Galt, in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged:

We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.
Herman Melville

He travels safest in dark night who travels lightest.
Hernando Cortez, in Prescott’s Conquest of Mexico

There are no traffic jams when you go the extra mile.
anonymous

If you have any notion of where you are going, you will never get anywhere.
Joan Miro

You know that it never has been easy Whether you do or do not resign, Whether you travel the breadth of the extremities Or stick to some straighter line.
Joni Mitchell

A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but, after a while, knows something.
Wilson Mizner

I’ve traveled more this year than any other living human being, and if I’d traveled any more I wouldn’t be living.
Walter F. Mondale

When I am… traveling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep; it is on such occasions that ideas flow best and most abundantly.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

No one’s going to be able to operate without a grounding in the basic sciences. Language would be helpful, although English is becoming increasingly international. And travel. You have to have a global attitude.
Rupert Murdoch

On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain. Either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow.
Friedrich Nietzsche

The world is his who has money to go over it.
Emerson, Conduct of Life

Do not lose your knowledge that man’s proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind, and a step that travels unlimited roads.
John Galt, in Ayn Rand’s ‘Atlas Shrugged’

Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.
Shakespeare

Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.
Albert Einstein

If we are always arriving and departing, it is also true that we are eternally anchored. One’s destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.
Henry Miller (1891-1980) US novelist

It would be nice to travel if you knew where you were going and where you would live at the end or do we ever know, do we ever live where we live, we’re always in other places, lost, like sheep.
Janet Frame, New Zealander novelist,

Aspects of life here, civility, courtesy, and coziness, have always bound Britons to their country… They are part of the British myth, along with lovely countryside, dogs and horses, rose gardens, the Armada, the Battle of Britain.
R. W. Apple, Jr. US journalist In NY Times,1985

I’ve got all the money I’ll ever need, if I die by four o’clock.
Henny Youngman

Where I was born and how I have lived is unimportant. It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of interest.
Georgia O’Keefe

Texas is a state of mind. Texas is an obsession. Above all, Texas is a nation in every sense of the word. And there’s an opening convey of generalities. A Texan outside of Texas is a foreigner.
John Steinbeck (1902-1968) US novelist Travels With Charley: in Search of America”

Look to this day…for yesterday is but a dream, and tomorrow is only a vision…but today well-lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope.
unknown

Not houses finely roofed or the stones of walls well builded, nay nor canals and dockyards, make the city, but men able to use their opportunity.
Alcaeus

He travels best that knows when to return.
Middleton, The Old Law

To get away from one’s working environment is, in a sense, to get away from one’s self; and this is often the chief advantage of travel and change.
Charles Horton Cooley (1864-1929) US sociologist Human Nature and the Social Order

Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes you get rained out.
Satchel Paige

One of the secrets of life is to make stepping stones out of stumbling blocks.
Jack Penn

If there is any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now, and not deter or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again.
William Penn

Modern Americans travel light, with little philosophic baggage other than a fervent belief in their right to the pursuit of happiness.
George Will, US journalist, TV personality

Spirit of place! It is for this we travel, to surprise its subtlety; and where it is a strong and dominant angel, that place, seen once, abides entire in the memory with all its own accidents, its habits, its breath, its name.
Alice Meynell (1847-1922) English poet

Good sense travels on the well-worn paths; genius, never. And that is why the crowd, not altogether without reason, is so ready to treat great men as lunatics.
Cesare Lombroso (1836-1909) Italian criminologist/physician

A traveller without observation is a bird without wings.
Moslih Eddin Saadi (1184-1291) Persian poet

What one has not experienced one will never understand in print.
Isadora Duncan

No man should travel until he has learned the language of the country he visits. Otherwise he voluntarily makes himself a great baby-so helpless and so ridiculous.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals, 1833

Unless one says goodbye to what one loves, and unless one travels to completely new territories, one can expect merely a long wearing away of oneself and an eventual extinction.
Jean Dubuffet (1901-1985) French painter, sculptor, printmaker

Go far–too far you cannot, still the farther. The more experience finds you: and go sparing– One meal a week will serve you, and one suit, Through all your travels; for you’ll find it certain The poorer and the baser you appear, The more you look through still.
John Fletcher, The Woman’s Prize

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
Marcel Proust

The miracle is not to fly in the air, or to walk on the water, but to walk on the earth.
Chinese proverb

We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.
Marcel Proust

We do not walk on our legs, but on our Will.
Sufi proverb

Discussion is an exchange of knowledge; argument is an exchange of ignorance.
Robert Quillen

All you have to do is look straight and see the road, and when you see it, don’t sit looking at it–walk!,
Ayn Rand

In the long run the pessimist may be proved right, but the optimist has a better time on the trip.
Daniel L. Reardon

I never practice, I always play.
Wanda Landowska, internationally recorded keyboardist

If all difficulties were known at the outset of a long journey, most of us would never start out at all.
Dan Rather ‘I Remember.’

A gentleman ought to travel abroad, but dwell at home.
Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia

Assume nothing. Pursue everything.
Kevin Riper

Traveling is not just seeing the new; it is also leaving behind. Not just opening doors; also closing them behind you, never to return. But the place you have left forever is always there for you to see whenever you shut your eyes.
Jan Myrdal, The Silk Road

Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business.
Tom Robbins

If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.
-John D. Rockefeller

Rumor travels faster, but it don’t stay put as long as truth.
Will Rogers

When you put down the good things you ought to have done, and leave out the bad things you did do–well, that’s memoirs.
Will Rogers

It ain’t what we don’t know that gives us trouble, It’s what we know that ain’t so.
Will Rogers

Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.
Will Rogers

The journey to happiness involves finding the courage to go down into ourselves and take responsibility for what’s there: all of it.
Richard Rohr

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.
Eleanor Roosevelt

A wise traveler never despises his own country.
Pamela Goldoni

Have you considered that if you ‘don’t make waves’ nobody including yourself will know that you are alive?,
Theodore Isaac Rubin

Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of traveling.
Margaret Lee Runbeck

One of these days in your travels a guy is going to come up to you and show you a nice brand-new deck of cards on which the seal is not yet broken, and this guy is going to offer to bet you that he can make the Jack of Spades jump out of the deck and squirt cider in your ear. But, son, do not bet this man, for as sure as you stand there, you are going to end up with an earful of cider.
Damon Runyon

The hardest thing in life to learn is which bridge to cross and which to burn.
David Russell

Man is an artifact designed for space travel. He is not designed to remain in his present biologic state any more than a tadpole is designed to remain a tadpole.
William S. Burroughs

Its really hard to be roommates with people if your suitcases are much better than theirs.
J. D. Salinger

It’s all very well in practice, but it will never work in theory.
French management saying

Travellers, like poets, are mostly an angry race.
Richard Francis Burton (1821-1890) English scholar

The tendency of an event to occur varies inversely with one’s preparation for it.
David Searles

It is no longer good enough to cry Peace. We must act Peace, live Peace, and march in Peace in alliance with the people of the world.
Tadohado Chief Leon Shenandoah Haudenosaunee

Everything in life is somewhere else, and you get there in a car.
E. B. White, One Man’s Meat

…the more the soul knows, the more she loves, and loving much, she tastes much.
St. Catherine of Siena

Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn

The road to success is lined with many tempting parking spaces.
unknown

He did not care in which direction the car was travelling, so long as he remained in the driver’s seat.
William Maxwell Beaverbrook (1879-1964) English publisher, statesman

If I had my life to live over I’d like to make more mistakes next time. I’d relax. I would limber up. I would be sillier than I have been this trip. I would take fewer things seriously. I would take more chances. I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers. I would eat more ice cream and less beans. I would perhaps have more actual trouble, but I’d have fewer imaginary ones. You see, I’m one of those people who live sensibly and sanely hour after hour, day after day. Oh, I’ve had my moments, and if I had to do it over again, I’d have more of them. In fact, I’d try to have nothing else. Just moments, one after another, instead of living so many years ahead of each day. I’ve been one of those persons who never goes anywhere without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a raincoat, and a parachute. If I had to do it again, I would travel lighter that I have. If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall. I would go to more dances. I would ride more merry-go-rounds, I would pick more daisies.
Nadine Stair

To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.
Robert Louis Stevenson

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken

I should like to spend the whole of my life in traveling abroad, if I could anywhere borrow another life to spend afterwards at home.
Hazlitt, Table-Talk

Gosh that takes me back… or is it forward? That’s the trouble with time travel, you never can tell.
Doctor Who, The Androids of Tara

Travel is the most private of pleasures. There is no greater bore than the travel bore. We do not in the least want to hear what he has seen in Hong Kong.
Vita Sackville-West, Passage to Teheran

I travel light; as light, that is, as a man can travel who will still carry his body around because of its sentimental value.
Christopher Fry, from The Lady’s Not for Burning, I

…et eunt homines mirari alta montium, et ingentes fluctus maris, et latissimos lapsus fluminum, et Oceani ambitum, et gyros siderum, et relinquunt se ipsos,… And men go abroad to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty billows of the sea, the broad tides of rivers, the compass of the ocean, and the circuits of the stars, and pass themselves by…
St. Augustine The Confessions

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.
Cicero

If you see ten troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you and you have to battle with only one of them.
Calvin Coolidge

Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.
Mother Theresa

Extensive traveling induces a feeling of encapsulation, and travel, so broadening at first, contracts the mind.
Paul Theroux

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh, and the greatness which does not bow before children.
Kahlil Gibran, ‘mirrors of the Soul’

He is the best sailor who can steer within fewest points of the wind, and exact a motive power out of the greatest obstacles.
Henry David Thoreau

Only the traveling is good which reveals to me the value of home and enables me to enjoy it better.
Henry David Thoreau

The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready, and it may be a long time before they get off.
Henry David Thoreau

There’s an alternative. There’s always a third way, and it’s not a combination of the other two ways–it’s a different way.
David Carradine

He who is only a traveler learns things at second-hand and by the halves, and is poor authority. We are most interested when science reports what those men already know practically or instinctively, for that alone is a true humanity…
Henry David Thoreau

Sincerity is like traveling on a plain, beaten road, which commonly brings a man sooner to his journey’s end than by-ways, in which men often lose themselves.
John Tillotson

Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together.
Eugene Ionesco

Laughter is, after speech, the chief thing that holds society together.
Max Eastman

Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience. He that traveleth into a country, before he hath some entrance into the language, goeth to school, and not to travel.
Francis Bacon, Essays: Of travel

While armchair travelers dream of going places, traveling armchairs dream of staying put.
Anne Tyler

I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.
Mark Twain

Everyone wants to understand painting. Why don’t they try to understand the song of the birds? Why do they love a night, a flower, everything which surrounds man, without attempting to understand them? Whereas where painting is concerned, they want to understand.
Pablo Picasso

It is somehow reassuring to discover that the word “travel” is derived from “travail,” denoting the pains of childbirth.
Jessica Mitford (1917-1996) English-USA

Diplomacy is the art of letting someone have your own way.
Danielle Vare

He who has travelled alone can tell what he likes.
Rwandan proverb

Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do against cold. For if you put on more clothes as the cold increases, it will have no power to hurt you. So in like manner you must grow in patience when you meet with great wrongs, and they will be powerless to vex your mind.
Leonardo da Vinci

Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude.
Denis Waitley

Worshipping the teapot instead of drinking the tea.
Wei Wu Wei

Our way is not soft grass, it’s a mountain path with lots of rocks. But it goes upward, forward, toward the sun.
Ruth Westheimer

If I traveled to the end of the rainbow As Dame Fortune did intend, Murphy would be there to tell me The pot’s at the other end.
Bert Whitney

Experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing.
Oscar Wilde

The only people flying to Europe will be terrorists, so it will be, “Will you be sitting in armed or unarmed?,
Robin Williams

Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the world together.
Woodrow Wilson

Courage is the art of being the only one who knows you’re scared to death!
Earl Wilson

Some minds improve by travel, others, rather, Resemble copper wire, or brass, Which get the narrower by going farther.
Thomas Hood, Ode to Rae Wilson

Down to Gehenna, or up to the Throne, He travels the fastest who travels alone.
Kipling, The Winners

The toughest opponent of all is Old Man Par. He’s a patient soul who never shoots a birdie and never incurs a bogey. And if you would travel the long road with him, you must be patient, too.
Bobby Jones (1902-1971) US golfer In “The Golfer’s Book of Wisdom”

Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.
Rodin

Conduct is more convincing than language.
John Woolman

The youth who daily farther from the east, Must travel, still is Nature’s priest, And by the vision splendid Is on his way attended: At length the man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day.
William Wordsworth

The best portion of a good man’s life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.
William Wordsworth

A vacation is having nothing to do and all day to do it in.
Robert Orben, US editor/writer

Home is not where you live, but where they understand you.
Christian Morgenstern

A good traveler is one who does not know where he is going to, and a perfect traveler does not know where he came from.
Lin Yutang

Sometimes, the road is less traveled for a reason.

Heaven has a road, but no one travels it; Hell has no gate but men will dig to get there.
Chinese Proverb

A traveler must have the back of an ass to bear all, a tongue like the tail of a dog to flatter all, the mouth of a hog to eat what is set before him, the ear of a merchant to hear all and say nothing.
Thomas Nashe, Works

Travel is a foretaste of hell.
Anonymous

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.
Emerson

The journey is difficult, immerse. We will travel as far as we can, but we cannot in one lifetime see all that we would like to see or to learn all that we hunger to know.
Loren Eiseley

The only aspect of our travels that is interesting to others is disaster.
Martha Gellman

Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.
Voltaire

I haven’t a clue as to how my story will end. But that’s all right. When you set out on a journey and night covers the road, you don’t conclude that the road has vanished. And how else could we discover the stars?
Unknown

We seldom know our biggest lessons while they’re taking place; our experience of that time is usually confusion, pain and/or discomfort. Like travel, the most exotic lands with the most amazing scenery sometimes means sleeping in tents 200 miles from the nearest toilet. It’s when we get back home that we remember the magnificent vistas. As Williams Burroughs explained, There are certain things human beings are not permitted to know – like what we’re doing.
John-Roger and Peter McWilliams, Life 101

…I could accept this openness, glasnost, perestroika, or whatever you want to call it if they did these things: abolish the one party system; open the Soviet frontier and allow Soviet people to travel freely; allow the Soviet people to have real free enterprise; allow Western businessmen to do business there, and permit freedom of speech and of the press. But so far, the whole country is like a concentration camp. The barbed wire on the fence around the Soviet Union is to keep people inside, in the dark. This openness that you are seeing, all these changes, are cosmetic and they have been designed to impress shortsighted, naive, sometimes stupid Western leaders. These leaders gush over Gorbachev, hoping to do business with the Soviet Union or appease it. He will say: “Yes, we can do business!” This while his military machine in Afghanistan has killed over a million people out of a population of 17 million. Can you imagine that?
Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in 1976 “Defense Electronics”, Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 110

A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.
John Steinbeck (1902-1968) US novelist “Travels With Charley: in Search of America,” pt. 1, 1961.

Love your neighbors as yourselves, to Obey the command of God. Value their well-being as your own, since Even the unlikable deserve God’s love…and yours.
paraphrase from Romans 13:8-14

See one promontory, one mountain, one sea, one river, and see all.
Socrates, in Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy

Traveling is almost like talking with men of other centuries.
Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

What should I have known or written had I been a quiet, mercantile politician or a lord in waiting? A man must travel, and turmoil, or there is no existence.
George Gordon Byron (1788-1824)

Woman must not depend on the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself.
Susan Brownell Anthony, 1871

Everyone carries his own inch rule of taste, and amuse himself by applying it, triumphantly, wherever he travels.
Henry Brooks Adams (1838-1918)

Travel gives a character of experience to our knowledge, and brings the figures on the tablet of memory into strong relief.
Henry Tuckerman (1813-1871)

I always think that the most delightful thing about traveling is to always be running into Americans and to always feel at home.
Anita Loos (1893-1981) US screenwriter, dramatist, author “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” 1925.

I have wandered all my life, and I have traveled; the difference between the two is this we wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment.
Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953)

Travel in foreign lands breaks speech habits and makes you blab less, and breaks the habitual space-feeling because of different village plans and landscapes. It’s less important that there are different mores, for you counteract these with your own…
Paul Goodman (1911-1972)

Every perfect traveler always creates the country where he travels.
Nikos Kazantzakis (1885-1957)

The blue-rinse warbler and her horn-rimmed mate are rare and overdue this year.
Alan Brien, English novelist, journalist, critic On annual migration of Americans to Great Britain, London “Sunday Times,” 21 Jul 1974.

One must spend time in gathering knowledge to give it out richly.
Edward C. Steadman

If you look like your passport photo, you’re too ill to travel.
Will Kommen In “1,911 Best Things Anybody Ever Said,” 1988.

Travel has a way of stretching the mind. The stretch comes not from travel’s immediate rewards, the inevitable myriad new sights, smells and sounds, but with experiencing firsthand how others do differently what we believed to be the right and only way.
Ralph Crawshaw In “Readers’ Digest,” Jun 1990.

To the untraveled, territory other than their own familiar heath is invariably fascinating. Next to love it is the one thing that solaces and delights.
Theodore Dreiser In “Readers’ Digest,” Sept 1994.

I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.
Diane Ackerman

A private railroad car is not an acquired taste. One takes to it immediately.
Eleanor Robson Belmont (1879-1979) English-USA actor

Nothing travels faster than light, with the possible exception of bad news, which follows its own rules.
Douglas Adams

The time to enjoy a European tour is about three weeks after you unpack.
George Ade

Love of country is like love of woman–he loves her best who seeks to bestow on her the highest good.
Felix Adler

Incipe, parve puer: qui non risere matrem, Nec deus hunc mensa, ea nec dignata cubili est.” (Begin, baby: if you haven’t a smile for your mother, then neither will a god think you worth inviting to dinner, nor a goddess to bed.)
Virgil, Aeneid

Voyage, travel, and change of place impart vigor. Vectatio, iterque, et mutata regio vigorem dabunt.
Seneca, De Tranquillitate

The American arrives in Paris with a few French phrases he has culled from a conversational guide or picked up from a friend who owns a beret.
Fred Allen

Far away up there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.
Louisa May Alcott

It is impossible to travel faster than the speed of light, and certainly not desirable, as one’s hat keeps blowing off.
Woody Allen

And now the end is near, and so I face the final curtain. I’ll state my case of which I’m certain. I’ve lived a life that’s full, I traveled each and ev’ry highway, and more, much more than this, I did it my way.
Frank Sinatra (1915-1998), My Way by Claude Fancois, Jacques Revaux and Paul Anka

An apology is the superglue of life: it can repair just about anything.
Lynn Johnston

Don’t refuse to go on an occasional wild goose chase–that’s what wild geese are for.
Anonymous

It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.
St. Francis of Assisi

Each of us has a spark of life inside USA, and our highest endeavor ought to be to set off that spark in one another.
Kenny Ausubel

Writers and travelers are mesmerized alike by knowing of their destinations.
Eudora Welty US author

No matter how far you’ve gone down the wrong road, turn back.
Turkish proverb

The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.
G. K. Chesterton

The Sussex lanes were very lovely in the autumn…. spendthrift gold and glory of the year-end… earth scents and the sky winds and all the magic of the countryside which is ordained for the healing of the soul.
Monica Baldwin

The oneness of human beings is the basic ethical thread that holds us together.
Muhammad Yunus, Director, Grameen Bank, Bangladesh

You must learn day by day, year by year, to broaden your horizons. The more things you love, the more you are interested in, the more you enjoy, the more you are indignant about–the more you have left when anything happens.
Ethel Barrymore

You know what I like best about looking at the stars? Not the stars themselves, but all those empty spaces between the stars. That’s where I can imagine traveling for ever and ever. That’s where I can imagine infinity.
–T.A. Barron

Let us face a pluralistic world in which there are no universal churches, no single remedy for all diseases, no one way to teach or write or sing, no magic diet, no world poets, and no chosen races, but only the wretched and wonderfully diversified human race.
Jacques Barzun

Wherever we go, across the Pacific or Atlantic, we meet, not similarity so much as ‘the bizarre.’ Things astonish USA, when we travel, that surprise nobody else.
Miriam Beard

Certainly, travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.
Miriam Beard

I have recently been all round the world and have formed a very poor opinion of it.
Thomas Beecham

Before you put on a frown, make absolutely sure there are no smiles available.
Jim Beggs

STREETS FULL OF WATER. PLEASE ADVISE.
Robert Benchley

You can plan events. But if they go according to your plan, they are not Events.
John Berger

I have, thanks to my travels, added to my stock all the superstitions of other countries. I know them all now, and in any critical moment of my life, they all rise up in armed legions for or against me.
Sarah Bernhardt

PILGRIM, n. A traveler that is taken seriously. A Pilgrim Father was one who [was] not permitted to sing psalms through his nose [in Europe], followed it to Massachusetts, where he could personate God according to the dictates of his conscience.
Ambrose Bierce

Two great talkers will not travel far together.
George Borrow

It’s easier to find a traveling companion than to get rid of one.
Peg Bracken

Half the fun of travel is the esthetic of lostness.
Ray Bradbury

Trust your hunches. They’re usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level.
Dr. Joyce Brothers

Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for: it is a thing to be achieved.
William Jennings Bryant

Traveling is the ruin of all happiness! There’s no looking at a building after seeing Italy.
Fanny Burney

Travel and society polish one, but a rolling stone gathers no moss, and a little moss is a good thing on a man.
John Burroughs

There are those who travel and those who are going somewhere. They are different and yet they are the same. The success has this over his rivals: He knows where he is going.
Mark Caine

For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.
Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey

Too many of us wait to do the perfect thing, with the result we do nothing. The way to get ahead is to start now. While many of us are waiting until conditions are ‘just right’ before we go ahead, others are stumbling along, fortunately ignorant of the dangers that beset them. By the time we are, in our superior wisdom, decided to make a start, we discover that those who have gone fearlessly on before, have, in their blundering way, traveled a considerable distance. If you start now, you will know a lot next year that you don’t know now, and that you will not know next year, if you wait.
The William Feather Magazine:

Go as far as you can see; when you get there, you’ll be able to see farther.
Thomas Carlyle

I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.
Willa Cather

One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. ‘Which road do I take?’ she asked. ‘Where do you want to go?’ was his response. ‘I don’t know,’ Alice answered. ‘Then,’ said the cat, ‘it doesn’t matter.
Lewis Carroll

There is change by necessity or adaptation, and there is contrived change or novelty.
Wendell Berry on kinds of cultural change

Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.
William Ellery Channing

The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.
G. K. Chasterton

I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.
G. K. Chesterton

The world is a country which nobody ever yet knew by description; one must travel through it one’s self to be acquainted with it.
Lord Chesterfield

Knowledge is free at the library. Just bring your own container.
unknown

If you don’t know where you’re going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Yogi Berra

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