Quotes about travel
page 12

Edward Bulwer-Lytton photo

“My father died shortly after I was twenty-one; and being left well off, and having a taste for travel and adventure, I resigned, for a time, all pursuit of the almighty dollar, and became a desultory wanderer over the face of the earth.”

Source: The Coming Race (1870), Chapter 1. This is the origin of the phrase "pursuit of the almighty dollar". Washington Irving coined the expression almighty dollar itself.

Cormac McCarthy photo
Alexander Pope photo
Cesare Pavese photo
Richard Bach photo
Ram Dass photo
Prem Rawat photo
Šantidéva photo
Christina Aguilera photo
George W. Bush photo

“On board was a crew of seven: Colonel Rick Husband; Lt. Colonel Michael Anderson; Commander Laurel Clark; Captain David Brown; Commander William McCool; Dr. Kalpana Chawla; and Ilan Ramon, a Colonel in the Israeli Air Force. These men and women assumed great risk in the service to all humanity.
In an age when space flight has come to seem almost routine, it is easy to overlook the dangers of travel by rocket, and the difficulties of navigating the fierce outer atmosphere of the Earth. These astronauts knew the dangers, and they faced them willingly, knowing they had a high and noble purpose in life. Because of their courage and daring and idealism, we will miss them all the more.
All Americans today are thinking, as well, of the families of these men and women who have been given this sudden shock and grief. You're not alone. Our entire nation grieves with you. And those you loved will always have the respect and gratitude of this country.
The cause in which they died will continue. Mankind is led into the darkness beyond our world by the inspiration of discovery and the longing to understand. Our journey into space will go on.
In the skies today we saw destruction and tragedy. Yet farther than we can see there is comfort and hope. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, "Lift your eyes and look to the heavens. Who created all these? He who brings out the starry hosts one by one and calls them each by name. Because of His great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.
The same Creator who names the stars also knows the names of the seven souls we mourn today. The crew of the shuttle Columbia did not return safely to Earth; yet we can pray that all are safely home.
May God bless the grieving families, and may God continue to bless America.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2003, Remarks after Columbia space shuttle disaster (February 2003)

Abby Sunderland photo

“But the more times she missed, the faster she’d be traveling when she finally slammed into the mast. And it wasn’t if she hit the mast; it was when. At that point, Abby would be either severely injured or dead.”

Abby Sunderland (1993) Camera Assistant, Inspirational Speaker and Sailor

Source: Unsinkable: A Young Woman's Courageous Battle on the High Seas (2011), p. 145

David Attenborough photo
Carl Safina photo
Nancy Reagan photo
Patri Friedman photo

“We meet fellow humans throughout our travels,
Become close — friends, dates, lovers.
Always we are distanced again
from death, geography, or meeting others,
Only dialtone on the phone,
cold and empty beneath the covers.”

Patri Friedman (1976) American libertarian activist and theorist of political economy

Parting is such sweet sorrow http://patrifriedman.com/quotes/sex_love.html

Michel Faber photo
Charles Darwin photo
Robert E. Howard photo
George Holmes Howison photo
Robert Louis Stevenson photo
Boniface Mwangi photo

“He who travels in the Barque of Peter had better not look too closely into the engine room.”

Ronald Knox (1888–1957) English priest and theologian

Reply when asked why he did not visit Rome, quoted in Penelope Fitzgerald, The Knox Brothers (1977)

Erik Naggum photo
Arundhati Roy photo

“He is Karna, whom the world has abandoned. Karna Alone. Condemned goods. A prince raised in poverty. Born to die unfairly, unarmed and alone at the hands of his brother. Majestic in his complete despair. Praying on the banks of the Ganga. Stoned out of his skull.
Then Kunti appeared. She too was a man, but a man grown soft and womanly, a man with breasts, from doing female parts for years. Her movements were fluid. Full of women. Kunti, too, was stoned. High on the same shared joints. She had come to tell Karna a story.
Karna inclined his beautiful head and listened.
Red-eyed, Kunti danced for him. She told him of a young woman who had been granted a boon. A secret mantra that she could use to choose a lover from among the gods. Of how, with the imprudence of youth, the woman decided to test it to see if it really worked. How she stood alone in an empty field, turned her face to the heavens and recited the mantra. The words had scarcely left her foolish lips, Kunti said, when Surya, the God of Day, appeared before her. The young woman, bewitched by the beauty of the shimmering young god, gave herself to him. Nine months later she bore him a son. The baby was born sheathed in light, with gold earrings in his ears and a gold breastplate on his chest, engraved with the emblem of the sun.
The young mother loved her first-born son deeply, Kunti said, but she was unmarried and couldn't keep him. She put him in a reed basket and cast him away in a river. The child was found downriver by Adhirata, a charioteer. And named Karna.
Karna looked up to Kunti. Who was she? Who was my mother? Tell me where she is. Take me to her.
Kunti bowed her head. She's here, she said. Standing before you.
Karna's elation and anger at the revelation. His dance of confusion and despair. Where were you, he asked her, when I needed you the most? Did you ever hold me in your arms? Did you feed me? Did you ever look for me? Did you wonder where I might be?
In reply Kunti took the regal face in her hands, green the face, red the eyes, and kissed him on his brow. Karna shuddered in delight. A warrior reduced to infancy. The ecstasy of that kiss. He dispatched it to the ends of his body. To his toes. His fingertips. His lovely mother's kiss. Did you know how much I missed you? Rahel could see it coursing through his veins, as clearly as an egg travelling down an ostrich's neck.
A travelling kiss whose journey was cut short by dismay when Karna realised that his mother had revealed herself to him only to secure the safety of her five other, more beloved sons - the Pandavas - poised on the brink of their epic battle with their one hundred cousins. It is them that Kunti sought to protect by announcing to Karna that she was his mother. She had a promise to extract.
She invoked the Love Laws.”

pages 232-233.
The God of Small Things (1997)

Rikki Rockett photo

“When I was in eighth grade there was a movie called Willard, about a rat, and I fell in love with rats. I wanted one … so one guy suggested that I call Hershey Medical Center … So I called and they said … "What experiment is it for?" I said, "I don't wanna experiment on it, I just want it for a pet!" And they said, "Well, we can't do that." … About two weeks later, I go out to the mailbox, and there's this thing from the [American Anti-Vivisection Society]. Lo and behold, I'm looking through all these different experiments and I see a rat there, spread wide open, and it said some of the experiments [were] done at Hershey med center. So boom! I put two and two together, and I decided to do a report in school about it. I took advanced bio and you had to dissect cats, and I started [asking] questions, "Where'd the cat come from?", and that really ruffled some feathers. "I'm not gonna do this, you know." So basically I got thrown out of advanced bio. From that point on I became an antivivisectionist. … [Things] are changing. When I went vegetarian it was really hard on the road, and that was just eight years ago. And I see people doing it twenty, twenty-five years, traveling, and it's like, wow! … I think on a very basic level people wanna do the right thing. And if we continue to focus on that part of them that wants to do the right thing, we can win maybe at the next generation or the one after that.”

Rikki Rockett (1961) American musician

"Something To Believe In" https://books.google.it/books?id=NWxF_V4r3PAC&pg=PA107, interview by Kirsten Rosenberg (July 1999), in Speaking Out for Animals, edited by Kim W. Stallwood, Lantern Books, 2001, pp. 107-112.

John Aubrey photo
Roberto Clemente photo

“I hit many what you call the "bad bol" pitches, and get good wood. The bol' travel like bullet. That remind me, I hit 565 foote hum-rum in Chicaga last year; the bol' disappear from centerfield, and Raj Hornsby tell me it longest drive he ever saw hit out of Wrigley Field. The bol' feel good on the bat but I feel bad at heart, when no writer with our team play up the big drive. I feel effort not appreciated.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted by Bill Nunn, Jr. in The New Pittsburgh Courier (June 25, 1960); reproduced in Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero https://books.google.com/books?id=jIhcvFs-k1cC&pg=PA98 (2006) by David Maraniss, p. 98
Comment: Clemente is not entirely correct. At least nationally (via TSN's weekly Pirates report), one veteran Pirates beat writer did do his part to publicize the blast. See Les Biederman (5/27/59 and 6/6/66) in Media, as well as Ernie Banks in Opponents.
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1960</big>

Yves Klein photo

“Space is waiting for our love, as I am longing for you; go with me, travelling through space.. [line in a poem of Klein himself]”

Yves Klein (1928–1962) French artist

De Tweede Helft, Ad de Visser, SUN, Nijmegen 1998, p. 107
from posthumous publications

Giovannino Guareschi photo
David Kurten photo
F. W. de Klerk photo
Lyndon LaRouche photo

“[The Leesburg Garden Club is a] nest of Soviet fellow travelers clacking busybodies in a Soviet jellyfish front, sitting here in Leesburg oozing out their funny little propaganda and making nuisances of themselves.”

Lyndon LaRouche (1922–2019) American political activist and founder of the LaRouche movement

Quoted in Chicago Tribune (2 December 1988) "Ex-Aide: LaRouche Extravagant" p. 13.
Attributed

Iris DeMent photo
Suze Robertson photo

“Then on a certain day I went out [from Amsterdam, c. 1881-82]. I traveled to Dongen, brought some interior studies back, to try to make something good of them.”

Suze Robertson (1855–1922) Dutch painter

(version in original Dutch / origineel citaat van Suze Robertson:) Toen ben ik er op 'n goeden dag eens op uit getrokken [c. 1880], naar buiten. Ik ging naar nl:Dongen, bracht er enkele interieur-studies uit mee, om te proberen daar wat van te maken.
Source: 1900 - 1922, Onder de Menschen: Suze Robertson' (1912), p. 32

James Macpherson photo

“All hail, Macpherson! hail to thee, Sire of Ossian! The Phantom was begotten by the suing embrace of all impudent Highlander upon a cloud of tradition—it travelled southward, where it was greeted with acclamation, and the thin Consistence took its course through Europe, upon the breath of popular applause. […] Having had the good fortune to be born and reared in a mountainous country, from my very childhood I have felt the falsehood that pervades the volumes imposed upon the world under the name of Ossian. From what I saw with my own eyes, I knew that the imagery was spurious. In Nature everything is distinct, yet nothing defined into absolute independent singleness. In Macpherson's work, it is exactly the reverse; every thing (that is not stolen) is in this manner defined, insulated, dislocated, deadened,—yet nothing distinct. It will always be so when words are substituted for things. […] Yet, much as those pretended treasures of antiquity have been admired, they have been wholly uninfluential upon the literature of the Country. No succeeding writer appears to have taught from them a ray of inspiration; no author, in the least distinguished, has ventured formally to imitate them—except the boy, Chatterton, on their first appearance. […] This incapacity to amalgamate with the literature of the Island, is, in my estimation, a decisive proof that the book is essentially unnatural; nor should I require any other to demonstrate it to be a forgery, audacious as worthless.”

James Macpherson (1736–1796) Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician

William Wordsworth, "Essay Supplementary to the Preface" http://spenserians.cath.vt.edu/TextRecord.php?textsid=35963 in Poems by William Wordsworth, Vol. I (1815), pp. 363–365.
Criticism

James Martin (priest) photo
Anthony Burgess photo

“I remember an old proverb. It says that youth thinks itself wise just as drunk men think themselves sober. Youth is not wise! Youth knows nothing about life! Youth knows nothing about anything except for massive cliches which for the most part through the media of pop songs are just foisted on them by middle-age entrepreneurs and exploiters who should know better. When we start thinking that pop music is close to God, then we'll think pop music is aesthetically better than it is. And it's only the aesthetic value of pop music that we're really concerned. I mean the only way we can judge Wagner or Beethoven or any other composer is aesthetically. We don't regard Wagner or Beethoven nor Shakespeare or Milton as great teachers. When we start claiming for Lennon or McCartney or Maharishi or any other of these pop prophets the ability to transport us to a region where God becomes manifest then I see red. We're satisfied with our little long playing record, ten pop numbers or thereabouts a side. This is great art, we've been told this by the great pundits of our age. And in consequence why should we bother to learn? There's nothing more delightful than to be told: "You don't have to learn, my boy. There's nothing in it. Modern art? There's nothing in it." When you're told these things you sit down with a sigh of relief: "Thank God I don't have to learn, I don't have to travel, I don't have to exert myself in the slightest. I am what I am. Youth is youth. Pop is pop. There's no need to progress. There's no need to do anything. Let us sit down, smoke our marijuana (an admirable thing in itself but not the end of anything), let us listen to our records and life has become a single moment. And the single moment is eternity. We're with God. Finis!”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Pop Music

Nicholas Sparks photo
Ed Harcourt photo
Ram Dass photo
Syed Ahmad Barelvi photo

“Barelvi’s confidence in a jihad against the British collapsed when he surveyed the extent and the magnitude of British power in India. He did the next best under the circumstances, and declared a jihad against the Sikh power in the Punjab, Kashmir and the North-West Frontier. The British on their part welcomed this change and permitted Barelvi to travel towards the border of Afghanistan at a leisurely pace, collecting money and manpower along the way. It was during this journey that Barelvi stayed with or met several Hindu princes, feigned that his fulminations against the Sikhs were a fake, and that he was going out of India in order to establish a base for fighting against the British. It is surmised that some Hindu princes took him at his word, and gave him financial help. To the Muslim princes, however, he told the truth, namely, that he was up against the Sikhs because they “do not allow the call to prayer from mosques and the killing of cows.”
Barelvi set up his base in the North-West Frontier near Afghanistan. The active assistance he expected from the Afghan king did not materialise because that country was in a mess at that time. But the British connived at the constant flow not only of a sizable manpower but also of a lot of finance. Muslim magnates in India were helping him to the hilt. His basic strategy was to conquer Kashmir before launching his major offensive against the Punjab. But he met with very little success in that direction in spite of several attempts. Finally, he met his Waterloo in 1831 when the Sikhs under Kunwar Sher Singh stormed his citadel at Balakot. The great mujahid fell in the very first battle he ever fought. His corpse along with that of his second in command was burnt, and the ashes were scattered in the winds. Muslims hail him as a shahid.”

Syed Ahmad Barelvi (1786–1831) Muslim activist

Goel, S. R. (1995). Muslim separatism: Causes and consequences.

Georgia O'Keeffe photo

“Before I traveled my road I was my road.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Antes de recorrer mi camino yo era mi camino.
Voces (1943)

Oliver Goldsmith photo
James Jeans photo
Jane Roberts photo
Elon Musk photo

“People should be travelling to Mars and doing it in our lifetime.”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

Page 9
Conversation: Elon Musk on Wired Science (2007), Foreword to Marc Kaufman's Mars Up Close: Inside the Curiosity Mission https://books.google.com/books/about/Mars_Up_Close.html?ido6XaCwAAQBAJ&hlen. National Geographic. ISBN 978-1-4262-1278-9.

William Dalrymple photo

“In the course of my travels I often came across the assumption that intense spirituality was somehow the preserve of what many call 'the mystic east'… it's a misconception that has always irritated me as I've always regarded our own indigenous British traditions of spirituality as especially rich.”

William Dalrymple (1965) author and historian

In The Long Search http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2002/05_may/27/long_search.shtml, BBC, 27 May 2002
On his search to discover the roots of spirituality in the British Isles covering the "divine supermarket" of Roman Britain with a plethora of gods - Celtic, Roman, Persian and a new god from Palestine called Jesus.

Chris Rea photo
Frida Kahlo photo
Dhyan Chand photo

“Nowadays I hear of the princely comforts provided for national teams traveling overseas, and fuss players raise if they happen to miss even a cup of tea! When we used to travel the name of our country and the game were the only two things that mattered.”

Dhyan Chand (1905–1979) Indian field hockey player

During India’s title defense at the 1936 Berlin Olympics when he captained the hockey team to victory in the Olympics in page=59
Quote, Olympics - The India Story

Ulysses S. Grant photo
Roger Bacon photo

“Everything in nature completes its action through its own force and species alone… as, for example, fire by its own force dries and consumes and does many things. Therefore vision must perform the act of seeing by its own force. But the act of seeing is the perception of a visible object at a distance, and therefore vision perceives what is visible by its own force multiplied to the object. Moreover, the species of the things of world are not fitted by nature to effect the complete act of vision at once, because of its nobleness. Hence these must be aided by the species of the eye, which travels in the locality of the visual pyramid, and changes the medium and ennobles it, and renders it analogous to vision, and so prepares the passage of the species itself of the visible object… Concerning the multiplication of this species, moreover, we are to understand that it lies in the same place as the species of the thing seen, between the sight and the thing seen, and takes place along the pyramid whose vertex is in the eye and base in the thing seen. And as the species of an object in the same medium travels in a straight path and is refracted in different ways when it meets a medium of another transparency, and is reflected when it meets the obstacles of a dense body; so is it also true of the species of vision that it travels altogether along the path of the species itself of the visible object.”

Bacon, like Grosseteste, asserts that both the active extramitted species of vision from the eye, and the intramitted species of light from object seen, were necessary for sight.
v. i. vii. 4, ed. Briggs as quoted in A.C. Crombie, Robert Grossetest and the Origins of Experimental Science 1100-1700 (1953)
Opus Majus, c. 1267

Sarojini Naidu photo
Alain de Botton photo
El Lissitsky photo
Jack McDevitt photo
George Raymond Richard Martin photo
John S. Mosby photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Radhanath Swami photo
Jared Leto photo
Stanisław Lem photo
Susan Faludi photo
George W. Bush photo
Mark Rothko photo
Mirkka Rekola photo
Charles Stross photo
Lawrence M. Krauss photo
Nicole Lapin photo

“Intelligence is attractive, but so is life experience. You can’t amass it just by reading a ton of books. But you can live a lot of life in a short time. Travel. Talk to everyone. Collect adventures, and use them to understand the world. That’s how you learn to treat people well. And that’s sexy.”

Nicole Lapin (1984) American journalist

Interview with Men's Health Magazine. http://www.menshealth.com/cda/article.do?site=MensHealth&channel=style&category=style.files&conitem=2cfa694820a64110VgnVCM20000012281eac____ (September 2007)

Hugh Trenchard, 1st Viscount Trenchard photo

“The development of air power in its broadest sense, and including the development of all means of combating missiles that travel through the air, whether fired or dropped, is the first essential to our survival in war.”

Hugh Trenchard, 1st Viscount Trenchard (1873–1956) Royal Flying Corps commander and first Royal Air Force Chief of the Air Staff

Given by Trenchard in 1946. As listed on Skygod.com - Great Aviation Quotes http://www.skygod.com/quotes/airpower.html

Frans de Waal photo

“If you look at human society, it is very easy, of course, to compare our warfare and territoriality with the chimpanzee. But that's only one side of what we do. We also trade, we intermarry, we allow each other to travel through our territory. There's an enormous amount of cooperation.”

Frans de Waal (1948) Dutch primatologist and ethologist

The Bonobo in All of Us (2007)
Context: If you look at human society, it is very easy, of course, to compare our warfare and territoriality with the chimpanzee. But that's only one side of what we do. We also trade, we intermarry, we allow each other to travel through our territory. There's an enormous amount of cooperation. Indeed, among hunter-gatherers, peace is common 90 percent of the time, and war takes place only a small part of the time. Chimps cannot tell us anything about peaceful relations, because chimps have only different degrees of hostility between communities. Whereas bonobos do tell us something; they tell us about the possibility of having peaceful relationships.

Yoko Ono photo

“I learnt to travel the world around
And run on the ground in the morning.
And that's the story of a wandering soul,
A story of a dreamer.”

Yoko Ono (1933) Japanese artist, author, and peace activist

"Silver Horse" on Season of Glass (1981).
Context: I usually stay away from being carried away,
But one day I saw a silver horse.
I thought he might take me to that somewhere high,
I thought he might take me to that deep blue sky. I came to realize that the horse had no wings.
No wings, well, it wasn't so bad, you know. I learnt to travel the world around
And run on the ground in the morning.
And that's the story of a wandering soul,
A story of a dreamer.

Angus King photo

“One of the real benefits of any travel is gaining some perspective. You see things from different points of view.”

Angus King (1944) United States Senator from Maine

Bowdoin Academic Spotlight interview (2011)
Context: One of the real benefits of any travel is gaining some perspective. You see things from different points of view. That came home to me in a variety of ways: politically, economically, seeing what was going on in other states.

Benoît Mandelbrot photo
Percy Bysshe Shelley photo

“A traveller from the cradle to the grave
Through the dim night of this immortal day.”

Demogorgon, Act IV, l. 549
Prometheus Unbound (1818–1819; publ. 1820)
Context: Man, who wert once a despot and a slave,
A dupe and a deceiver! a decay,
A traveller from the cradle to the grave
Through the dim night of this immortal day.

Craig Ferguson photo

“In 1963 the BBC premiered a show about an alien
Who traveled through space and time to combat the powers of evil.”

Craig Ferguson (1962) Scottish-born American television host, stand-up comedian, writer, actor, director, author, producer and voice a…

A comedic musical tribute to Doctor Who made in November 2010 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9P4SxtphJ4, which was not aired for legal reasons, but "leaked" to the internet, and finally aired with legal clearance on Late Late Show (6 January 2011) http://geeksofdoom.com/2011/01/07/craig-fergusons-doctor-who-musical-finally-airs/The ·  Transcript of lyrics (with some minor errors), online at Forbes (1 December 2010) http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidewalt/2010/12/01/craig-fergusons-doctor-who-song/
The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (2005–2014)
Context: In 1963 the BBC premiered a show about an alien
Who traveled through space and time to combat the powers of evil. … 
The show has been running in Britain almost fifty years,
with many different actors in the role of The Doctor. …
One thing is consistent though and this is why the show is so beloved by geeks and nerds —
It's all about the triumph of intellect and romance over brute force and cynicism!
Intellect and romance over brute force and cynicism!
And if there is any hope for any of us in this giant explosion in which we inhabit then surely that’s it:
Intellect and romance triumph over brute force and cynicism! <!-- Right Doctor?

Carl Sagan photo

“National boundaries are not evident when we view the Earth from space. Fanatical ethnic or religious or national chauvinisms are a little difficult to maintain when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point of light against the bastion and citadel of the stars. Travel is broadening.”

Source: Cosmos (1980), p. 318
Context: The choice is with us still, but the civilization now in jeopardy is all humanity. As the ancient myth makers knew, we are children equally of the earth and the sky. In our tenure on this planet we've accumulated dangerous evolutionary baggage — propensities for aggression and ritual, submission to leaders, hostility to outsiders — all of which puts our survival in some doubt. But we've also acquired compassion for others, love for our children and desire to learn from history and experience, and a great soaring passionate intelligence — the clear tools for our continued survival and prosperity. Which aspects of our nature will prevail is uncertain, particularly when our visions and prospects are bound to one small part of the small planet Earth. But up there in the immensity of the Cosmos, an inescapable perspective awaits us. There are not yet any obvious signs of extraterrestrial intelligence and this makes us wonder whether civilizations like ours always rush implacably, headlong, toward self-destruction. National boundaries are not evident when we view the Earth from space. Fanatical ethnic or religious or national chauvinisms are a little difficult to maintain when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point of light against the bastion and citadel of the stars. Travel is broadening.

William Least Heat-Moon photo

“Boredom lies only with the traveler's limited perception and his failure to explore deeply enough.”

Part Seven, Chapter 7.
Blue Highways (1982)
Context: Boredom lies only with the traveler's limited perception and his failure to explore deeply enough. After a while, I found my perception limited.

Pope John Paul I photo

“Those who travel in the stratosphere are in danger of not being prudent, when they are full of knowledge acquired purely from books.”

Pope John Paul I (1912–1978) 263rd Pope of the Catholic Church

"Letter to St Bernard" in Illustrissimi (1976), p. 53
Context: Let me give an example. It is far away in time but a classic case … In 1815, the official French newspaper Le Moniteur, showed its readers how to follow Napoleon's progress: 'The brigand flees from the island of Elba '; 'The usurper arrives at Grenoble'; ' Napoleon enters Lyons'; 'The Emperor reaches Paris this evening'. What an amazing turnabout! This must not be compared with prudence, just as it isn't prudent to have a stubborn attitude and to take no account of what is obviously real or to become excessively rigid and zealously upright, more loyalist than the king, more papist than the pope.
This happens. Some people seize on an idea, then bury it and guard it for the rest of their lives, defending it jealously without ever examining it again, without ever trying to check what has become of it after all the rain and wind and storms of events and changes.
Those who travel in the stratosphere are in danger of not being prudent, when they are full of knowledge acquired purely from books. They can never get away from what is written, are always busy analyzing, pointing out subtleties, perpetually splitting hairs.
Life is quite another matter.

Ray Bradbury photo

“Space travel is life-enhancing, and anything that's life-enhancing is worth doing. It makes you want to live forever.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Playboy interview (1996)
Context: If NASA's budgeters could be convinced that there are riches on Mars, we would explode overnight to stand on the rim of the Martian abyss. We need space for reasons we have not as yet discovered, and I don't mean Tupperware. … NASA feels it has to justify everything it does in practical terms.
And Tupperware was one of the many practical products that came out of space travel. NASA feels it has got to flimflam you to get you to spend money on space. That's B. S. We don't need that. Space travel is life-enhancing, and anything that's life-enhancing is worth doing. It makes you want to live forever.

Percy Bysshe Shelley photo

“I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: — Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert.”

Ozymandias (1818)
Context: I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: — Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Ernesto Che Guevara photo

“After graduation, due to special circumstances and perhaps also to my character, I began to travel throughout America, and I became acquainted with all of it.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

On Revolutionary Medicine (1960)
Context: After graduation, due to special circumstances and perhaps also to my character, I began to travel throughout America, and I became acquainted with all of it. Except for Haiti and Santo Domingo, I have visited, to some extent, all the other Latin American countries. Because of the circumstances in which I traveled, first as a student and later as a doctor, I came into close contact with poverty, hunger and disease; with the inability to treat a child because of lack of money; with the stupefaction provoked by the continual hunger and punishment, to the point that a father can accept the loss of a son as an unimportant accident, as occurs often in the downtrodden classes of our American homeland. And I began to realize at that time that there were things that were almost as important to me as becoming famous for making a significant contribution to medical science: I wanted to help those people.

“I get very inspired by traveling, by being home in Donegal … all those wonderful moments I'll take with me to the studio. And they, ah, then become at some stage, a melody. That emotion that I loved at some stage will evolve as a melody.”

Enya (1961) Irish singer, songwriter, and musician

KSCA interview (1996)
Context: I get very inspired by traveling, by being home in Donegal... all those wonderful moments I'll take with me to the studio. And they, ah, then become at some stage, a melody. That emotion that I loved at some stage will evolve as a melody.

P. J. O'Rourke photo

“Two key rules of Third World travel: 1. Never run out of whiskey. 2. Never run out of whiskey.”

P. J. O'Rourke (1947) American journalist

All the Trouble in the World (1994)

Bram Stoker photo

“THE DEAD TRAVEL FAST”

Inscription found on the tomb of Countess Dolingen of Gratz by Jonathan Harker
Dracula's Guest (1914)
Variant: For the dead travel fast.

Lois McMaster Bujold photo

“Acting or reacting, we carry him in us. You can't walk away from him any more than I can. Whether you travel toward or away, he'll be the compass.”

Vorkosigan Saga, The Warrior's Apprentice (1986)
Context: Acting or reacting, we carry him in us. You can't walk away from him any more than I can. Whether you travel toward or away, he'll be the compass. He'll be the glass, full of subtle colors and astigmatisms, through which all new things will be viewed. I too have a father who haunts me, and I know.

Billy Graham photo

“In my travels, I have found that those who keep heaven in view remain serene and cheerful in the darkest day.”

Billy Graham (1918–2018) American Christian evangelist

Hope for the Troubled Heart: Finding God in the Midst of Pain (1991); the last statement of this anecdote has often become quoted as if it originated with Graham: "My home is in Heaven. I'm just traveling through this world."
Context: In my travels, I have found that those who keep heaven in view remain serene and cheerful in the darkest day. If the glories of Heaven were more real to us, if we lived less for material things and more for things eternal and spiritual, we would be less easily disturbed by this present life.
A friend told me about stopping on a street corner in London and listening to a man play the bagpipes. He was playing "Amazing Grace" and smiling from ear to ear. My friend asked him if he was from Scotland, and he answered, “No sir, my home is in Heaven. I'm just traveling through this world.”

Aung San Suu Kyi photo

“Absolute peace in our world is an unattainable goal. But it is one towards which we must continue to journey, our eyes fixed on it as a traveller in a desert fixes his eyes on the one guiding star that will lead him to salvation. Even if we do not achieve perfect peace on earth, because perfect peace is not of this earth, common endeavours to gain peace will unite individuals and nations in trust and friendship and help to make our human community safer and kinder.”

Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy

Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech (2012)
Context: The peace of our world is indivisible. As long as negative forces are getting the better of positive forces anywhere, we are all at risk. It may be questioned whether all negative forces could ever be removed. The simple answer is: “No!” It is in human nature to contain both the positive and the negative. However, it is also within human capability to work to reinforce the positive and to minimize or neutralize the negative. Absolute peace in our world is an unattainable goal. But it is one towards which we must continue to journey, our eyes fixed on it as a traveller in a desert fixes his eyes on the one guiding star that will lead him to salvation. Even if we do not achieve perfect peace on earth, because perfect peace is not of this earth, common endeavours to gain peace will unite individuals and nations in trust and friendship and help to make our human community safer and kinder.