Adventure Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Adventure. Here they are! All 100 of them:

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To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.
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J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter, #1))
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To die will be an awfully big adventure.
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J.M. Barrie (Peter Pan)
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I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo. "So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.
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J.R.R. Tolkien (The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, #1))
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Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don't be sorry.
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Jack Kerouac
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Let us step into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure.
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J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter, #6))
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Never say 'no' to adventures. Always say 'yes,' otherwise you'll lead a very dull life.
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Ian Fleming
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I knew when I met you an adventure was going to happen.
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A.A. Milne
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She generally gave herself very good advice, (though she very seldom followed it).
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Lewis Carroll (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass)
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I'd rather die on an adventure than live standing still.
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V.E. Schwab (A Darker Shade of Magic (Shades of Magic, #1))
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Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.
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Helen Keller (The Open Door)
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I address you all tonight for who you truly are: wizards, mermaids, travelers, adventurers, and magicians. You are the true dreamers.
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Brian Selznick (The Invention of Hugo Cabret)
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Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?" "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to." "I don't much care where –" "Then it doesn't matter which way you go.
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Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland)
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Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.
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Terry Pratchett (A Hat Full of Sky (Discworld, #32; Tiffany Aching, #2))
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But I don’t want to go among mad people," Alice remarked. "Oh, you can’t help that," said the Cat: "we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad." "How do you know I’m mad?" said Alice. "You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn’t have come here.
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Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland)
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Adventure is worthwhile in itself.
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Amelia Earhart
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To live will be an awfully big adventure.
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J.M. Barrie (Peter Pan)
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Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!
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Hunter S. Thompson (The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967)
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I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity. I want this adventure that is the context of my life to go on without end.
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Simone de Beauvoir (La vieillesse)
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Don't let the expectations and opinions of other people affect your decisions. It's your life, not theirs. Do what matters most to you; do what makes you feel alive and happy. Don't let the expectations and ideas of others limit who you are. If you let others tell you who you are, you are living their reality β€” not yours. There is more to life than pleasing people. There is much more to life than following others' prescribed path. There is so much more to life than what you experience right now. You need to decide who you are for yourself. Become a whole being. Adventure.
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Roy T. Bennett
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I can choose either to be a victim of the world or an adventurer in search of treasure. It's all a question of how I view my life.
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Paulo Coelho (Eleven Minutes)
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The biggest adventure you can ever take is to live the life of your dreams.
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Oprah Winfrey
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The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.
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Eleanor Roosevelt
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Adventure is just bad planning.
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Roald Amundsen
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People come, people go – they’ll drift in and out of your life, almost like characters in a favorite book. When you finally close the cover, the characters have told their story and you start up again with another book, complete with new characters and adventures. Then you find yourself focusing on the new ones, not the ones from the past.
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Nicholas Sparks (The Rescue)
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Have your adventures, make your mistakes, and choose your friends poorly -- all these make for great stories.
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Chuck Palahniuk
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It's true that adventures are good for people even when they are very young. Adventures can get in a person's blood even if he doesn't remember having them.
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Eva Ibbotson (The Secret of Platform 13)
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When you set sail for Ithaca, wish for the road to be long, full of adventures, full of knowledge.
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Constantinos P. Cavafy
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If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?
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Lewis Carroll (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass)
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No, no! The adventures first, explanations take such a dreadful time.
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Lewis Carroll (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass)
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Never fear quarrels, but seek hazardous adventures.
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Alexandre Dumas (The Three Musketeers)
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I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, "Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.
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Lewis Carroll (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass)
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I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing.
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Herman Melville (Moby-Dick or, The Whale)
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Many will call me an adventurer, and that I am...only one of a different sort: one who risks his skin to prove his truths.
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Ernesto Che Guevara
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When you see someone putting on his Big Boots, you can be pretty sure that an Adventure is going to happen.
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A.A. Milne (Winnie-the-Pooh (Winnie-the-Pooh, #1))
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Life is pure adventure, and the sooner we realize that, the quicker we will be able to treat life as art.
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Maya Angelou
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What a large volume of adventures may be grasped within the span of his little life by him who interests his heart in everything.
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Laurence Sterne
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Do not stop thinking of life as an adventure. You have no security unless you can live bravely, excitingly, imaginatively; unless you can choose a challenge instead of competence.
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Eleanor Roosevelt (The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt)
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An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.
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G.K. Chesterton
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I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then
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Lewis Carroll (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass)
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To fall in love with God is the greatest romance; to seek him the greatest adventure; to find him, the greatest human achievement.
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Augustine of Hippo
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You see, but you do not observe.
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Arthur Conan Doyle (A Scandal in Bohemia (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, #1))
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What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? - it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.
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Jack Kerouac (On the Road)
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Why it's simply impassible! Alice: Why, don't you mean impossible? Door: No, I do mean impassible. (chuckles) Nothing's impossible!
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Lewis Carroll (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass)
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You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It's their mistake, not my failing.
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Richard P. Feynman (Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character)
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Nothing makes a man so adventurous as an empty pocket.
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Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre Dame)
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Adventures are all very well in their place, but there's a lot to be said for regular meals and freedom from pain.
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Neil Gaiman (Stardust)
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Make your choice, adventurous Stranger, Strike the bell and bide the danger, Or wonder, till it drives you mad, What would have followed if you had.
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C.S. Lewis (The Magician's Nephew (Chronicles of Narnia, #1))
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Adventures are never fun while you're having them.
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C.S. Lewis (The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Chronicles of Narnia, #3))
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Keep reading. It's one of the most marvelous adventures that anyone can have.
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Lloyd Alexander
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I am two women: one wants to have all the joy, passion and adventure that life can give me. The other wants to be a slave to routine, to family life, to the things that can be planned and achieved. I'm a housewife and a prostitute, both of us living in the same body and doing battle with each other.
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Paulo Coelho (Eleven Minutes)
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I want out of the labels. I don't want my whole life crammed into a single word. A story. I want to find something else, unknowable, some place to be that's not on the map. A real adventure.' A spinx. A mystery. A blank. Unknown. Undefined.
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Chuck Palahniuk
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Curiouser and curiouser.
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Lewis Carroll (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass)
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I am looking for someone to share in an adventure that I am arranging, and it's very difficult to find anyone.' I should think so β€” in these parts! We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner!
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J.R.R. Tolkien (The Hobbit (The Lord of the Rings, #0))
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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.
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Richard Bach (Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah)
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I will not be "famous," "great." I will go on adventuring, changing, opening my mind and my eyes, refusing to be stamped and stereotyped. The thing is to free one's self: to let it find its dimensions, not be impeded.
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Virginia Woolf (A Writer's Diary)
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From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood. There was poetry for quiet companionship. There was adventure when she tired of quiet hours. There would be love stories when she came into adolescence and when she wanted to feel a closeness to someone she could read a biography. On that day when she first knew she could read, she made a vow to read one book a day as long as she lived.
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Betty Smith (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn)
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If adventures will not befall a young lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad.
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Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)
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If you drink much from a bottle marked 'poison' it is certain to disagree with you sooner or later.
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Lewis Carroll (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland)
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I was an adventurer, but she was not an adventuress. She was a 'wanderess.' Thus, she didn’t care about money, only experiences - whether they came from wealth or from poverty, it was all the same to her.
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Roman Payne (The Wanderess)
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Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness. Listen to it carefully.
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Richard Bach (Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah)
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Yea, all things live forever, though at times they sleep and are forgotten.
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H. Rider Haggard (She: A History of Adventure (She, #1))
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make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservation, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun. If you want to get more out of life, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty.
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Jon Krakauer (Into the Wild)
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Do you know, I always thought unicorns were fabulous monsters, too? I never saw one alive before!" Well, now that we have seen each other," said the unicorn, "if you'll believe in me, I'll believe in you.
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Lewis Carroll (Alice's Adventures In Wonderland: and Through The Looking Glass)
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Watson. Come at once if convenient. If inconvenient, come all the same.
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Arthur Conan Doyle (Adventure of the Creeping Man)
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My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people do not know.
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Arthur Conan Doyle (The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle - a Sherlock Holmes Short Story (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, #7))
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Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, 'if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.
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Lewis Carroll (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass)
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If you don't take risks, you'll have a wasted soul.
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Drew Barrymore
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You're never given a dream without also being given the power to make it true.
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Richard Bach (Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah)
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I can't explain myself, I'm afraid, sir,' said Alice, 'Because I'm not myself you see.
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Lewis Carroll (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass)
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For now she need not think of anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of - to think; well not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others... and this self having shed its attachments was free for the strangest adventures.
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Virginia Woolf (To the Lighthouse)
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And all at once I knew how Margo Roth Spiegelman felt when she wasn't being Margo Roth Spiegelman: she felt empty. She felt the unscaleable wall surrounding her. I thought of her asleep on the carpet with only that jagged sliver of sky above her. Maybe Margo felt comfortable there because Margo the person lived like that all the time: in an abandoned room with blocked-out windows, the only light pouring in through holes in the roof. Yes. The fundamental mistake I had always madeβ€”and that she had, in fairness, always led me to makeβ€”was this: Margo was not a miracle. She was not an adventure. She was not a fine and precious thing. She was a girl.
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John Green (Paper Towns)
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your body is not a temple, it's an amusement park. Enjoy the ride.
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Anthony Bourdain (Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly)
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It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing. It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive. It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain!I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human. It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithlessand therefore trustworthy. I want to know if you can see beauty even when it's not pretty, every day,and if you can source your own life from its presence. I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, β€œYes!” It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children. It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back. It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.
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Oriah Mountain Dreamer
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The time has come," the walrus said, "to talk of many things: Of shoes and ships - and sealing wax - of cabbages and kings
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Lewis Carroll (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass)
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Nobody who says, β€˜I told you so’ has ever been, or will ever be, a hero.
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Ursula K. Le Guin
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I knew who I was this morning, but I've changed a few times since then.
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Lewis Carroll (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass)
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All right, then, I'll go to hell.
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Mark Twain (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn)
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Until you step into the unknown, you don’t know what you’re made of.
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Roy T. Bennett
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I am a brain, Watson. The rest of me is a mere appendix.
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Arthur Conan Doyle (The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone)
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Where should I go?" -Alice. "That depends on where you want to end up." - The Cheshire Cat.
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Lewis Carroll (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass)
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To venture causes anxiety, but not to venture is to lose one's self.... And to venture in the highest is precisely to be conscious of one's self.
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SΓΈren Kierkegaard
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Life is a blank canvas, and you need to throw all the paint on it you can.
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Danny Kaye
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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.
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Richard Bach (Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah)
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If you have never wept bitter tears because a wonderful story has come to an end and you must take your leave of the characters with whom you have shared so many adventures, whom you have loved and admired, for whom you have hoped and feared, and without whose company life seems empty and meaningless. If such things have not been part of your own experience, you probably won't understand what Bastian did next.
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Michael Ende (The Neverending Story)
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People say, 'I'm going to sleep now,' as if it were nothing. But it's really a bizarre activity. 'For the next several hours, while the sun is gone, I'm going to become unconscious, temporarily losing command over everything I know and understand. When the sun returns, I will resume my life.' If you didn't know what sleep was, and you had only seen it in a science fiction movie, you would think it was weird and tell all your friends about the movie you'd seen. They had these people, you know? And they would walk around all day and be OK? And then, once a day, usually after dark, they would lie down on these special platforms and become unconscious. They would stop functioning almost completely, except deep in their minds they would have adventures and experiences that were completely impossible in real life. As they lay there, completely vulnerable to their enemies, their only movements were to occasionally shift from one position to another; or, if one of the 'mind adventures' got too real, they would sit up and scream and be glad they weren't unconscious anymore. Then they would drink a lot of coffee.' So, next time you see someone sleeping, make believe you're in a science fiction movie. And whisper, 'The creature is regenerating itself.
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George Carlin (Brain Droppings)
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I have stolen princesses back from sleeping barrow kings. I burned down the town of Trebon. I have spent the night with Felurian and left with both my sanity and my life. I was expelled from the University at a younger age than most people are allowed in. I tread paths by moonlight that others fear to speak of during day. I have talked to gods, loved women, and written songs that make the minstrels weep. You may have heard of me.
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Patrick Rothfuss (The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1))
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So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more dangerous to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.
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Jon Krakauer (Into the Wild)
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I wonder if I've been changed in the night. Let me think. Was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is 'Who in the world am I?' Ah, that's the great puzzle!
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Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland)
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Stories, like people and butterflies and songbirds' eggs and human hearts and dreams, are also fragile things, made up of nothing stronger or more lasting than twenty-six letters and a handful of punctuation marks. Or they are words on the air, composed of sounds and ideas-abstract, invisible, gone once they've been spoken-and what could be more frail than that? But some stories, small, simple ones about setting out on adventures or people doing wonders, tales of miracles and monsters, have outlasted all the people who told them, and some of them have outlasted the lands in which they were created.
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Neil Gaiman (Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders)
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Good Morning!" said Bilbo, and he meant it. The sun was shining, and the grass was very green. But Gandalf looked at him from under long bushy eyebrows that stuck out further than the brim of his shady hat. "What do you mean?" he said. "Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?" "All of them at once," said Bilbo. "And a very fine morning for a pipe of tobacco out of doors, into the bargain. ... "Good morning!" he said at last. "We don't want any adventures here, thank you! You might try over The Hill or across The Water." By this he meant that the conversation was at an end. "What a lot of things you do use Good morning for!" said Gandalf. "Now you mean that you want to get rid of me, and that it won't be good till I move off.
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J.R.R. Tolkien (The Hobbit (The Lord of the Rings, #0))
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Hey Clark', he said.'Tell me something good'. I stared out of the window at the bright-blue Swiss sky and I told him a story of two people. Two people who shouldn't have met, and who didn't like each other much when they did, but who found they were the only two people in the world who could possibly have understood each other. And I told him of the adventures they had, the places they had gone, and the things I had seen that I had never expected to. I conjured for him electric skies and iridescent seas and evenings full of laughter and silly jokes. I drew a world for him, a world far from a Swiss industrial estate, a world in which he was still somehow the person he had wanted to be. I drew the world he had created for me, full of wonder and possibility.
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Jojo Moyes (Me Before You (Me Before You, #1))
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One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast....a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards.
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Edward Abbey
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And how do you know that you're mad? "To begin with," said the Cat, "a dog's not mad. You grant that?" I suppose so, said Alice. "Well then," the Cat went on, "you see a dog growls when it's angry, and wags it's tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad.
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Lewis Carroll (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass)
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He held up a book then. β€œI'm going to read it to you for relax.” β€œDoes it have any sports in it?” β€œFencing. Fighting. Torture. Poison. True Love. Hate. Revenge. Giants. Hunters. Bad men. Good men. Beautifulest Ladies. Snakes. Spiders... Pain. Death. Brave men. Cowardly men. Strongest men. Chases. Escapes. Lies. Truths. Passion. Miracles.” β€œSounds okay,” I said and I kind of closed my eyes.
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William Goldman (The Princess Bride)
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I went to bed and woke in the middle of the night thinking I heard someone cry, thinking I myself was weeping, and I felt my face and it was dry. Then I looked at the window and thought: Why, yes, it's just the rain, the rain, always the rain, and turned over, sadder still, and fumbled about for my dripping sleep and tried to slip it back on.
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Ray Bradbury (Green Shadows, White Whale)
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Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outre results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.
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Arthur Conan Doyle (The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes)
β€œ
I'd like to repeat the advice that I gave you before, in that I think you really should make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun. If you want to get more out of life, Ron, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty. And so, Ron, in short, get out of Salton City and hit the Road. I guarantee you will be very glad you did. But I fear that you will ignore my advice. You think that I am stubborn, but you are even more stubborn than me. You had a wonderful chance on your drive back to see one of the greatest sights on earth, the Grand Canyon, something every American should see at least once in his life. But for some reason incomprehensible to me you wanted nothing but to bolt for home as quickly as possible, right back to the same situation which you see day after day after day. I fear you will follow this same inclination in the future and thus fail to discover all the wonderful things that God has placed around us to discover. Don't settle down and sit in one place. Move around, be nomadic, make each day a new horizon. You are still going to live a long time, Ron, and it would be a shame if you did not take the opportunity to revolutionize your life and move into an entirely new realm of experience. You are wrong if you think Joy emanates only or principally from human relationships. God has placed it all around us. It is in everything and anything we might experience. We just have to have the courage to turn against our habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living. My point is that you do not need me or anyone else around to bring this new kind of light in your life. It is simply waiting out there for you to grasp it, and all you have to do is reach for it. The only person you are fighting is yourself and your stubbornness to engage in new circumstances.
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Jon Krakauer (Into the Wild)
β€œ
No matter how old you are now. You are never too young or too old for success or going after what you want. Here’s a short list of people who accomplished great things at different ages 1) Helen Keller, at the age of 19 months, became deaf and blind. But that didn’t stop her. She was the first deaf and blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. 2) Mozart was already competent on keyboard and violin; he composed from the age of 5. 3) Shirley Temple was 6 when she became a movie star on β€œBright Eyes.” 4) Anne Frank was 12 when she wrote the diary of Anne Frank. 5) Magnus Carlsen became a chess Grandmaster at the age of 13. 6) Nadia ComΔƒneci was a gymnast from Romania that scored seven perfect 10.0 and won three gold medals at the Olympics at age 14. 7) Tenzin Gyatso was formally recognized as the 14th Dalai Lama in November 1950, at the age of 15. 8) Pele, a soccer superstar, was 17 years old when he won the world cup in 1958 with Brazil. 9) Elvis was a superstar by age 19. 10) John Lennon was 20 years and Paul Mcartney was 18 when the Beatles had their first concert in 1961. 11) Jesse Owens was 22 when he won 4 gold medals in Berlin 1936. 12) Beethoven was a piano virtuoso by age 23 13) Issac Newton wrote PhilosophiΓ¦ Naturalis Principia Mathematica at age 24 14) Roger Bannister was 25 when he broke the 4 minute mile record 15) Albert Einstein was 26 when he wrote the theory of relativity 16) Lance E. Armstrong was 27 when he won the tour de France 17) Michelangelo created two of the greatest sculptures β€œDavid” and β€œPieta” by age 28 18) Alexander the Great, by age 29, had created one of the largest empires of the ancient world 19) J.K. Rowling was 30 years old when she finished the first manuscript of Harry Potter 20) Amelia Earhart was 31 years old when she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean 21) Oprah was 32 when she started her talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind 22) Edmund Hillary was 33 when he became the first man to reach Mount Everest 23) Martin Luther King Jr. was 34 when he wrote the speech β€œI Have a Dream." 24) Marie Curie was 35 years old when she got nominated for a Nobel Prize in Physics 25) The Wright brothers, Orville (32) and Wilbur (36) invented and built the world's first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight 26) Vincent Van Gogh was 37 when he died virtually unknown, yet his paintings today are worth millions. 27) Neil Armstrong was 38 when he became the first man to set foot on the moon. 28) Mark Twain was 40 when he wrote "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", and 49 years old when he wrote "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" 29) Christopher Columbus was 41 when he discovered the Americas 30) Rosa Parks was 42 when she refused to obey the bus driver’s order to give up her seat to make room for a white passenger 31) John F. Kennedy was 43 years old when he became President of the United States 32) Henry Ford Was 45 when the Ford T came out. 33) Suzanne Collins was 46 when she wrote "The Hunger Games" 34) Charles Darwin was 50 years old when his book On the Origin of Species came out. 35) Leonardo Da Vinci was 51 years old when he painted the Mona Lisa. 36) Abraham Lincoln was 52 when he became president. 37) Ray Kroc Was 53 when he bought the McDonalds Franchise and took it to unprecedented levels. 38) Dr. Seuss was 54 when he wrote "The Cat in the Hat". 40) Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III was 57 years old when he successfully ditched US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in 2009. All of the 155 passengers aboard the aircraft survived 41) Colonel Harland Sanders was 61 when he started the KFC Franchise 42) J.R.R Tolkien was 62 when the Lord of the Ring books came out 43) Ronald Reagan was 69 when he became President of the US 44) Jack Lalane at age 70 handcuffed, shackled, towed 70 rowboats 45) Nelson Mandela was 76 when he became President
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Pablo
β€œ
I have always, essentially, been waiting. Waiting to become something else, waiting to be that person I always thought I was on the verge of becoming, waiting for that life I thought I would have. In my head, I was always one step away. In high school, I was biding my time until I could become the college version of myself, the one my mind could see so clearly. In college, the post-college β€œadult” person was always looming in front of me, smarter, stronger, more organized. Then the married person, then the person I’d become when we have kids. For twenty years, literally, I have waited to become the thin version of myself, because that’s when life will really begin. And through all that waiting, here I am. My life is passing, day by day, and I am waiting for it to start. I am waiting for that time, that person, that event when my life will finally begin. I love movies about β€œThe Big Moment” – the game or the performance or the wedding day or the record deal, the stories that split time with that key event, and everything is reframed, before it and after it, because it has changed everything. I have always wanted this movie-worthy event, something that will change everything and grab me out of this waiting game into the whirlwind in front of me. I cry and cry at these movies, because I am still waiting for my own big moment. I had visions of life as an adventure, a thing to be celebrated and experienced, but all I was doing was going to work and coming home, and that wasn’t what it looked like in the movies. John Lennon once said, β€œLife is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” For me, life is what was happening while I was busy waiting for my big moment. I was ready for it and believed that the rest of my life would fade into the background, and that my big moment would carry me through life like a lifeboat. The Big Moment, unfortunately, is an urban myth. Some people have them, in a sense, when they win the Heisman or become the next American Idol. But even that football player or that singer is living a life made up of more than that one moment. Life is a collection of a million, billion moments, tiny little moments and choices, like a handful of luminous, glowing pearl. It takes so much time, and so much work, and those beads and moments are so small, and so much less fabulous and dramatic than the movies. But this is what I’m finding, in glimpses and flashes: this is it. This is it, in the best possible way. That thing I’m waiting for, that adventure, that move-score-worthy experience unfolding gracefully. This is it. Normal, daily life ticking by on our streets and sidewalks, in our houses and apartments, in our beds and at our dinner tables, in our dreams and prayers and fights and secrets – this pedestrian life is the most precious thing any of use will ever experience.
”
”
Shauna Niequist (Cold Tangerines: Celebrating the Extraordinary Nature of Everyday Life)
β€œ
I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible; Jew, Gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone, and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The airplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men; cries out for universal brotherhood; for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say, do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish. Soldiers! Don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you, enslave you; who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel! Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines, you are not cattle, you are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don't hate! Only the unloved hate; the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers! Don't fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the seventeenth chapter of St. Luke, it is written that the kingdom of God is within man, not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people, have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy, let us use that power. Let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfill that promise. They never will! Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfill that promise. Let us fight to free the world! To do away with national barriers! To do away with greed, with hate and intolerance! Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness. Soldiers, in the name of democracy, let us all unite!
”
”
Charlie Chaplin