Gardner Travel Quotes

When you take the step towards your dreams you will be met with fears because you have never traveled this way before. As you go, you will discover that you had nothing to fear. Through overcoming your fears you give those that follow you hope that if they pursue their dreams, they will achieve their dreams.

The late John Gardner once said that there are only two plots in all of literature. You go on a journey or a stranger comes to town. Since women, for many years, were denied the journey, they were left with only one plot in their lives -- to await the stranger. Indeed, there is essentially no picaresque tradition among women novelists. While the latter part of the twentieth century has seen a change of tendency, women's literature from Austen to Woolf is by and large a literature about waiting, usually for love.

A good book is like a good friend, do you know, Lacey? One you can turn to when the night is cold and you are lonely. And there is old Herodotus, standing ready to regale me with tales of his travels.

Girl was not to be pressured into a quick and easy answer. She took her work very seriously, and became one of the most adept Diviners in the cult by the young age of sixteen. She was quite crushed when the outsiders broke through the ancient gates of the world's Husmannsplasses and gleefully proclaimed her kind freed from a cult of fairy tales.

Wouldn’t you like to know,” I smiled. “I travel. Shit happens.

All that travel is inevitably exhausting, but it never gets old. Arriving in the next city for the next opportunity is always a thrill. As busy as I am, wherever I am, I try to get out and walk the streets, to check out the sidewalks for cracks, to remember how far I’ve come and appreciate every baby step of the way, to stand in amazement and joy that the pursuit never ends.

The average Christian is not supposed to know that Jesus’ home town of Nazareth did not actually exist, or that key places mentioned in the Bible did not physically exist in the so-called “Holy Land.” He is not meant to know that scholars have had greater success matching Biblical events and places with events and places in Britain rather than in Palestine. It is a point of contention whether the settlement of Nazareth existed at all during Jesus' lifetime. It does not appear on contemporary maps, neither in any books, documents, chronicles or military records of the period, whether of Roman or Jewish compilation. The Jewish Encyclopedia identifies that Nazareth is not mentioned in the Old Testament, neither in the works of Josephus, nor in the Hebrew Talmud – Laurence Gardner (The Grail Enigma) As far back as 1640, the German traveller Korte, after a complete topographical examination of the present Jerusalem, decided that it failed to coincide in any way with the city described by Josephus and the Scriptures. Claims that the tombs of patriarchs Ab’Ram, Isaac, and Jacob are buried under a mosque in Hebron possess no shred of evidence. The rock-cut sepulchres in the valleys of Jehoshaphat and Hinnom are of Roman period with late Greek inscriptions, and there exists nothing in groups of ruins at Petra, Sebaste, Baalbec, Palmyra or Damascus, or among the stone cities of the Haran, that are pre-Roman. Nothing in Jerusalem itself can be related to the Jews – Comyns Beaumont (Britain: Key to World’s History) The Jerusalem of modern times is not the city of the Scriptures. Mt. Calvary, now nearly in the centre of the city, was without walls at the time of the Crucifixion, and the greater part of Mt. Zion, which is not without, was within the ancient city. The holy places are for the most part the fanciful dreams of monkish enthusiasts to increase the veneration of the pilgrims – Rev. J. P. Lawson (quoted in Beaumont’s Britain: Key to World’s History)

But this time around, and perhaps for the first time in his career, he realized that American Express’s most important asset by far did not appear on its balance sheet—it existed in people’s minds. The company’s four historical cash cows—express, money order, travelers cheques, and charge card—all depended on safeguarding cash before it arrived at its destination.

Formed in 1950, Diners’ Club initiated the first universal restaurant charge card that prominent New York restaurants would accept. Cardholders charged for a meal, and the restaurant collected from the Club less a 5%–10% discount (which restaurants were willing to accept since cardholders typically spent more than those paying with cash on hand). Diners’ Club paid the restaurant and had to collect from cardholders. In the 1950s, credit cards took off in the United States. There were cards for specific companies as well as universal travel and entertainment charge cards.244 American Express debated the merits of creating a card. But by the 1950s, the company’s executives realized that people were using the cards for travel-related services, posing a risk for the travelers cheque. Furthermore, the money order business was becoming less important, with the rise of personal checking accounts stealing business away from money orders. The company finally decided it would be better for American Express to protect itself by making its own card rather than lose all that business.245 American Express debated entering the business by acquiring Diners’ Club. After that deal fell through, American Express decided to go forward by launching its own American Express Credit Card in 1958. The American Express Credit Card was, in reality, a charge card, not a credit card. The latter had a revolving line of credit whose balance could be carried over from month to month. While technically still an extension of credit, the charge card required all outstanding balances to be paid in full each month.246,247 Before launching, American Express reached a deal with the American Hotel Association, providing Amex with 150,000 cardholders and 4,500 participating hotels. American Express then bought 40,000 members from the Gourmet card.248 And when rumors spread that American Express was thinking of starting a card, people wanted in. In contrast to the banks, who literally had to mass-mail cards to people when they rolled out their offerings (a practice made illegal in 1970), people flocked to American Express.249 The brand, whose image had evolved from a guard dog to ‘the guardian of Rome,’ the centurion, had now become a status symbol.

Second, Buffett ran a highly concentrated portfolio, occasionally investing more than 20% of his fund in a single investment idea. Great investment ideas are rare; Buffett seized on them whenever he uncovered them. Third, Buffett was a tenacious and creative researcher, traveling extensively to learn about companies and industries, pushing his understanding of business beyond what he could learn from the documents. While he was certainly a voracious reader, he also applied similar ferocity to uncovering information through people. Fourth, Buffett possessed a remarkable filter. His ability to sift through investment opportunities quickly, something he has honed throughout his career, allowed him to seize on the best ideas and concentrate

Una volta, il mio capitano disse che nella vita si incontrano persone che, crediamo, diventeranno nostri compagni di viaggio, ma poi le perdiamo per strada. Altre persone da cui non ci aspettiamo molto, invece, scalano montagne insieme a noi. Il mio capitano concludeva - solo quando il bere lo faceva diventare sentimentale- che è meglio non chiedere al destino che cosa ha in serbo per noi, o dove porta la nostra strada. «Ti basti stare in viaggio per essere felice» diceva. «Tutte le strade portano a una sola destinazione.»

Refusing to meet his eyes, she looked at his mouth instead. It was a beautiful mouth for a man, she had to admit. Full and sensual, yet masculine. A layer of dark stubble coated the bottom half of his face. Apparently, Mr. Calvert did not shave as frequently when he traveled. There was something rather erotic about the contrast between the alluring lips and the rough dark hair. Something which almost made her want to run a finger over his skin, to touch those lips, to feel that layer of stubble. Would it be rough to the touch or was it softer than it looked?

In the hall of an old inn by the ocean is a sign that reads “Home is Where Our Story Begins.” For a third culture kid who questions the definition of home, this is both reassuring and sad. If home is where our story begins, what happens when we cannot go back? The word ‘story’ is the key. Third culture kids have stories. Their stories are detailed and vibrant. Stories of travel between worlds, of cross cultural relationships and connections, of grief and of loss, of goodbyes and hellos and more goodbyes. In Exodus God repeatedly tells the people of Israel to remember their story, to remember their beginning, to remember who they are. Later, exiled in Babylon, unable to return home, they were to remember their stories - stories of wonder and deliverance, of the power of God and His provision. They were to remember their beginnings.

Why, one may ask, should we care about erasing these gaps? And, in particular, why is it important that natural or scholastic understandings give way to disciplinary understandings? To my mind, the answer is simple: The understandings of the disciplines represent the most important cognitive achievements of human beings. It is necessary to come to know these understandings if we are to be fully human, to live in our time, to be able to understand it to the best of our abilities, and to build upon it. The five-year-old knows many things, but he cannot know what disciplinary experts have discovered over the centuries. Perhaps our daily lives might not be that different if we continue to believe that the world is flat, but such a belief makes it impossible for us to appreciate in any rounded way the nature of time, travel, weather, or seasons; the behaviors of objects; and the personal and cultural options open to us.

The losses felt by those of us raised in a country that was different from that indicated on our passports can be heavy. To be sure, the gains are also real: the way we look at the world, the wonder of travel, our love of passports and places, our wish to defend parts of the world that we feel are misunderstood by those around us. But along with these come profound losses of people and place. For many of us, the only thing we feel we have left are our memories. We cannot go back to the place that was home. Either it does not exist, will not let us in, or danger and cost prohibit a casual trip to indulge the times of homesickness. In its place is memory. Our memories may be biased, or relayed in a way that would make our mothers say, “That’s not quite the way it happened,” but it is inalienably ours.

When I was in a traveling company, we slept seven or eight to a bed such as this, too tired to do anything but snore.