Of Journey Quotes

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

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Not all those who wander are lost.
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J.R.R. Tolkien (The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, #1))
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What you're supposed to do when you don't like a thing is change it. If you can't change it, change the way you think about it. Don't complain.
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Maya Angelou (Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now)
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Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.
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Mark Twain (Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World)
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Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.
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Anna Quindlen (How Reading Changed My Life)
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The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
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Lao Tzu
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Life is about accepting the challenges along the way, choosing to keep moving forward, and savoring the journey.
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Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
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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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Open your heart. Someone will come. Someone will come for you. But first you must open your heart.
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Kate DiCamillo (The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane)
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It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
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Ursula K. Le Guin (The Left Hand of Darkness)
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Do not let the memories of your past limit the potential of your future. There are no limits to what you can achieve on your journey through life, except in your mind.
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Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
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You have everything needed for the extravagant journey that is your life.
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Carlos Castaneda
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Life before Death. Strength before Weakness. Journey before Destination.
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Brandon Sanderson (The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive, #1))
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We are of opinion that instead of letting books grow moldy behind an iron grating, far from the vulgar gaze, it is better to let them wear out by being read.
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Jules Verne (Journey to the Center of the Earth)
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No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.
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Heraclitus
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Life is a journey, not a destination.
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Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls.
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AnaΓ―s Nin (The Diary of AnaΓ―s Nin, Vol. 7: 1966-1974)
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Sorrow is better than fear. Fear is a journey, a terrible journey. But, sorrow is at least an arriving.
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Alan Paton
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How would your life be different if…You stopped making negative judgmental assumptions about people you encounter? Let today be the day…You look for the good in everyone you meet and respect their journey.
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Steve Maraboli (Life, the Truth, and Being Free)
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We are travelers on a cosmic journey,stardust,swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share.This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.
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Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)
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At times the world may seem an unfriendly and sinister place, but believe that there is much more good in it than bad. All you have to do is look hard enough. and what might seem to be a series of unfortunate events may in fact be the first steps of a journey.
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Lemony Snicket
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There is a wilderness we walk alone However well-companioned
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Stephen Vincent BenΓ©t (Western Star)
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To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.
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Elbert Hubbard (Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Vol. 3: American Statesmen)
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Everyone you meet is a part of your journey, but not all of them are meant to stay in your life. Some people are just passing through to bring you gifts; either they're blessings or lessons.
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Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
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Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.
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Confucius
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All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost.
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J.R.R. Tolkien (The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, #1))
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Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you. You must travel it by yourself. It is not far. It is within reach. Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know. Perhaps it is everywhere - on water and land.
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Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass)
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And you? When will you begin that long journey into yourself?
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Rumi (Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi)
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I am fated to journey hand in hand with my strange heroes and to survey the surging immensity of life, to survey it through the laughter that all can see and through the tears unseen and unknown by anyone.
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Nikolai Gogol
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... "You may not see the ocean, but right now we are in the middle of the ocean, and we have to keep swimming.
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Tracy Kidder (Strength in What Remains: A Journey of Remembrance and Forgiveness)
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Dare to love yourself as if you were a rainbow with gold at both ends.
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Aberjhani (Journey through the Power of the Rainbow: Quotations from a Life Made Out of Poetry)
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I love the way that each bookβ€”any bookβ€”is its own journey. You open it, and off you go….
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Sharon Creech
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The only journey is the one within.
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Rainer Maria Rilke
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It was culture as class performance, literature fetishised for its ability to take educated people on false emotional journeys, so that they might afterwards feel superior to the uneducated people whose emotional journeys they liked to read about.
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Sally Rooney (Normal People)
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All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.
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Leo Tolstoy
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Life is a journey. Time is a river. The door is ajar
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Jim Butcher (Dead Beat (The Dresden Files, #7))
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The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.
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Joseph Campbell (A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living)
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The journey is what brings us happiness not the destination.
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Dan Millman (Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives)
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Though the road's been rocky it sure feels good to me.
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Bob Marley
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If you take a book with you on a journey," Mo had said when he put the first one in her box, "an odd thing happens: The book begins collecting your memories. And forever after you have only to open that book to be back where you first read it. It will all come into your mind with the very first words: the sights you saw in that place, what it smelled like, the ice cream you ate while you were reading it... yes, books are like flypaperβ€”memories cling to the printed page better than anything else.
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Cornelia Funke (Inkheart (Inkworld, #1))
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In the middle of the journey of our life I found myself within a dark woods where the straight way was lost.
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Dante Alighieri (Inferno)
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To love the journey is to accept no such end. I have found, through painful experience, that the most important step a person can take is always the next one.
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Brandon Sanderson (Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive, #3))
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Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.
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Jules Verne (A Journey to the Center of the Earth (Great Illustrated Classics))
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Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.
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Edward Abbey (The Journey Home: Some Words in Defense of the American West)
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There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages.
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Mark Twain (Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World)
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Some things cannot be taught; they must be experienced. You never learn the most valuable lessons in life until you go through your own journey.
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Roy T. Bennett
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We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.
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Marcel Proust
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If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it - then I can achieve it.
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Muhammad Ali (The Soul of a Butterfly: Reflections on Life's Journey)
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The most important reason for going from one place to another is to see what's in between, and they took great pleasure in doing just that.
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Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth)
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PIPPIN: I didn't think it would end this way. GANDALF: End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it. PIPPIN: What? Gandalf? See what? GANDALF: White shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise. PIPPIN: Well, that isn't so bad. GANDALF: No. No, it isn't.
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J.R.R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings)
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The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.
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Joseph Campbell (A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living)
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The beautiful journey of today can only begin when we learn to let go of yesterday.
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Steve Maraboli (Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience)
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You’ll learn, as you get older, that rules are made to be broken. Be bold enough to live life on your terms, and never, ever apologize for it. Go against the grain, refuse to conform, take the road less traveled instead of the well-beaten path. Laugh in the face of adversity, and leap before you look. Dance as though EVERYBODY is watching. March to the beat of your own drummer. And stubbornly refuse to fit in.
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Mandy Hale (The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass)
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Some beautiful paths can't be discovered without getting lost.
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Erol Ozan
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We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.
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Henry Ward Beecher
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We'll be there, Harry," said Ron "What?" "At your Aunt and Uncle's house," said Ron, "And then we'll go with you wherever you're going." "No-" said Harry quickly; he hadn't counted on this, he had meant them to understand that he was undertaking the most dangerous journey alone. "You said it once before," said Hermione quickly, "that there was time to turn back if we wanted to. We've had time, haven't we? We're with you whatever happens.
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J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter, #6))
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A man of my acquaintance once wrote a poem called "The Road Less Traveled", describing a journey he took through the woods along a path most travelers never used. The poet found that the road less traveled was peaceful but quite lonely, and he was probably a bit nervous as he went along, because if anything happened on the road less traveled, the other travelers would be on the road more frequently traveled and so couldn't hear him as he cried for help. Sure enough, that poet is dead.
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Lemony Snicket (The Slippery Slope (A Series of Unfortunate Events, #10))
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And so, does the destination matter? Or is it the path we take? I declare that no accomplishment has substance nearly as great as the road used to achieve it. We are not creatures of destinations. It is the journey that shapes us. Our callused feet, our backs strong from carrying the weight of our travels, our eyes open with the fresh delight of experiences lived.
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Brandon Sanderson (The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive, #1))
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Sometimes the hardest part of the journey is believing you're worthy of the trip.
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Glenn Beck (The Christmas Sweater)
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For me, becoming isn’t about arriving somewhere or achieving a certain aim. I see it instead as forward motion, a means of evolving, a way to reach continuously toward a better self. The journey doesn’t end.
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Michelle Obama (Becoming)
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every mouth you’ve ever kissed was just practice all the bodies you’ve ever undressed and ploughed in to were preparing you for me. i don’t mind tasting them in the memory of your mouth they were a long hall way a door half open a single suit case still on the conveyor belt was it a long journey? did it take you long to find me? you’re here now, welcome home.
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Warsan Shire
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How would your life be different if…You stopped allowing other people to dilute or poison your day with their words or opinions? Let today be the day…You stand strong in the truth of your beauty and journey through your day without attachment to the validation of others.
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Steve Maraboli (Life, the Truth, and Being Free)
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...there ain't no journey what don't change you some.
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David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas)
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Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for.
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Maya Angelou (Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now)
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There is only one way to learn. It's through action. Everything you need to know you have learned through your journey.
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Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)
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One of the greatest journeys in life is overcoming insecurity and learning to truly not give a shit.
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J.A. Konrath
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I knew that if I allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed. Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. Nothing could vanquish me.
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Cheryl Strayed (Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail)
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Dance. Smile. Giggle. Marvel. TRUST. HOPE. LOVE. WISH. BELIEVE. Most of all, enjoy every moment of the journey, and appreciate where you are at this moment instead of always focusing on how far you have to go.
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Mandy Hale (The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass)
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Sometimes, reaching out and taking someone's hand is the beginning of a journey. At other times, it is allowing another to take yours.
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Vera Nazarian (The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration)
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When you begin a journey of revenge, start by digging two graves: one for your enemy, and one for yourself.
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Jodi Picoult (Nineteen Minutes)
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What people forget is a journey to nowhere starts with a single step, too.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Survivor)
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Sometimes when you lose your way, you find YOURSELF.
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Mandy Hale (The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass)
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May your adventures bring you closer together, even as they take you far away from home.
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Trenton Lee Stewart (The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey (The Mysterious Benedict Society, #2))
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And what is love, in the end?" Alabaster said. "Except the irrational desire to put evolutionary competitiveness aside in order to ease someone else's journey through life?
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Gabrielle Zevin (Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow)
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We're not on our journey to save the world but to save ourselves. But in doing that you save the world. The influence of a vital person vitalizes.
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Joseph Campbell
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Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.
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Pat Conroy
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The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving.
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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards.
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Mark Twain (Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World)
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Regrets about the journey, maybe, but not the destination.
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Nicholas Sparks (Dear John)
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Dream your own dreams, achieve your own goals. Your journey is your own and unique.
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Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
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The sadness of the world has different ways of getting to people, but it seems to succeed almost every time.
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Louis-Ferdinand CΓ©line (Journey to the End of the Night)
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Love is what we are born with. Fear is what we learn. The spiritual journey is the unlearning of fear and prejudices and the acceptance of love back in our hearts. Love is the essential reality and our purpose on earth. To be consciously aware of it, to experience love in ourselves and others, is the meaning of life. Meaning does not lie in things. Meaning lies in us.
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Marianne Williamson
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End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it.
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Peter Jackson
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The Journey One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice -- though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. "Mend my life!" each voice cried. But you didn't stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little, as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do -- determined to save the only life you could save.
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Mary Oliver
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It's funny how, in this journey of life, even though we may begin at different times and places, our paths cross with others so that we may share our love, compassion, observations, and hope. This is a design of God that I appreciate and cherish.
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Steve Maraboli (Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience)
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If you learn to really sit with loneliness and embrace it for the gift that it is…an opportunity to get to know YOU, to learn how strong you really are, to depend on no one but YOU for your happiness…you will realize that a little loneliness goes a LONG way in creating a richer, deeper, more vibrant and colorful YOU.
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Mandy Hale (The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass)
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All I wanted was to live a life where I could be me, and be okay with that. I had no need for material possessions, money or even close friends with me on my journey. I never understood people very well anyway, and they never seemed to understand me very well either. All I wanted was my art and the chance to be the creator of my own world, my own reality. I wanted the open road and new beginnings every day.
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Charlotte Eriksson (Empty Roads & Broken Bottles: in search for The Great Perhaps)
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Anyone who imagines that bliss is normal is going to waste a lot of time running around shouting that he has been robbed. The fact is that most putts don’t drop, most beef is tough, most children grow up to be just like people, most successful marriages require a high degree of mutual toleration, and most jobs are more often dull than otherwise. Life is just like an old time rail journey ... delays, sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders, and jolts, interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling bursts of speed. The trick is to thank the Lord for letting you have the ride.
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Jenkin Lloyd Jones
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Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever. That surrender, even the smallest act of giving up, stays with me. So when I feel like quitting, I ask myself, which would I rather live with?
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Lance Armstrong (It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life)
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Every person needs to take one day away.Β  A day in which one consciously separates the past from the future.Β  Jobs, family, employers, and friends can exist one day without any one of us, and if our egos permit us to confess, they could exist eternally in our absence.Β  Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for.Β  Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us.
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Maya Angelou (Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now)
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Roads Go Ever On Roads go ever ever on, Over rock and under tree, By caves where never sun has shone, By streams that never find the sea; Over snow by winter sown, And through the merry flowers of June, Over grass and over stone, And under mountains in the moon. Roads go ever ever on, Under cloud and under star. Yet feet that wandering have gone Turn at last to home afar. Eyes that fire and sword have seen, And horror in the halls of stone Look at last on meadows green, And trees and hills they long have known. The Road goes ever on and on Down from the door where it began. Now far ahead the Road has gone, And I must follow, if I can, Pursuing it with eager feet, Until it joins some larger way, Where many paths and errands meet. The Road goes ever on and on Down from the door where it began. Now far ahead the Road has gone, And I must follow, if I can, Pursuing it with weary feet, Until it joins some larger way, Where many paths and errands meet. And whither then? I cannot say. The Road goes ever on and on Out from the door where it began. Now far ahead the Road has gone. Let others follow, if they can! Let them a journey new begin. But I at last with weary feet Will turn towards the lighted inn, My evening-rest and sleep to meet.
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J.R.R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings)
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I've come to believe that there exists in the universe something I call "The Physics of The Quest" β€” a force of nature governed by laws as real as the laws of gravity or momentum. And the rule of Quest Physics maybe goes like this: "If you are brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting (which can be anything from your house to your bitter old resentments) and set out on a truth-seeking journey (either externally or internally), and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue, and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher, and if you are prepared – most of all – to face (and forgive) some very difficult realities about yourself... then truth will not be withheld from you." Or so I've come to believe.
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Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
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There are, it seems, two muses: the Muse of Inspiration, who gives us inarticulate visions and desires, and the Muse of Realization, who returns again and again to say "It is yet more difficult than you thought." This is the muse of form. It may be then that form serves us best when it works as an obstruction, to baffle us and deflect our intended course. It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.
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Wendell Berry
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My father took one hundred and thirty-two minutes to die. I counted. It happened on the Jellicoe Road. The prettiest road I’d ever seen, where trees made breezy canopies like a tunnel to Shangri-La. We were going to the ocean, hundreds of miles away, because I wanted to see the ocean and my father said that it was about time the four of us made that journey. I remember asking, 'What’s the difference between a trip and a journey?' and my father said, 'Narnie, my love, when we get there, you’ll understand,' and that was the last thing he ever said.
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Melina Marchetta (On the Jellicoe Road)
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I survived because I remained soft, because I listened, because I wrote. Because I huddled close to my truth, protected it like a tiny flame in a terrible storm. Hold up your head when the tears come, when you are mocked, insulted, questioned, threatened, when they tell you you are nothing, when your body is reduced to openings. The journey will be longer than you imagined, trauma will find you again and again. Do not become the ones who hurt you. Stay tender with your power. Never fight to injure, fight to uplift. Fight because you know that in this life, you deserve safety, joy, and freedom. Fight because it is your life. Not anyone else’s. I did it, I am here. Looking back, all the ones who doubted or hurt or nearly conquered me faded away, and I am the only one standing. So now, the time has come. I dust myself off, and go on.
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Chanel Miller (Know My Name: A Memoir)
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For everything in this journey of life we are on, there is a right wing and a left wing: for the wing of love there is anger; for the wing of destiny there is fear; for the wing of pain there is healing; for the wing of hurt there is forgiveness; for the wing of pride there is humility; for the wing of giving there is taking; for the wing of tears there is joy; for the wing of rejection there is acceptance; for the wing of judgment there is grace; for the wing of honor there is shame; for the wing of letting go there is the wing of keeping. We can only fly with two wings and two wings can only stay in the air if there is a balance. Two beautiful wings is perfection. There is a generation of people who idealize perfection as the existence of only one of these wings every time. But I see that a bird with one wing is imperfect. An angel with one wing is imperfect. A butterfly with one wing is dead. So this generation of people strive to always cut off the other wing in the hopes of embodying their ideal of perfection, and in doing so, have created a crippled race.
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C. JoyBell C.
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A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
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James Joyce (Dubliners)
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The most important words a man can say are, β€œI will do better.” These are not the most important words any man can say. I am a man, and they are what I needed to say. The ancient code of the Knights Radiant says β€œjourney before destination.” Some may call it a simple platitude, but it is far more. A journey will have pain and failure. It is not only the steps forward that we must accept. It is the stumbles. The trials. The knowledge that we will fail. That we will hurt those around us. But if we stop, if we accept the person we are when we fall, the journey ends. That failure becomes our destination. To love the journey is to accept no such end. I have found, through painful experience, that the most important step a person can take is always the next one. I’m certain some will feel threatened by this record. Some few may feel liberated. Most will simply feel that it should not exist. I needed to write it anyway.
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Brandon Sanderson (Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive, #3))
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Kindness Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever. Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness, you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road. You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive. Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say It is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend.
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Naomi Shihab Nye (Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (A Far Corner Book))
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Perfectly Imperfect We have all heard that no two snowflakes are alike. Each snowflake takes the perfect form for the maximum efficiency and effectiveness for its journey. And while the universal force of gravity gives them a shared destination, the expansive space in the air gives each snowflake the opportunity to take their own path. They are on the same journey, but each takes a different path. Along this gravity-driven journey, some snowflakes collide and damage each other, some collide and join together, some are influenced by wind... there are so many transitions and changes that take place along the journey of the snowflake. But, no matter what the transition, the snowflake always finds itself perfectly shaped for its journey. I find parallels in nature to be a beautiful reflection of grand orchestration. One of these parallels is of snowflakes and us. We, too, are all headed in the same direction. We are being driven by a universal force to the same destination. We are all individuals taking different journeys and along our journey, we sometimes bump into each other, we cross paths, we become altered... we take different physical forms. But at all times we too are 100% perfectly imperfect. At every given moment we are absolutely perfect for what is required for our journey. I’m not perfect for your journey and you’re not perfect for my journey, but I’m perfect for my journey and you’re perfect for your journey. We’re heading to the same place, we’re taking different routes, but we’re both exactly perfect the way we are. Think of what understanding this great orchestration could mean for relationships. Imagine interacting with others knowing that they too each share this parallel with the snowflake. Like you, they are headed to the same place and no matter what they may appear like to you, they have taken the perfect form for their journey. How strong our relationships would be if we could see and respect that we are all perfectly imperfect for our journey.
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Steve Maraboli (Life, the Truth, and Being Free)
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You know, I do believe in magic. I was born and raised in a magic time, in a magic town, among magicians. Oh, most everybody else didn’t realize we lived in that web of magic, connected by silver filaments of chance and circumstance. But I knew it all along. When I was twelve years old, the world was my magic lantern, and by its green spirit glow I saw the past, the present and into the future. You probably did too; you just don’t recall it. See, this is my opinion: we all start out knowing magic. We are born with whirlwinds, forest fires, and comets inside us. We are born able to sing to birds and read the clouds and see our destiny in grains of sand. But then we get the magic educated right out of our souls. We get it churched out, spanked out, washed out, and combed out. We get put on the straight and narrow and told to be responsible. Told to act our age. Told to grow up, for God’s sake. And you know why we were told that? Because the people doing the telling were afraid of our wildness and youth, and because the magic we knew made them ashamed and sad of what they’d allowed to wither in themselves. After you go so far away from it, though, you can’t really get it back. You can have seconds of it. Just seconds of knowing and remembering. When people get weepy at movies, it’s because in that dark theater the golden pool of magic is touched, just briefly. Then they come out into the hard sun of logic and reason again and it dries up, and they’re left feeling a little heartsad and not knowing why. When a song stirs a memory, when motes of dust turning in a shaft of light takes your attention from the world, when you listen to a train passing on a track at night in the distance and wonder where it might be going, you step beyond who you are and where you are. For the briefest of instants, you have stepped into the magic realm. That’s what I believe. The truth of life is that every year we get farther away from the essence that is born within us. We get shouldered with burdens, some of them good, some of them not so good. Things happen to us. Loved ones die. People get in wrecks and get crippled. People lose their way, for one reason or another. It’s not hard to do, in this world of crazy mazes. Life itself does its best to take that memory of magic away from us. You don’t know it’s happening until one day you feel you’ve lost something but you’re not sure what it is. It’s like smiling at a pretty girl and she calls you β€œsir.” It just happens. These memories of who I was and where I lived are important to me. They make up a large part of who I’m going to be when my journey winds down. I need the memory of magic if I am ever going to conjure magic again. I need to know and remember, and I want to tell you.
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Robert McCammon (Boy's Life)