Path Less Traveled Quotes

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

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.
Mandy Hale (The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass)
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.
Lemony Snicket (The Slippery Slope (A Series of Unfortunate Events, #10))
I chose the path less traveled but only because I was lost. Carry a map. - Phoebe Traeger
Jill Shalvis (Simply Irresistible (Lucky Harbor, #1))
I hope you remember that if you encounter an obstacle on the road, don’t think of it as an obstacle at all… think of it as a challenge to find a new path on the road less traveled.
Hyeonseo Lee (The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story)
You must be fearless to take the path less traveled.
Lailah Gifty Akita
Every journey taken always includes the path not taken, the detour through hell, the crossroads of indecision and the long way home.
Shannon L. Alder
Time moves so fucking fast. Blink, and you’re halfway through school, paralyzed by the idea that whatever you choose to do, it means choosing not to do a hundred other things, so you change your major half a dozen times before finally ending up in theology, and for a while it seems like the right path, but that’s really just a reflex to the pride on your parents’ faces, because they assume they’ve got a budding rabbi, but the truth is, you have no desire to practice, you see the holy texts as stories, sweeping epics, and the more you study, the less you believe in any of it. Blink, and you’re twenty-four, and you travel through Europe, thinking—hoping—that the change will spark something in you, that a glimpse of the greater, grander world will bring your own into focus. And for a little while, it does. But there’s no job, no future, only an interlude, and when it’s over, your bank account is dry, and you’re not any closer to anything. Blink, and you’re twenty-six, and you’re called into the dean’s office because he can tell that your heart’s not in it anymore, and he advises you to find another path, and he assures you that you’ll find your calling, but that’s the whole problem, you’ve never felt called to any one thing. There is no violent push in one direction, but a softer nudge a hundred different ways, and now all of them feel out of reach. Blink and you’re twenty-eight, and everyone else is now a mile down the road, and you’re still trying to find it, and the irony is hardly lost on you that in wanting to live, to learn, to find yourself, you’ve gotten lost.
V.E. Schwab (The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue)
Your path is yours alone. And if it’s the path less traveled, that’s absolutely fine. The world doesn’t need more conformists. The world needs more people who create and question and search.
Laird Hamilton (Force of Nature: Mind, Body, Soul (And, of Course, Surfing))
Not everyone will understand your journey. That’s fine. It’s not their journey to make sense of. It’s yours.
Zero Dean (Lessons Learned from The Path Less Traveled Volume 1: Get motivated & overcome obstacles with courage, confidence & self-discipline)
The path to holiness lies through questioning everything.
M. Scott Peck (The Road Less Traveled (Korean Edition): A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values)
The path of spiritual growth is a path of lifelong learning.
M. Scott Peck (The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth)
The world accommodates you for fitting in, but only rewards you for standing out.
Matshona Dhliwayo
If you want more kindness in the world, put some there.
Zero Dean (Lessons Learned from The Path Less Traveled Volume 1: Get motivated & overcome obstacles with courage, confidence & self-discipline)
Sometimes what’s meant to be isn’t written in the stars, instead it’s a journey on the path less travelled without a map of guidance, without certainty.
Kate Stewart (Someone Else's Ocean)
Not everyone with a problem needs you to solve it. Sometimes all a person needs is to feel like they've been heard. Listening without judging can be more effective than injecting your opinions or trying to solve a problem that doesn't have an easy answer.
Zero Dean (Lessons Learned from The Path Less Traveled Volume 1: Get motivated & overcome obstacles with courage, confidence & self-discipline)
Look to your right... It is the path back home. If you choose, you can take it. It is safe, easy, and comfortable. You do not have to work out or fight or do anything else you do not want to... Or you can keep moving forward. I will not lie to you. I cannot predict what may become of you. It will require a lot of training, hard work, study, and danger. But in the very end, you will know strength. I swear it. You might just become someone who will make a difference in the world.
Wesley Chu (The Lives of Tao (Tao, #1))
You don't get over the fear of doing something by not doing it.
Zero Dean (Lessons Learned from The Path Less Traveled Volume 1: Get motivated & overcome obstacles with courage, confidence & self-discipline)
Anger and hate dig holes. Love and kindness move mountains. Choose your motivation wisely.
Zero Dean (Lessons Learned from The Path Less Traveled Volume 1: Get motivated & overcome obstacles with courage, confidence & self-discipline)
Healthy habits harbor happiness.
Zero Dean (Lessons Learned from The Path Less Traveled Volume 1: Get motivated & overcome obstacles with courage, confidence & self-discipline)
Don't let your life goals fall victim to the allure of comfortable routines.
Zero Dean (Lessons Learned from The Path Less Traveled Volume 1: Get motivated & overcome obstacles with courage, confidence & self-discipline)
For Hercules, the choice was between vice and virtue, the easy way and the hard way, the well-trod path and the road less traveled. We all face this choice.
Ryan Holiday (Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave (The Stoic Virtues Series))
If you treat your mind like a trash can, don't be surprised when you reach for a thought and all you get is garbage.
Zero Dean (Lessons Learned from The Path Less Traveled Volume 1: Get motivated & overcome obstacles with courage, confidence & self-discipline)
One of the biggest steps to gaining control over one’s life is gaining control over one’s self.
Zero Dean (Lessons Learned from The Path Less Traveled Volume 1: Get motivated & overcome obstacles with courage, confidence & self-discipline)
There are different paths to your destination. Choose your own path.
Lailah Gifty Akita
Every time you change something unique about yourself in order to be just like someone else, a piece of the best part of you dies.
Zero Dean (Lessons Learned from The Path Less Traveled Volume 1: Get motivated & overcome obstacles with courage, confidence & self-discipline)
Never stop seeking meaningful ways to improve yourself and you will be rewarded with a life that attracts and reflects more of the things that are meaningful to you.
Zero Dean (Lessons Learned from The Path Less Traveled Volume 1: Get motivated & overcome obstacles with courage, confidence & self-discipline)
Dare to take chances. Dare to take the path less traveled. You may never know where the path may lead you.
Lailah Gifty Akita
The Road not Taken [...] I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence: two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference...
Robert Frost
Don’t squander your potential living a life that amounts to far less than the one you are capable of living.
Zero Dean (Lessons Learned from The Path Less Traveled Volume 1: Get motivated & overcome obstacles with courage, confidence & self-discipline)
The longer we tolerate things that we find unappealing or unacceptable, the more normal they seem and the less those things shock us. This is how “I can’t believe it.” becomes “That’s just the way things are.
Zero Dean (Lessons Learned from The Path Less Traveled Volume 1: Get motivated & overcome obstacles with courage, confidence & self-discipline)
Mystics have spoken to us through the ages in terms of paradox. Is it possible that we are beginning to see a meeting ground between science and religion? When we are able to say that “a human is both mortal and eternal at the same time” and “light is both a wave and a particle at the same time,” we have begun to speak the same language. Is it possible that the path of spiritual growth that
M. Scott Peck (The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth)
Now is your time. Become, believe, try. Walk closely with people you love, and with other people who believe that God is very good and life is a grand adventure. Don’t spend time with people who make you feel like less than you are. Don’t get stuck in the past, and don’t try to fast-forward yourself into a future you haven’t yet earned. Give today all the love and intensity and courage you can, and keep traveling honestly along life’s path.
Shauna Niequist (Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way)
The lonely road to greatness is better than the crowded road to mediocrity.
Matshona Dhliwayo
I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost
Be a person who believes in the possibility of positive change because it is often the belief in something that creates the possibility.
Zero Dean (Lessons Learned from The Path Less Traveled Volume 1: Get motivated & overcome obstacles with courage, confidence & self-discipline)
If you have a choice follow the path less traveled its more fun.
Keith M. Weller
The easy road would have been to stay on the same path, the one that led only to death and decay. Instead, I took the road less travelled; I journeyed towards new life; towards transformation.
Alex Clare-Young (Transgender. Christian. Human.)
The proper management of one's feelings clearly lies along a complex (and therefore not simple or easy) balanced middle path, requiring constant judgment and continuing adjustment. Here the owner treats his feelings (slaves) with respect, nurturing them with good food, shelter and medical care, listening and responding to their voices, encouraging them, inquiring as to their health, yet also organizing them, limiting them, deciding clearly between them, redirecting them and teaching them, all the while leaving no doubt as to who is the boss. This is the path of healthy self-discipline.
M. Scott Peck (The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth)
And here I am sitting again, yes, sitting again by this faithful lamp, feeling indescribably serene and unhurried. I shall travel this day's path quite calmly and just take a little holiday—my eyes and head are slightly overstressed and overstrained. One must have the patience to do a little less.
–Etty Hillesum
Dedication: To anyone who has ever loved unconditionally. To all the people who have loved someone that did not deserve it. And finally, to every person who has followed their heart down the path less traveled.
Belle Aurora (Raw (RAW Family, #1))
"Best wishes for an adventurous life. Remember if you veer from that oad-less traveled, take your dreams, hold them tight and keep pressing on until you're there…no matter how treacherous or tormenting that path may be.
Carol Gambill
Best wishes for an adventurous life. Remember if you veer from that road-less traveled, take your dreams, hold them tight and keep pressing on until you're there…no matter how treacherous or tormenting that path may be.
Carol Gambill
Best wishes for an adventurous life. Remember if you veer from that road-less traveled, take your dreams, hold them tight and keep pressing on until you're there…no matter how treacherous or tormenting that path may be.
Carol Gambill
Parents who are unwilling to risk the suffering of changing and growing and learning from their children are choosing a path of senility—whether they know it or not—and their children and the world will leave them far behind. Learning from their children is the best opportunity most people have to assure themselves of a meaningful old age. Sadly, most do not take this opportunity. The Risk of Confrontation The final and possibly the greatest risk of love is the risk of exercising power with humility.
M. Scott Peck (The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth)
I was responding to earlier loving messages from my parents, hundreds of them, which said, “You are a beautiful and beloved individual. It is good to be you. We will love you no matter what you do, as long as you are you.” Without that security of my parents’ love reflected in my own self-love, I would have chosen the known instead of the unknown and continued to follow my parents’ preferred pattern at the extreme cost of my self’s basic uniqueness. Finally, it is only when one has taken the leap into the unknown of total selfhood, psychological independence and unique individuality that one is free to proceed along still higher paths of spiritual growth and free to manifest love in its greatest dimensions. As long as one marries, enters a career or has children to satisfy one’s parents or the expectations of anyone else, including society as a whole, the commitment by its very nature will be a shallow one. As long as one loves one’s children primarily because one is expected to behave in a loving manner toward them, then the parent will be insensitive to the more subtle needs of the children and unable to express love in the more subtle, yet often most important ways. The highest forms of love are inevitably totally free choices and not acts of conformity.
M. Scott Peck (The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth)
Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back, Wherein he puts alms for oblivion, A great-sized monster of ingratitudes: Those scraps are good deeds past; which are devour'd As fast as they are made, forgot as soon As done: perseverance, dear my lord, Keeps honour bright: to have done is to hang Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail In monumental mockery. Take the instant way; For honour travels in a strait so narrow, Where one but goes abreast: keep then the path; For emulation hath a thousand sons That one by one pursue: if you give way, Or hedge aside from the direct forthright, Like to an enter'd tide, they all rush by And leave you hindmost; Or like a gallant horse fall'n in first rank, Lie there for pavement to the abject rear, O'er-run and trampled on: then what they do in present, Though less than yours in past, must o'ertop yours; For time is like a fashionable host That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand, And with his arms outstretch'd, as he would fly, Grasps in the comer: welcome ever smiles, And farewell goes out sighing. O, let not virtue seek Remuneration for the thing it was; For beauty, wit, High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service, Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all To envious and calumniating time.
William Shakespeare (Troilus and Cressida)
Law 1: Transcend the culturescape. Extraordinary minds are good at seeing the culturescape and are able to selectively choose the rules and conditions to follow versus those to question or ignore. Therefore, they tend to take the path less traveled and innovate on the idea of what it means to truly live.
Vishen Lakhiani (The Code of the Extraordinary Mind: 10 Unconventional Laws to Redefine Your Life and Succeed On Your Own Terms)
Some paths lead us into the light, but others take us down and ever-dimming pathway into darkness.
Wofford Lee Jones (Off the Beaten Path)
Take the road less travelled. Get lost if you must, because only in losing yourself will you find your true path...
Virginia Alison
Make friends with the path you are travelling on; then, you feel less lonely
Mehmet Murat ildan
Ben looked up from his studying. Aleksey reckoned it was time Ben put the books away and fed him, and annoying him was a sure way to achieve this objective.
John Wiltshire (The Paths Less Travelled (The Winds of Fortune, #2))
Don’t worry, we’ll take good care of your boat.’ Aleksey thought privately this was a bit of a stretch as they’d sunk four in less than a month by his reckoning.
John Wiltshire (The Paths Less Travelled (The Winds of Fortune, #2))
They fail to consult or listen to the God within them, the knowledge of rightness which inherently resides within the minds of all mankind. We make this failure because we are lazy. It is work to hold these internal debates. They require time and energy just to conduct them. And if we take them seriously—if we seriously listen to this “God within us”—we usually find ourselves being urged to take the more difficult path, the path of more effort rather than less. To conduct the debate is to open ourselves to suffering and struggle. Each and every one of us, more or less frequently, will hold back from this work, will also seek to avoid this painful step. Like Adam and Eve, and every one of our ancestors before us, we are all
M. Scott Peck (The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth)
Best wishes for an adventurous life. Remember if you veer from that oad-less traveled, take your dreams, hold them tight and keep pressing on until you're there…no matter how treacherous or tormenting that path may be.
Carol Gambill
Remember this as you go through life: sometimes we have choices and other times we don’t. It’s the times that we do when you should always consider the path that might be less traveled by—it might just make all of the difference.
Shari J. Ryan (Broken Sky: A gut-wrenching emotional heartstopper (The Heart Series Book 1))
Conformity means following the crowd down conventional paths and maintaining the status quo. Originality is taking the road less traveled, championing a set of novel ideas that go against the grain but ultimately make things better.
Adam M. Grant (Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World)
Kahlil Gibran addresses himself in what are perhaps the finest words ever written about child-raising: Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bow from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrow may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness; For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable. 19
M. Scott Peck (The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth)
In many different ways those of us living a simpler life are all walking the path less travelled. We see what is considered ‘normal’ now, we know that consumption is the ‘standard’ way and we have decided to reject it. Instead of buying all that is new and shiny, we are standing our ground and going back to basics. It’s comfortable there. It’s warm oats soaked overnight and cooked slowly rather than cornflakes; it’s home-baked bread instead of sliced white in plastic wrap; it’s ‘come over and I’ll teach you how to knit’ instead of ‘let’s go shopping’. Instead of buying fast food, we have it slow and easy bubbling away in the oven when the family comes home in the evening. Even the smell of that home-cooked food in the air when they walk through the door tells your family that someone loves them enough to make it all happen. It’s sitting around the table, talking about today and tomorrow. It’s really knowing your friends and family instead of just knowing what they tell you.
Rhonda Hetzel (The Simple Life)
Understand when you listen to your intuition and commit to a life path that is unique to your desires, you’re likely choosing the path less traveled. This means there are going to be substantial obstacles in your way at times, and sometimes it may seem almost impossible to continue.Some things will happen outside of your control. But if you learn to roll with it, rather than against it, you will produce the best possible results. It is not always what happens to you, but how you respond to what happens to you that matters most.
Anonymous . (The Angel Affect: The World Wide Mission)
You are allowed to lead, to redefine, to revolutionize, to birth. You are allowed to take the path less traveled, to speak-up while everyone is silent, to take the right action even if you are by yourself, to choose your mission especially when others don’t understand it yet. You are allowed to be free, to leave, to move forward, to start over, to reinvent yourself, to be your higher-self. You are allowed to heal, to outgrow, to raise your consciousness, to ascend, to come home. On a planet full of scared souls, you are allowed to be brave
Farah Ayaad
Most such criticism and confrontation, usually made impulsively in anger or annoyance, does more to increase the amount of confusion in the world than the amount of enlightenment. For the truly loving person the act of criticism or confrontation does not come easily; to such a person it is evident that the act has great potential for arrogance. To confront one’s beloved is to assume a position of moral or intellectual superiority over the loved one, at least so far as the issue at hand is concerned. Yet genuine love recognizes and respects the unique individuality and separate identity of the other person. (I will say more about this later.) The truly loving person, valuing the uniqueness and differentness of his or her beloved, will be reluctant indeed to assume, “I am right, you are wrong; I know better than you what is good for you.” But the reality of life is such that at times one person does know better than the other what is good for the other, and in actuality is in a position of superior knowledge or wisdom in regard to the matter at hand. Under these circumstances the wiser of the two does in fact have an obligation to confront the other with the problem. The loving person, therefore, is frequently in a dilemma, caught between a loving respect for the beloved’s own path in life and a responsibility to exercise loving leadership when the beloved appears to need such leadership. The dilemma can be resolved only by painstaking self-scrutiny, in which the lover examines stringently the worth of his or her “wisdom” and the motives behind this need to assume leadership. “Do I really see things clearly or am I operating on murky assumptions? Do I really understand my beloved? Could it not be that the path my beloved is taking is wise and that my perception of it as unwise is the result of limited vision on my part? Am I being self-serving in believing that my beloved needs redirection?” These are questions that those who truly love must continually ask themselves. This self-scrutiny, as objective as possible, is the essence of humility or meekness. In the words of an anonymous fourteenth-century British monk and spiritual teacher, “Meekness in itself is nothing else than a true knowing and feeling of
M. Scott Peck (The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth)
Before I ended up in this dungeon of the world, I was with you all the time. How I wish I’d never fallen into this earthly trap. I kept telling you over and over again: “I’m perfectly happy here. I don’t want to go anywhere. To travel from this exaltation down to earth is just too difficult a journey." You sent me anyway: “Go, don’t be scared. No harm will come to you. I will always be with you." You persuaded me by saying: 
“If you go, you’ll gain new experiences. You’ll progress on your path. You’ll be far more mature when you come back home." I replied: “O Essence of Knowledge, What good is all this learning and information
without you? Who could leave you for knowledge, unless he has no knowledge of you?" When I drink wine from your hand, 
I haven’t a care in the world. I become drunk and happy. 
I couldn’t care less about gain or loss, or people’s good or bad features.
Rumi (Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi) (The Forbidden Rumi: The Suppressed Poems of Rumi on Love, Heresy, and Intoxication)
Robert Frost wrote about “two roads diverg[ing] in a wood” and taking “the one less traveled.” But, in Molly’s case, both roads continued on to equally devastating destinations, even if the specifics were different. Which of the two paths would you choose if one went off a cliff and the other into quicksand?
Ray Smith (The Magnolia That Bloomed Unseen)
Psychologists discovered that there are two routes to achievement: conformity and originality. Conformity means following the crowd down conventional paths and maintaining the status quo. Originality is taking the road less traveled, championing a set of novel ideas that go against the grain but ultimately make things better.
Adam Grant (Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World)
The roads of life are paved wide and skirt the mountains. And these very roads are choked with a steady stream of pathetically pedantic travelers who in reality have no intent of traveling. And if we are to discover the real travelers, much less join them, we will find them out on precarious paths that defy the roads and scale the mountains.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
But the past months have taught me that there is no starting over. As the narrator of Martin in Space says, "I can't unsee what I've seen, I can't unlearn what I know. Each place, each decision, each experience, has become a part of me, no more than my head, no less than my heart." Life is a series of decisions, forks in the road, this or that, yes or no, left or right. We make our choices, we select our path. When I was young, the options seemed unlimited, so many paths to travel. But here's what I didn't understand: Every path is a one-way street. There is no turning back, no changing your mind, no trying both options. There is only forward motion. With time, your decisions pile up, compounding, interweaving, slowly turning you into the person you are.
Michelle Richmond (The Wonder Test)
But now, if I be marching on with my utmost vigour in that way which, according to the sacred geography, leads straight to Jerusalem, why am I beaten and ill-used by others because, perhaps, I wear not buskins; because my hair is not of the right cut; because, perhaps, I have not been dipped in the right fashion; because I eat flesh upon the road, or some other food which agrees with my stomach; because I avoid certain by-ways, which seem unto me to lead into briars or precipices; because, amongst the several paths that are in the same road, I choose that to walk in which seems to be the straightest and cleanest; because I avoid to keep company with some travellers that are less grave and others that are more sour than they ought to be; or, in fine, because I follow a guide that either is, or is not, clothed in white, or crowned with a mitre?
John Locke (A Letter Concerning Toleration)
Tomorrow is just as real a thing as yesterday. So is day after next, and the rest of them. Because you cannot see the future, it does not follow that it is not there. Your own path may vary widely, but the piece of country you are to travel is solid and real. We have been most erroneously taught not to think of the future; to live only in the present: and at the same time we have been taught to guide our lives by an ideal of the remotest possible future - a postmortem eternity. Between the contradictory ideals of this paradox, most of us drag along, forced by the exigencies of business to consider some future, but ignoring most of it. A single human life is short enough to be well within range of anybody's mind. Allow for it eighty years: if you don't have eight you are that much in - so much less to plan for. Sit down wherever you happen to be; under twenty, over fifty, anywhere on the road; lift your eyes from your footsteps, and "look before and after." Look back, see the remarkable wiggling sort of path you have made; see the places where you made no progress at all, but simply tramped up and down without taking a step. Ask yourself: "If I had thought about what I should be feeling toady, would I have behaved as I did then?" Quite probably not. But why not? Why not, in deciding on own's path and gait at a given moment, consider that inevitable advancing future? Come it will; but how it comes, what it is, depends on us. Then look ahead; not merely just before your nose, but way ahead. It is a good and wholesome thing to plan out one's whole life; as one thinks it is likely to be; as one desires it should be; and then act accordingly. Suppose you are about twenty-five. Consider a number of persons of fifty or sixty, and how they look. Do you want to look like that? What sort of a body do you want at fifty? It is in your hands to make. In health, in character, in business, in friendship, in love, in happiness; your future is very largely yours to make. Then why not make it? Suppose you are thirty, forty, fifty, sixty. So long as you have a year before you it is worth while to consider it in advance. Live as a whole, not in disconnected fractions.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bow from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrow may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness; For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.19
M. Scott Peck (The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth)
The real Tradition is this: the teacher never tells the disciple what he or she should do. They are merely travelling companions, sharing the same uncomfortable feeling of 'estrangement' when confronted by ever-changing perceptions, broadening horizons, closing doors, rivers that sometimes seem to block their path and which, in fact, should never be crossed, but followed. There is only one difference between teacher and disciple: the former is slightly less afraid than the latter. Then, when they sit down at a table or in front of a fire to talk, the more experienced person might say: 'Why don't you do that?' But he or she never says: 'Go there and you'll arrive where I did', because every path and every destination are unique to the individual. The true teacher gives the disciple the courage to throw his or her world off balance, even though the disciple is afraid of things already encountered and more afraid still of what might be around the next corner.
Paulo Coelho (The Witch of Portobello)
As psychologist Bruce Hood writes in his book The Self Illusion, you have an origin story and a sense that you’ve traveled from youth to now along a linear path, with ups and downs that ultimately made you who you are today. Babies don’t have that. That sense is built around events that you can recall and place in time. Babies and small children have what Hood calls “unconscious knowledge,” which is to say they simply recognize patterns and make associations with stimuli. Without episodic memories, there is no narrative; and without any narrative, there is no self. Somewhere between ages two and three, according to Hood, that sense of self begins to come online, and that awakening corresponds with the ability to tell a story about yourself based on memories. He points to a study by Alison Gopnik and Janet Astington in 1988 in which researchers presented to three-year-olds a box of candy, but the children were then surprised to find pencils inside instead of sweets. When they asked each child what the next kid would think was in the box when he or she went through the same experiment, the answer was usually pencils. The children didn’t yet know that other people have minds, so they assumed everyone knew what they knew. Once you gain the ability to assume others have their own thoughts, the concept of other minds is so powerful that you project it into everything: plants, glitchy computers, boats with names, anything that makes more sense to you when you can assume, even jokingly, it has a sort of self. That sense of agency is so powerful that people throughout time have assumed a consciousness at the helm of the sun, the moon, the winds, and the seas. Out of that sense of self and other selves come the narratives that have kept whole societies together. The great mythologies of the ancients and moderns are stories made up to make sense of things on a grand scale. So strong is the narrative bias that people live and die for such stories and devote whole lives to them (as well as take lives for them).
David McRaney (You Are Now Less Dumb: How to Conquer Mob Mentality, How to Buy Happiness, and All the Other Ways to Outsmart Yourself)
What shall it be? The easy path? Or the road less traveled? Ask yourself: Can you afford to maintain your unmoving place in life? Are you willing to stay in the status quo, or do you want to do something so that one day you will not look back on a life strewn with regrets? As we struggle under the weight of our circumstances when the vision of our hopes and dreams grows dim, we must never forget what Robert Frost wrote about the positive impact that taking a less-traveled direction can make on a person's life...
Art E. Berg (The Impossible Just Takes a Little Longer: Living with Purpose and Passion)
It’s like that hoary Robert Frost poem, but without the false dichotomy: Two paths diverged in our woods, and because we are women, and women’s choices change dramatically with every single generation, both paths were less traveled by. And because there is no one way to have a family, no instruction book, and no trustworthy set of rules (and, trust me, I’ve looked), it is likely that both paths are just a little bit wrong and just a little bit right, and which one we take is simply a matter of luck and happenstance.
Kelly Harms (The Seven Day Switch)
Slow down and remember this as you begin your travels: Being busy can be a form of laziness. Lazy thinking, and indiscriminate action. Being selective—in other words, doing less in a smart way—is usually the more productive and fun path. Focus on the quality of your experiences instead of the quantity. Get to know a few places really well, and try to avoid racing around the world on some over-ambitious itinerary, doing everything through your iPhone. In other words, try to live it and experience it, not just gather stories for later.
Rolf Potts (Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel)
The dilemma can be resolved only by painstaking self-scrutiny, in which the lover examines stringently the worth of his or her “wisdom” and the motives behind this need to assume leadership. “Do I really see things clearly or am I operating on murky assumptions? Do I really understand my beloved? Could it not be that the path my beloved is taking is wise and that my perception of it as unwise is the result of limited vision on my part? Am I being self-serving in believing that my beloved needs redirection?” These are questions that those who truly love must continually ask themselves.
M. Scott Peck (The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth)
The guide–book warmly recommends the seashore when the wind is in the east (which it was) as the quickest and firmest route from Göhren to Thiessow; but I chose rather to take the road over the plain because there was a poem in the guide–book about the way along the shore, and the guide–book said it described it extremely well, and I was sure that if that were so I would do better to go the other way. This is the poem — the translation is exact, the original being unrhymed, and the punctuation is the poet’s — Splashing waves Rocking boat Dipping gulls — Dunes. Raging winds Floating froth. Flashing lightning Moon! Fearful hearts Morning grey — Stormy nights Faith! I read it, marvelled, and went the other way.
Elizabeth von Arnim (The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rügen)
Two paths with very worthy objectives, but only one results in pleasing God; ironically, it is not the Pleasing God path! When we choose the path of Pleasing God, we end up neither pleasing Him nor learning to live by faith. Our spiritual lives are dependent upon our ability to follow. But when we choose the Trusting God path, continually admitting our brokenness and humbly embracing the sufficiency of Christ, we experience both trusting God and pleasing God. Our spiritual lives are not motivated by guilt, fear, and shame but by love, desire, and gratitude. Two paths … very different results. In the powerful words of Robert Frost, “I chose the road less traveled, and that has made all the difference.” This choice truly does make all the difference in our lives.
Alan Kraft (Good News for Those Trying Harder)
When the past is allowed to remain what it is, the past, when a person leaves it by stepping onto the good path and does not look back too often, he himself is changed little by little, and the past is imperceptibly changed at the same time, and eventually they do not, so to speak, suit each other. The past fades away into a less definite form, becomes a recollection, and the recollection becomes less and less terrifying. It becomes quieter, it becomes gentle, it becomes sad, and in each of these attributes it is becoming more and more distanced . Finally the past becomes almost alien to him; he does not comprehend how he could possibly have gone astray in that way, and he hears recollection's account of it just as the traveler hears a legend in a distant land.
Søren Kierkegaard (Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses)
I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear, that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now. I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
Henry David Thoreau (Walden)
Philosophy is the theory of multiplicities, each of which is composed of actual and virtual elements. Purely actual objects do not exist. Every actual surrounds itself with a cloud of virtual images. This cloud is composed of a series of more or less extensive coexisting circuits, along which the virtual images are distributed, and around which they run. These virtuals vary in kind as well as in their degree of proximity from the actual particles by which they are both emitted and absorbed. They are called virtual in so far as their emission and absorption, creation and destruction, occur in a period of time shorter than the shortest continuous period imaginable; it is this very brevity that keeps them subject to a principle of uncertainty or indetermination. The virtuals, encircling the actual, perpetually renew themselves by emitting yet others, with which they are in turn surrounded and which go on in turn to react upon the actual: ‘in the heart of the cloud of the virtual there is a virtual of a yet higher order ... every virtual particle surrounds itself with a virtual cosmos and each in its turn does likewise indefinitely.’ It is the dramatic identity of their dynamics that makes a perception resemble a particle: an actual perception surrounds itself with a cloud of virtual images, distributed on increasingly remote, increasingly large, moving circuits, which both make and unmake each other. These are memories of different sorts, but they are still called virtual images in that their speed or brevity subjects them too to a principle of the unconsciousness. It is by virtue of their mutual inextricability that virtual images are able to react upon actual objects. From this perspective, the virtual images delimit a continuum, whether one takes all of the circles together or each individually, a spatium determined in each case by the maximum of time imaginable. The varyingly dense layers of the actual object correspond to these, more or less extensive, circles of virtual images. These layers, whilst themselves virtual, and upon which the actual object becomes itself virtual, constitute the total impetus of the object. The plane of immanence, upon which the dissolution of the actual object itself occurs, is itself constituted when both object and image are virtual. But the process of actualization undergone by the actual is one which has as great an effect on the image as it does on the object. The continuum of virtual images is fragmented and the spatium cut up according to whether the temporal decompositions are regular or irregular. The total impetus of the virtual object splits into forces corresponding to the partial continuum, and the speeds traversing the cut-up spatium. The virtual is never independent of the singularities which cut it up and divide it out on the plane of immanence. As Leibniz has shown, force is as much a virtual in the process of being actualized as the space through which it travels. The plane is therefore divided into a multiplicity of planes according to the cuts in the continuum, and to the divisions of force which mark the actualization of the virtual. But all the planes merge into one following the path which leads to the actual. The plane of immanence includes both the virtual and its actualization simultaneously, without there being any assignable limit between the two. The actual is the complement or the product, the object of actualization, which has nothing but virtual as its subject. Actualization belongs to the virtual. The actualization of the virtual is singularity whereas the actual itself is individuality constituted. The actual falls from the plane like a fruit, whist the actualization relates it back to the plane as if to that which turns the object back into a subject.
Gilles Deleuze (Dialogues II)
Experience. Travel the path less taken. By seeing more of the world, we begin to see both how differently people live their lives as well as the underlying rhythms of life. We realize that many of these differences run only so deep. Learn something new every day. This does not mean you have to cram it into your head, remembering everything you encounter, but sit with the idea for a few minutes and consider your own thoughts on it. Your thoughts, not what you are supposed to think. By exposing yourself to new things, you broaden your understanding of what exists out there and how people think, and this in turn makes you aware of the sheer number of possibilities. The power of education is to open up the world to you, and allow you to realize that there are equally an infinite number of ways you might open up to the world. By recognizing that there are so many possibilities, you have the option of confronting situations in more productive, positive ways. Go towards your fears. This is an excellent mantra if you want to continue to challenge yourself. If something scares you, it can also be interpreted as something you have left to confront and conquer.
Charlotte Maloney (Emotional Maturity: Discover How to Control Your Emotions and Be More Mature (The Secrets of Emotional Maturity))
Umar came one morning to the house of the Messenger, and as he approached he heard the sound of women’s voices raised to a pitch which he considered unseemly in the prophetic presence. The women were moreover of Quraysh, that is, of the Emigrants, which confirmed his opinion that they were learning bad ways from the women of Medina who for generations had been less restrained and more self-assertive than the women of Mecca. The Prophet hated to refuse a request, as well they knew, and they were now asking him with some insistence to give them various garments which had come to him as part of his fifth in the spoils of war. There was a curtain spread across part of the room, and when ‘Umar’s voice was heard asking permission to enter there was a sudden total silence and the women hid themselves behind the curtain with such speed that he entered to find the Prophet speechless with laughter. “May God fill thy life with laughter, O Messenger of God,” he said. “Wondrous it was,” said the Prophet, “how these women who were with me even now - how speedily upon hearing thy voice they were gone behind that curtain!” “It is rather thy right, not mine, that they should stand in awe of thee, not of me,” said ‘Umar. Then, addressing the women, he said “O enemies of yourselves, fear ye me, and fear ye not God’s Messenger?” “It is even so,” they said, “for thou art rougher and harsher than God’s Messenger.” “That is true, O son of Khattab,” said the Prophet. Then he added: “By Him in whose hand is my soul, if Satan found that thou wert travelling upon a certain path, he would choose to go himself by any other path but thine.
Martin Lings (Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources)
I just lay on the mountain Meadowside in the moonlight, head to grass, and heard the silent recognition of my temporary woes. Yes, so to try to attain to Nirvana when you're already there, to the top of a mountain when you're already there and only have to stay -thus to stay in the nirvana bliss is all I have to do, you have to do, no effort no path really no discipline but just to know that all is empty and awake , a vision and a movie in God's universal mind(Alya-Vijnana) and to stay more or less wisely in that. Because silence itself is the sound of diamonds which can cut through anything the sound of holy emptiness the sound of extinction and bliss, that graveyard silence which is like the silence of an infant's smile the sound of eternity, of the blessedness surely to be believed the sound of nothing ever happened Except God(Which I'd soon hear in a noisy Atlantic tempest) What exists is god in his emanation, what does not exist is god in his peaceful neutrality, what neither exist nor does not exist is god's immortal primordial dawn of father sky9this world this very minute). So, I said stay in that no dimensions here to any of the mountain s or mosquitos and whole milky ways of worlds Because sensation is emptiness old age is emptiness. T's only the golden eternity of gods mind so practice kindness and sympathy remember that men are not responsible in themselves as men for their ignorance and unkindness, they should be pitied, God does pity it, because who says anything about anything since everything is just what it is, free of interpretations. God is not the attainer, he is the farer in that which everything is the abider one caterpillar, a thousand hairs of God. So, know constantly that this is only, you ,God ,empty and awake and eternally free as the unnumerable atoms of emptiness everywhere.
Jack Kerouac (Lonesome Traveler)
The thing about the path less travelled is that it is often less travelled for a good reason.
Anonymous
With this in mind, your options are now clear; Stick to the system’s path and never have to face any tough, soul searching moments but forever close yourself off to greatness. Or, Take the road less travelled, be prepared to face all of your demons but remember that if you make it through to the other side, in the words of Martin Luther King, you’ll be, ‘ready to face anything
Joe Barnes (Escape The System: The Ultimate Guide to a Life of Freedom and Greatness)
Fortune is not on the side of the faint-hearted.” To live your life to the fullest, start taking more risks and doing the things you fear. Get good at being uncomfortable and stop walking the path of least resistance. Sure, there is a greater chance you will stub your toes when you walk the road less traveled, but that is the only way you can get anywhere. As my wise mother always says, “you cannot get to third base with one foot on second.” Or as André Gide observed, “One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.” The real secret to a life of abundance is to stop spending your days searching for security and to start spending your time pursuing opportunity. Sure, you will meet with your share of failures if you start living more deliberately and passionately. But failure is nothing more than learning how to win. Or as my dad observed one day, “Robin, it’s risky out on a limb. But that’s where all the fruit is.
Robin S. Sharma (Who Will Cry When You Die?: Life Lessons From The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari)
depressive symptoms are a sign to the suffering individual that all is not right with him or her and major adjustments need to be made. Many of the case histories I have used to demonstrate other principles can also be used to illustrate this one: that the unpleasant symptoms of mental illness serve to notify people that they have taken the wrong path, that their spirits are not growing and are in grave jeopardy.
M. Scott Peck (The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth)
A star would lose its value if it tried to be something else; just be yourself.
Matshona Dhliwayo
The areas they traveled through became less and less populated. They followed an interminably straight road, thickly surrounded by maples and conifers as far as the eye could see. Only rarely did their path cross a truck or car. Night was falling. Now and again they saw points of light in the distance, boats that must have been navigating the rivers and lakes. They had driven about sixty miles when the man told her to turn onto a path. The headlights lit the massive bases of tree trunks. Lucie felt she was on the edge of the abyss; she had seen only two or three houses in the past half hour. A cabin emerged from the darkness. When the cop stepped onto the ground, feeling feverish, she heard the furious roar of a waterfall.
Franck Thilliez (Syndrome E)
Take the path less traveled and learn from your mistakes. Don’t just let life happen around you; control your future. Learn to ask questions, set small goals, and dream of big ones. Absorb any criticism and let it fuel you. Convince others that you are worthy of your dream, and show them that you are willing to put up a damn good fight for it.
Matthew T. Cross (The Resume Design Book: How to Write a Resume in College & Influence Employers to Hire You [Color Edition])
Taking the road less travelled is easier; there is less congestion.
Matshona Dhliwayo
There's More Than Two Choices [10w] Don't take the road less traveled; blaze your own path.
Beryl Dov
A path less traveled is best done in twos.
R.W. Richard (A More Perfect Union)
What has made the European family of nations an improving, instead of a stationary portion of mankind? Not any superior excellence in them, which, when it exists, exists as the effect, not as the cause; but their remarkable diversity of character and culture. Individuals, classes, nations, have been extremely unlike one another: they have struck out a great variety of paths, each leading to something valuable; and although at every period those who travelled in different paths have been intolerant of one another, and each would have thought it an excellent thing if all the rest could have been compelled to travel his road, their attempts to thwart each other's development have rarely had any permanent success, and each has in time endured to receive the good which the others have offered. Europe is, in my judgement, wholly indebted to this plurality of paths for its progressive and many-sided development. But it already begins to possess this benefit in a considerably less degree. It is decidedly advancing towards the Chinese ideal of making all people alike.
John Stuart Mill (On Liberty)
When I was sixteen, I was already on a path less travelled with several questions preoccupying my somewhat troubled soul.
Frank L. Douglas (Defining Moments of a Free Man from a Black Stream)
choose the path less traveled
Bhavya Prasad
Campgrounds are never comfortable. They are merely less awful than other options. In normal circumstances, if told that the nearest available toilet was half a mile away, up a dirt path frequented by animals in gastric distress, one would lock the doors and speed to civilization. When a tent or camper is involved, one is jubilant. At least this site had flush toilets!
Thomm Quackenbush (Holidays with Bigfoot)
By my early twenties, I was still devoted to heroic woman stories, but the love narratives had started to lose some of their appeal. The release of a new Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks vehicle seemed far less interesting to me than the latest installment of the Alien movie franchise. Had I lost interest in romance? Far from it. In fact, this was at the time in my life when I was very serious about finding a great love. However, I was also struggling to be my own person, to understand my identity, to follow my own dreams and start down my chosen career path. I had plans to travel the world, to attend graduate school. I was coming into—and exercising—my own forms of strength and independence. But I was tired of the one-sided representations of male-identified characters doing this, of feeling that only one version of this kind of empowerment existed. I wanted balance and social justice. I wanted to see more evidence of women on screen doing the same, women making a difference, doing something amazing, and being the heroes of their own lives and stories. Unfortunately, there weren’t very many female-bodied characters who did that who also got to find love. In fact, the more romance a woman enjoyed in a narrative, the less strength or independence of any kind she expressed in the story, especially before the last two decades. (3)
Allison P. Palumbo
Scott Peck's major insight in his best-selling book, The Road Less Traveled. He told me personally once that he felt most Western people were just spiritually lazy. And when we are lazy, we stay on the path we are already on, even if it is going nowhere. It is the spiritual equivalent of the second law of thermodynamics: everything winds down unless some outside force winds
Richard Rohr (Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life)
Devant moi il y avait deux routes J'ai choisi la route la moins fréquentée Et cela a fait toute la différence. ---------------------- In front of me there were two roads I chose the less traveled road And it made all the difference.
Paulo Coelho (The Witch of Portobello)