Travel Quotes

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

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A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
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Mark Twain
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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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The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.
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Augustine of Hippo
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That's the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.
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Jhumpa Lahiri (The Namesake)
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I have never listened to anyone who criticized my taste in space travel, sideshows or gorillas. When this occurs, I pack up my dinosaurs and leave the room.
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Ray Bradbury (Zen in the Art of Writing: Releasing the Creative Genius Within You)
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I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.
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Oscar Wilde (The Importance of Being Earnest)
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Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don't be sorry.
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Jack Kerouac
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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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Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.
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Terry Pratchett (A Hat Full of Sky (Discworld, #32; Tiffany Aching, #2))
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A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.
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Lao Tzu
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Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.
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Terry Pratchett (Reaper Man (Discworld, #11; Death, #2))
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I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.
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Robert Louis Stevenson (Travels with a Donkey in the CΓ©vennes)
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The Road Not Taken Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and Iβ€” I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
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Robert Frost
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Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.
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Mark Twain (The Innocents Abroad / Roughing It)
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Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.
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Douglas Adams (Mostly Harmless (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #5))
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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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When I was a child, adults would tell me not to make things up, warning me of what would happen if I did. As far as I can tell so far, it seems to involve lots of foreign travel and not having to get up too early in the morning.
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Neil Gaiman (Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fiction and Illusions)
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I address you all tonight for who you truly are: wizards, mermaids, travelers, adventurers, and magicians. You are the true dreamers.
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Brian Selznick (The Invention of Hugo Cabret)
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Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
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Robert Frost
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Wherever you go becomes a part of you somehow.
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Anita Desai
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I went to collect the few personal belongings which...I held to be invaluable: my cat, my resolve to travel, and my solitude.
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Colette
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Don't you think it's better to be extremely happy for a short while, even if you lose it, than to be just okay for your whole life?
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Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)
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Travel brings power and love back into your life.
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Rumi (Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi)
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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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Travel changes you. As you move through this life and this world you change things slightly, you leave marks behind, however small. And in return, lifeβ€”and travelβ€”leaves marks on you.
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Anthony Bourdain
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I stood still, vision blurring, and in that moment, I heard my heart break. It was a small, clean sound, like the snapping of a flower's stem.
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Diana Gabaldon (Dragonfly in Amber (Outlander, #2))
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Travel far enough, you meet yourself.
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David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas)
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The road that is built in hope is more pleasant to the traveler than the road built in despair, even though they both lead to the same destination.
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Marion Zimmer Bradley (The Fall of Atlantis (The Fall of Atlantis, #1-2))
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Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it. You must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it.
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Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
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We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend.
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Robert Louis Stevenson
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The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see.
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G.K. Chesterton
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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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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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The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
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Marcel Proust
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I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life. I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish… You see, it is difficult to get all which I want. And then when I do not succeed I get mad with anger.
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Simone de Beauvoir
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Believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.
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Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet)
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We all know that light travels faster than sound. That's why certain people appear bright until you hear them speak.
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Albert Einstein
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I don't recommend shadow travel if you're scared of: a) The dark b) Cold shivers up your spine c) Strange noises d) Going so fast you feel like your face is peeling off In other words, I thought it was awesome.
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Rick Riordan (The Last Olympian (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #5))
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I have found out that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.
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Mark Twain (Tom Sawyer Abroad)
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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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I read; I travel; I become
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Derek Walcott
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Never travel faster than your guardian angel can fly.
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Mother Teresa
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Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not.
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Ralph Waldo Emerson (Emerson's Essays)
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Love the world and yourself in it, move through it as though it offers no resistance, as though the world is your natural element.
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Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)
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I think you travel to search and you come back home to find yourself there.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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I won't ever leave you, even though you're always leaving me.
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Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)
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Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.
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Gustave Flaubert
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The three saddest things are the ill wanting to be well, the poor wanting to be rich, and the constant traveler saying 'anywhere but here'.
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E.E. Cummings
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It's hard being left behind. (...) It's hard to be the one who stays.
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Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)
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In books I have traveled, not only to other worlds, but into my own.
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Anna Quindlen (How Reading Changed My Life)
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What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.
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John Steinbeck (Travels with Charley: In Search of America)
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Every traveler has a home of his own, and he learns to appreciate it the more from his wandering.
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Charles Dickens
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Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason
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Jerry Seinfeld
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No matter how far you travel, you can never get away from yourself.
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Haruki Murakami (After the Quake)
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What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? - it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.
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Jack Kerouac (On the Road)
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How to stop time: kiss. How to travel in time: read. How to escape time: music. How to feel time: write. How to release time: breathe.
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Matt Haig (Reasons to Stay Alive)
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Now more than ever do I realize that I will never be content with a sedentary life, that I will always be haunted by thoughts of a sun-drenched elsewhere.
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Isabelle Eberhardt (The Nomad: Diaries of Isabelle Eberhardt)
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To travel is to live.
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Hans Christian Andersen (The Fairy Tale of My Life: An Autobiography)
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People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but *actually* from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff.
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Steven Moffat
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I was born lost and take no pleasure in being found.
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John Steinbeck (Travels with Charley: In Search of America)
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Maybe the truth is, there's a little bit of loser in all of us. Being happy isn't having everything in your life be perfect. Maybe it's about stringing together all the little things.
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Ann Brashares (The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Sisterhood, #1))
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You're on Earth. There's no cure for that.
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Samuel Beckett
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Though [Abraham Lincoln] never would travel to Europe, he went with Shakespeare’s kings to Merry England; he went with Lord Byron poetry to Spain and Portugal. Literature allowed him to transcend his surroundings.
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Doris Kearns Goodwin
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It’s dark now and I am very tired. I love you, always. Time is nothing.
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Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)
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The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives. She went on olden-day sailing ships with Joseph Conrad. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India with Rudyard Kipling. She travelled all over the world while sitting in her little room in an English village.
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Roald Dahl (Matilda)
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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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We leave something of ourselves behind when we leave a place, we stay there, even though we go away. And there are things in us that we can find again only by going back there.
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Pascal Mercier (Night Train to Lisbon)
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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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Good humor may be said to be one of the very best articles of dress one can wear in society.
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William Makepeace Thackeray (Sketches and Travels, Etc.)
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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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Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Back, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice.
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Charles Bukowski (Women)
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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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Every dreamer knows that it is entirely possible to be homesick for a place you've never been to, perhaps more homesick than for familiar ground.
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Judith Thurman
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Why is love intensified by absence?
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Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)
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Time is priceless, but it’s Free. You can't own it, you can use it. You can spend it. But you can't keep it. Once you've lost it you can never get it back.
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Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)
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Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away... and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast.... be happy about your growth, in which of course you can't take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don't torment them with your doubts and don't frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn't be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn't necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust.... and don't expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.
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Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet)
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Sleep is my lover now, my forgetting, my opiate, my oblivion.
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Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)
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We laugh and laugh, and nothing can ever be sad, no one can be lost, or dead, or far away: right now we are here, and nothing can mar our perfection, or steal the joy of this perfect moment.
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Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)
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And it came to me then. That we were wonderful traveling companions but in the end no more than lonely lumps of metal in their own separate orbits. From far off they look like beautiful shooting stars, but in reality they're nothing more than prisons, where each of us is locked up alone, going nowhere. When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we'd be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing.
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Haruki Murakami (Sputnik Sweetheart)
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because he had no place he could stay in without getting tired of it and because there was nowhere to go but everywhere, keep rolling under the stars...
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Jack Kerouac (On the Road)
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To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there's the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscover'd country from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action.--Soft you now! The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sins remember'd!
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William Shakespeare (Hamlet)
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Stars, too, were time travelers. How many of those ancient points of light were the last echoes of suns now dead? How many had been born but their light not yet come this far? If all the suns but ours collapsed tonight, how many lifetimes would it take us to realize we were alone? I had always known the sky was full of mysteriesβ€”but not until now had I realized how full of them the earth was.
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Ransom Riggs (Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, #1))
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Maybe I'm dreaming you. Maybe you're dreaming me; maybe we only exist in each other's dreams and every morning when we wake up we forget all about each other.
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Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)
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Until you value yourself, you won't value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.
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M. Scott Peck (The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth)
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One's destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.
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Henry Miller
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may came home with a smooth round stone as small as a world and as large as alone.
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E.E. Cummings
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Truthfully, Professor Hawking? Why would we allow tourists from the future muck up the past when your contemporaries had the task well in Hand?" Brigadier General Patrick E Buckwalder 2241C.E.
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Gabriel F.W. Koch (Paradox Effect: Time Travel and Purified DNA Merge to Halt the Collapse of Human Existence)
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Yes, my consuming desire is to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, barroom regularsβ€”to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recordingβ€”all this is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always supposedly in danger of assault and battery. My consuming interest in men and their lives is often misconstrued as a desire to seduce them, or as an invitation to intimacy. Yes, God, I want to talk to everybody as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night...
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Sylvia Plath (The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath)
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I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I've lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment.
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John Steinbeck (Travels with Charley: In Search of America)
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But that's the glory of foreign travel, as far as I am concerned. I don't want to know what people are talking about. I can't think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Suddenly you are five years old again. You can't read anything, you have only the most rudimentary sense of how things work, you can't even reliably cross a street without endangering your life. Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses.
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Bill Bryson (Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe)
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Anger is like flowing water; there's nothing wrong with it as long as you let it flow. Hate is like stagnant water; anger that you denied yourself the freedom to feel, the freedom to flow; water that you gathered in one place and left to forget. Stagnant water becomes dirty, stinky, disease-ridden, poisonous, deadly; that is your hate. On flowing water travels little paper boats; paper boats of forgiveness. Allow yourself to feel anger, allow your waters to flow, along with all the paper boats of forgiveness. Be human.
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C. JoyBell C.
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I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was - I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost.
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Jack Kerouac (On the Road (The Viking Critical Library))
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you are a horse running alone and he tries to tame you compares you to an impossible highway to a burning house says you are blinding him that he could never leave you forget you want anything but you you dizzy him, you are unbearable every woman before or after you is doused in your name you fill his mouth his teeth ache with memory of taste his body just a long shadow seeking yours but you are always too intense frightening in the way you want him unashamed and sacrificial he tells you that no man can live up to the one who lives in your head and you tried to change didn't you? closed your mouth more tried to be softer prettier less volatile, less awake but even when sleeping you could feel him travelling away from you in his dreams so what did you want to do love split his head open? you can't make homes out of human beings someone should have already told you that and if he wants to leave then let him leave you are terrifying and strange and beautiful something not everyone knows how to love.
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Warsan Shire
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All men have stars, but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travelers, the stars are guides. For others they are no more than little lights in the sky. For others, who are scholars, they are problems... But all these stars are silent. You-You alone will have stars as no one else has them... In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars will be laughing when you look at the sky at night..You, only you, will have stars that can laugh! And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me... You will always be my friend. You will want to laugh with me. And you will sometimes open your window, so, for that pleasure... It will be as if, in place of the stars, I had given you a great number of little bells that knew how to laugh
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Antoine de Saint-ExupΓ©ry (The Little Prince)
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It is a long way to Ireland, Janet, and I am sorry to send my little friend on such weary travels: but if I can't do better, how is it to be helped? Are you anything akin to me, do you think, Jane?" I could risk no sort of answer by this time: my heart was still. "Because, he said, "I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you - especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous channel, and two hundred miles or so of land some broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly. As for you, - you'd forget me.
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Charlotte BrontΓ« (Jane Eyre)
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somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond any experience, your eyes have their silence: in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which i cannot touch because they are too near your slightest look easily will unclose me though i have closed myself as fingers, you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens (touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose or if your wish be to close me, i and my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly, as when the heart of this flower imagines the snow carefully everywhere descending; nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility: whose texture compels me with the colour of its countries, rendering death and forever with each breathing (i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens; only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses) nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands
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E.E. Cummings (Selected Poems)
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Does this mean you’re going to make love to me tonight, Christian?” Holy shit. Did I just say that? His mouth drops open slightly, but he recovers quickly. β€œNo, Anastasia it doesn’t. Firstly, I don’t make love. I fuck… hard. Secondly, there’s a lot more paperwork to do, and thirdly, you don’t yet know what you’re in for. You could still run for the hills. Come, I want to show you my playroom.” My mouth drops open. Fuck hard! Holy shit, that sounds so… hot. But why are we looking at a playroom? I am mystified. β€œYou want to play on your Xbox?” I ask. He laughs, loudly. β€œNo, Anastasia, no Xbox, no Playstation. Come.”… Producing a key from his pocket, he unlocks yet another door and takes a deep breath. β€œYou can leave anytime. The helicopter is on stand-by to take you whenever you want to go, you can stay the night and go home in the morning. It’s fine whatever you decide.” β€œJust open the damn door, Christian.” He opens the door and stands back to let me in. I gaze at him once more. I so want to know what’s in here. Taking a deep breath I walk in. And it feels like I’ve time-traveled back to the sixteenth century and the Spanish Inquisition. Holy fuck.
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E.L. James (Fifty Shades of Grey (Fifty Shades, #1))
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It was the pure Language of the World. It required no explanation, just as the universe needs none as it travels through endless time. What the boy felt at that moment was that he was in the presence of the only woman in his life, and that, with no need for words, she recognized the same thing. He was more certain of it than of anything in the world. He had been told by his parents and grandparents that he must fall in love and really know a person before becoming committed. But maybe people who felt that way had never learned the universal language. Because, when you know that language, it's easy to understand that someone in the world awaits you, whether it's in the middle of the desert or in some great city. And when two such people encounter each other, and their eyes meet, the past and the future become unimportant. There is only that moment, and the incredible certainty that everything under the sun has been written by one hand only. It is the hand that evokes love, and creates a twin soul for every person in the world. Without such love, one's dreams would have no meaning.
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Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)
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Sections in the bookstore - Books You Haven't Read - Books You Needn't Read - Books Made for Purposes Other Than Reading - Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong to the Category of Books Read Before Being Written - Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered - Books You Mean to Read But There Are Others You Must Read First - Books Too Expensive Now and You'll Wait 'Til They're Remaindered - Books ditto When They Come Out in Paperback - Books You Can Borrow from Somebody - Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them, Too - Books You've Been Planning to Read for Ages - Books You've Been Hunting for Years Without Success - Books Dealing with Something You're Working on at the Moment - Books You Want to Own So They'll Be Handy Just in Case - Books You Could Put Aside Maybe to Read This Summer - Books You Need to Go with Other Books on Your Shelves - Books That Fill You with Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified - Books Read Long Ago Which It's Now Time to Re-read - Books You've Always Pretended to Have Read and Now It's Time to Sit Down and Really Read Them
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Italo Calvino (If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler)
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Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '97: Wear sunscreen. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now. Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine. Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 pm on some idle Tuesday. Do one thing everyday that scares you. Sing. Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours. Floss. Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself. Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how. Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements. Stretch. Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't. Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You'll miss them when they're gone. Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's. Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own. Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room. Read the directions, even if you don't follow them. Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly. Get to know your parents. You never know when they'll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future. Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young. Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel. Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders. Respect your elders. Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out. Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you're 40 it will look 85. Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth. But trust me on the sunscreen.
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Mary Schmich (Wear Sunscreen: A Primer for Real Life)