Traveller Quotes - Page 8

• Look at this vigorous plant that lifts its head from the meadow, See how its leaves are turned to the north, as true as the magnet; This is the compass-flower, that the finger of God has planted Here in the houseless wild, to direct the traveller's journey. Over the sea-like, pathless, limitless waste of the desert, Such in the soul of man is faith.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Flower, Journey, Men

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Illustrated)”, p.359, Delphi Classics

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• While I complain of being able to glimpse no more than the shadow of the past, I may be insensitive to reality as it is taking shape at this very moment, since I have not reached the stage of development at which I would be capable of perceiving it. A few hundred years hence, in this same place, another traveller, as despairing as myself, will mourn the disappearance of what I might have seen, but failed to see.

  Claude Levi-Strauss

  Past, Reality, Years

  Claude Levi-Strauss (2012). “Tristes Tropiques”, p.49, Penguin

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• A great silence has descended on me for the last six months. I am as silent as an Arab in the desert, as dry, thirsty, and full of wonder and rumours which do not materialize into camels or travellers at all, but just vanish into the silent spaces from where they came. I expect this is a good thing though it is extremely irritating - the brink of a voice and never a voice.

  May Sarton

  Voice, Space, Silence

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• The towns and countryside that the traveller sees through a train window do not slow down the train, nor does the train affect them. Neither disturbs the other. This is how you should see the thoughts that pass through your mind when you meditate.

  Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

  Mind, Doe, Towns

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• Man, who wert once a despot and a slave, A dupe and a deceiver! a decay, A traveller from the cradle to the grave Through the dim night of this immortal day.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Night, Men, Decay

  'Prometheus Unbound' (1820) act 4, l. 551

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• Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
  Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
  Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
  Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
  And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end.
  The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet
  Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
  Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Winter, Garden, Rivers

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.83, Delphi Classics

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• He who has attained intellectual emancipation to any extent cannot, for a long time, regard himself otherwise than as a wanderer on the face of the earth and not even as a traveller towards a final goal, for there is no such thing.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Independent, Long, Goal

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2012). “Human, All-Too-Human: Parts One and Two”, p.241, Courier Corporation

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• If the book is second-hand, I leave all its markings intact, the spoor of previous readers, fellow-travellers who have recorded their passage by means of scribbled comments, a name on the fly-leaf, a bus ticket to mark a certain page.

  Alberto Manguel

  Book, Reading, Mean

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• Traveler is my only companion; I may also say my pleasure. He and I, whenever practicable, wander out in the mountains and enjoy sweet confidence.

  Robert E. Lee

  Sweet, Mountain, Wander

  "Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee".

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• Lovers O lovers, lovers it is time to set out from the world. I hear a drum in my soul's ear coming from the depths of the stars. Our camel driver is at work; the caravan is being readied. He asks that we forgive him for the disturbance he has caused us, He asks why we travellers are asleep. Everywhere the murmur of departure; the stars, like candles thrust at us from behind blue veils, and as if to make the invisible plain, a wondrous people have come forth.

  Rumi

  Stars, Blue, People

  Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi (2016). “Love is a Stranger”, p.77, Shambhala Publications

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• When I have come to you, at last (as I have always done), I have come to peace and happiness. I come home, now, like a tired traveller, and find such a blessed sense of rest!

  Charles Dickens

  Happiness, Blessed, Home

  Charles Dickens (1850). “Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observations of David Copperfield the Younger”, p.86

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• Was awakened in the night to a strain of music dying away, - passing travellers singing. My being was so expanded and infinitely and divinely related for a brief season that I saw how unexhausted, how almost wholly unimproved, was man's capacity for a divine life. When I remembered what a narrow and finite life I should anon awake to!

  Henry David Thoreau

  Music, Night, Men

  Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.159, Courier Corporation

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• In religious matters a traveller loses nothing by civility.

  James Branch Cabell

  Religious, Matter, Civility

  James Branch Cabell (2009). “The Silver Stallion”, p.100, Wildside Press LLC

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• Travellers with closed minds can tell us little except about themselves

  Chinua Achebe

  Mind, Littles, Closed Mind

  Chinua Achebe (2012). “Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays”, p.32, Anchor

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• Traveling provides occasions for shaking oneself up but not, as people believe, freedom. Indeed it involves a kind of reduction: deprived of one’s usual setting, the customary routine stripped away like so much wrapping paper, the traveller finds himself reduced to more modest proportions - but also more open to curiosity, to intuition, to love at first sight.

  Nicolas Bouvier

  Believe, Sight, People

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• False taste is always busy to mislead those that are entering upon the regions of learning; and the traveller, uncertain of his way, and forsaken by the sun, will be pleased to see a fainter orb arise on the horizon, that may rescue him from total darkness, though with weak and borrowed lustre.

  Samuel Johnson

  Ignorance, Darkness, Horizon

  Samuel Johnson, Elizabeth Carter, Samuel Richardson, Catherine Talbot (1825). “The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752”, p.148

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• Men may be very learned, and yet very miserable; it is easy to be a deep geometrician, or a sublime astronomer, but very difficult to be a good man. I esteem, therefore, the traveller who instructs the heart, but despise him who only indulges the imagination. A man who leaves home to mend himself and others, is a philosopher; but he who goes from country to country, guided by the blind impulse of curiosity, is only a vagabond.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Country, Home, Heart

  Oliver Goldsmith (1854). “The works of Oliver Goldsmith. 2: Enquiry into the present state of polite learning; The citizen of the world”, p.106

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• A traveller, lost on a desert plain, feels that the recognition of one star, the Pole star, is of itself a great acquisition.

  Maria Mitchell

  Travel, Stars, Acquisition

  Maria Mitchell (1896). “Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals”

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• To represent a bad thing in its least offensive light is, doubtless, the most agreeable course for a writer of fiction to pursue; but is it the most honest, or the safest? Is it better to reveal the snares and pitfalls of like to the young and thoughtless traveller, or to cover them with branches and flowers? Oh, reader! if there were less of this delicate concealment of facts--this whispering "Peace, peace," when there is no peace, there would be less of sin and misery to the young of both sexes who are left to wring their bitter knowledge from experience.

  Anne Bronte

  Sex, Flower, Light

  Anne Bronte, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte (2014). “The Complete Novels Of The Bronte Sisters: Seven-Book Bundle”, p.244, Harper Collins

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• But nothing will persuade me that the mere fact of being in a place is enough in itself to justify the effort of getting out of bed to become a tourist, or even a traveller. I don't have the slightest wish to be intrepid. I don't want to prove myself to myself or anyone else. I don't care if no one thinks me brave or hardy. I have no concern at all that I did not have whatever it is I should have had to take a dive out of a plane or off a building. None of that matters to me in the least.

  Jenny Diski

  Thinking, Should Have, Effort

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• If the traveller can find A virtuous and wise companion Let him go with him joyfully And overcome the dangers of the way. But if you cannot find Friend or master to go with you, Travel on alone.

  Gautama Buddha

  Wise, Meditation, Overcoming

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• ...A traveller is to be reverenced as such. His profession is the best symbol of our life. Going from - toward; it is the history of every one of us. It is a great art to saunter.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Art, Profession, Symbols

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• How long the night to the watchman, How long the road to the weary traveller, How long the wandering of many lives To the fool who misses the way.

  Gautama Buddha

  Night, Long, Meditation

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• 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?

  William Shakespeare

  Life, Death, Country

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 3, sc. 1, l. 56

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• Thus, when the lamp that lighted The traveller at first goes out, He feels awhile benighted, And looks around in fear and doubt. But soon, the prospect clearing, By cloudless starlight on he treads, And thinks no lamp so cheering As that light which Heaven sheds.

  Charles Lamb

  Cheer, Fear, Thinking

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