Quotes from Rolf Potts

there is still an overwhelming social compulsion-an insanity of consensus, if you will-to get rich from life rather than live richly, to "do well" in the world instead of living well.

The goal of preparation then is not knowing exactly where you'll go but being confident nonetheless that you'll get there.

the Buddha whimsically pointed out that seeking happiness in one's material desires is as absurd as "suffering because a banana tree will not bear mangoes.

It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. —RALPH WALDO EMERSON, "SELF-RELIANCE

Vagabonding involves taking an extended time-out from your normal life—six weeks, four months, two years—to travel the world on your own terms.

Vagabonding is about looking for adventure in normal life, and normal life within adventure. Vagabonding is an attitude—a friendly interest in people, places, and things that makes a person an explorer in the truest, most vivid sense of the word.

If in doubt about what to do in a place, just start walking through your new environment. Walk until your day becomes interesting—even if this means wandering out of town and strolling the countryside. Eventually you'll see a scene or meet a person that makes your walk worthwhile. If you get "lost" in the process, just take a bus or taxi to a local landmark and find your way back to your hotel from there.

vagabonding is simply a matter of making work serve your interests

For all the amazing experiences that await you in distant lands, the "meaningful" part of travel always starts at home, with a personal investment in the wonders to come.

To know the universe itself as a road, as many roads, as roads for traveling souls.

spectral connection between people long separated by place and time, but somehow speaking the same language.

Instead—out of our insane duty to fear, fashion, and monthly payments on things we don't really need—we quarantine our travels to short, frenzied bursts. In this way, as we throw our wealth at an abstract notion called "lifestyle," travel becomes just another accessory—a smooth-edged, encapsulated experience that we purchase the same way we buy clothing and furniture.

no combination of one-week or ten-day vacations will truly take you away from the life you lead at home.

And we'll be haunted by our unrealized dreams and know that we have sinned against ourselves gravely.

Someday" ("someday I'll do this, someday I'll do that") is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you.

Pro and con lists—one of my previous favorites—are just as bad. If it's important to you, and you want to do it eventually, just do it, and correct course along the way. Fortune favors the bold.

People say that what we are all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think this is what we're really seeking. I think what we're seeking is an experience of being alive. —JOSEPH CAMPBELL, THE

The traveler sees what he sees," wrote G. K. Chesterton in the 1920s, "the tourist sees what he has come to see.

so that your travels are not an escape from your real life but a discovery of your real life.

We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abysses belong to us; are dangers at hand, we must try to love them….How should we be able to forget those ancient myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. —RAINER MARIA RILKE, LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET

Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly," wrote Henry Miller. "Everything…we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is golden for him who has the vision to realize it as such." Once

They are spending plenty of time and money on the road, but they never spent enough of themselves to begin with. Thus, their experience of travel has a diminished sense of value.

a petition campaign called Work to Live. The goal of this movement was to pass a law that would increase American vacation time to three weeks after one year on the job, and to four weeks after three years.

paradise" is defined in contrast to the stresses of home. Take away those stresses for a couple of months, and it's hard to wring much passion or esteem from hanging out on a beach and not doing much.