Quotes from Phil Cousineau

Voltaire playfully wrote, "Ice-cream is exquisite—what a pity it isn't illegal.

Raymond Carver read his poem "Late Fragment": "And did you get what / you wanted from this life even so? / I did. / And what did you want? / To call myself beloved, to feel myself / beloved on this earth." Mother Theresa concluded, near the end of her days, "I have come to realize more and more that the greatest disease and the greatest suffering is to be unwanted, unloved, uncared for, to be shunned by everybody, to be just nobody [to no one].

On the flip side is Woody Allen's nebbish observation: "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying." Companion words include mischief and bonchief, a bad result and a good result, respectively

derives from the 14th-century word Old French aleurer, to attract, captivate, and more exotically, to train a falcon to hunt. The roots are à, to, and loirre, falconer's lure.

Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson, "Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest

Recall the words of Alan Jones, dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, who writes, "We are impoverished in our longing and devoid of imagination when it comes to our reaching out to others.…We need to be introduced to our longings, because they guard our mystery." Ask yourself what mystery is being guarded by your longing. Are you taking the time to find out? The time for this never appears; it is discovered.

In other words, if the journey you have chosen is indeed a pilgrimage, a soulful journey, it will be rigorous. Ancient wisdom suggests if you aren't trembling as you approach the sacred, it isn't the real thing. The sacred, in its various guises as holy ground, art, or knowledge, evokes emotion and commotion.

Inspiration comes and goes, creativity is the result of practice.

Myths are experienced in ordinary life, as everyday epiphanies.

Now is the time to lead your ideal life.

True myths, ancient and modern, stop time because they emerge from somewhere beyond time.

We travel as seekers after answers we cannot find at home, and soon find that a change of climate is easier than a change of heart.

What every traveler confronts sooner or later is that the way we spend each day of our travel...is the way we spend our lives.

Our task in life is to find our deep soul work and throw ourselves headlong into it.

Inspiration comes and goes, creativity is the result of practice.

Centuries of travel yore suggest that when we no longer know where to turn, our real journey has just begun.

Uncover what you long for and you will discover who you are.

On an ordinary journey, one designed for sheer entertainment, diversion, or self-reward for a year of hard work, there would be no obvious need to go out of your way to strike up a conversation with a perfect stranger. But a pilgrimage asks us to do exactly that. The path needs more light. To shine the light of your own natural curiosity into the world of another traveler can reveal wonders. To remember the mysteries you forgot at home.

What matters most on your journey is how deeply you see, how attentively you hear, how richly the encounters are felt in your heart and soul.

Groucho Marx said, "I find television very educational. Every time someone turns on a set I go into the other room and read a book.

For a journey without challenge, has no meaning; one without purpose, has no soul.

ABSQUATULATE To flee, abscond, or boogie. This facetious frontier slang combines the notion of speculating with squatting or camping. An example of America's "barbaric brilliancy

THE FIVE EXCELLENT PRACTICES OF PILGRIMAGES Inspired by a fifth-century conversation between Zi Zhang and Confucius about the practices of wise rulers in The Analects, here are five excellent practices for travelers on sacred journeys: Practice the arts of attention and listening. Practice renewing yourself every day. Practice meandering toward the center of every place. Practice the ritual of reading sacred texts. Practice gratitude and praise-singing.

What legendary travelers have taught us since Pausanius and Marco Polo is that the art of travel is the art of seeing what is sacred.