Quotes About Journey

Patrick O'Brian

On and on she sailed, in warmer seas but void, as though they alone had survived Deucalion's flood; as though all land had vanished from the earth; and once again the ship's routine dislocated time and temporal reality so that this progress was an endless dream, even a circular dream, contained within an unbroken horizon and punctuated only by the sound of guns thundering daily in preparation for an enemy whose real existence it was impossible to conceive.

Now, Polychrests,' he said, 'now we are going to crack on until she groans again. Stuns'ls aloft and alow, royals, and, damn me, royal stuns'ls and skys'ls if she'll bear 'em. The sooner we're there, the sooner we're home. Topmen, upperyardmen, are you ready?' 'Ready, aye ready, sir.' A comfortable, good body of sound – relief, thankfulness? 'Then at the word, up you go. Lay aloft!

aboard ship, and then hard tack, salt-horse

The map? I will first make it.

The mystery of life is not salved by success, which is an end in itself, but in failure, in perpetual struggle, in becoming.

He did not think of himself as a tourist; he was a traveler. The difference is partly one of time, he would explain. Whereas the tourist generally hurries back home at the end of a few weeks or months, the traveler, belonging no more to one place than to the next, moves slowly, over periods of years, from one part of the earth to another.

Many days later another caravan was passing and a man saw something on top of the highest dune there. And when they went up to see, they found Outka, Mimouna and Aicha; they were still there, lying the same way as when they had gone to sleep. And all three of the glasses,' he held up his own little tea glass, 'were full of sand. That was how they had their tea in the Sahara.

Whereas the tourist generally hurries back home at the end of a few weeks or months, the traveler, belonging no more to one place than to the next, moves slowly, over periods of years, from one part of the earth to another.

And it occurred to him that a walk through the countryside was a sort of epitome of the passage through life itself. One never took the time to savor the details; one said: another day, but always with the hidden knowledge that each day was unique and final, that there never would be a return, another time.

The idea that at each successive moment he was deeper into the Sahara than he had been the moment before, that he was leaving behind all familiar things, this constant consideration kept him in a state of pleasurable agitation.

Here we say that life is a cliff, and you must never turn around and look back when you're climbing.

Ogniqualvolta si trovava in viaggio da un luogo all'altro, era in grado di valutare la propria vita con un po' più di obiettività del solito. Spesso, proprio durante un viaggio i suoi pensieri divenivano particolarmente lucidi, e prendeva decisioni cui non poteva arrivare quand'era fermo in un luogo.

If a traveller does not meet with one who is his better, or his equal, let him firmly keep to his solitary journey; there is no companionship with fools. 43

Reality is not simply there, it does not simply exist: it must be sought out and won.

you're rowing by wordlight

Maybe the journey isn't so much about becoming anything. Maybe it's about un-becoming everything that isn't really you, so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place.

We come to life in the middle of stories that are not ours.

life lived in search of God is real life, the only life worth living.

A pilgrimage is a journey undertaken in the light of a story. A great event has happened; the pilgrim hears the reports and goes in search of the evidence, aspiring to be an eyewitness. The pilgrim seeks not only to confirm the experience of others firsthand but to be changed by the experience.

Hers was the bliss of one who knew that at last she was off upon the adventure at the end of which lay her heart's desire'.

Our life's dance is not painted for us in footsteps on the floor. It's not laid out so we know where to place our next step. We simply had to judge which steps best fit the rhythms that we hear.

The tug of the lodestar slowly grew stronger until, with an abrupt quantum jump, it was a physical force prying at her mind. She felt everything else fall away, felt the same out-of-body swoon she'd experienced on First Foot when she'd stared too long at the star at the edge of the Badlands. Felt as if she was expanding beyond her body the room the ship into everywhere …

There are seven levels!