Quotes About Exploration

4] and if we wish only to take the surface of space, [5] we need to go seeking a finite position [4] in the infinite.

You must read, you must persevere, you must sit up nights, you must inquire, and exert the utmost power of your mind. If one way does not lead to the desired meaning, take another; if obstacles arise, then still another; until, if your strength holds out, you will find that clear which at first looked dark.

Qué era lo que yo quería aprender? ¿Qué quería hacer? No lo sabía. Ni programas ni guías: ninguna idea concreta. De acá o de allá, este u oeste, en profundidad o en altura. Solamente saber, saber todo. —He aquí la palabra de mi desastre: ¡todo!

To have no particular aim was to open grand possibilities...

Poi gli parve finalmente di essere giunto a una possibile meta: dietro l'ennesimo gomito di un vicolo era apparsa una casa bassa e lunga, percorsa su tutta la parete che dava sulla strada da un portico su cui campeggiava un'insegna dipinta a lettere scarlatte che volevano rozzamente imitare tante lingue di fiamma: LA MALA BOLGIA.

Everyone wants a long journey, kid. That's all. Next!

The flesh had infinity in it. I must know every inch by touch yet every inch renewed its mystery the instant my hand moved on. Delightful endless futility.

He was always teasing me about not reading books, but one day he said: Reading a book is a dangerous thing, Justine. A book can make you find room in yourself for something you never thought you'd understand. Or worse, something you never wanted to understand.

I wish you had fucked her. Then you'd know. Then you'd know the sublime … Her asshole, for example. It's like a stern coquettish spoiled secretary working for Himmler—

So much of reading and writing to me is about being elsewhere, no matter how much I love where I am.

So we went on what we now call "The Beck Family Church Tour" and man did we see some churches.

What made the Internet so appealing was precisely that it afforded the ability to speak and act anonymously, which is so vital to individual exploration.

For many kids, the Internet is a means of self-actualization. It allows them to explore who they are and who they want to be, but that works only if we're able to be private and anonymous, to make mistakes without them following us.

God may be in the details, but the goddess is in the questions. Once we begin to ask them, there's no turning back.

Her searches after knowledge were arbitrary and without context. It was as if she were shining a small flashlight of curiosity into the dark room of the world.

We learn most where we know the least.

Because adventure starts the moment I leave my door.

Altogether, if I had to pick one place to hang out anywhere, from New York to Cape Town and Australia to Hong Kong, a bookstore would be it.

When people ask me why I still have hope and energy after all these years, I always say: Because I travel.

More reliably than anything else on earth, the road will force you to live in the present.

You can travel without traveling, and you can not travel -- yet travel. Being on the road is a state of mind.

but I grew to love these spontaneous gatherings in shopping malls, university bookstores, and specialty bookshops that couldn't be replaced by the big chains, all the spaces with coffee, comfortable chairs, and the presence of books that allow people to browse and discover interests they didn't know they had.

It's time to leave. There is so much out there to do and say and listen to. I can go on the road, because I can come home. I come home, because I am free to leave.

Taking to the road—by which I mean letting the road take you—changed who I thought I was. The road is messy in the way that real life is messy. It leads us out of denial and into reality, out of theory and into practice, out of caution and into action, out of statistics and into stories—in short, out of our heads and into our hearts.