Quotes About Exploration

I heard the Denver and Rio Grande locomotives howling off in to the mountains. I wanted to pursue my star further.

Sometimes, driving past restaurants that had once been other restaurants, big box stores that had once been wood lots and houses, I imagined that if I could just make the right set of turns, the city would unlock for me, and my car would carry me into the roads of fifteen years ago.

Every time [some software engineer] says, "Nobody will go to the trouble of doing that," there's some kid in Finland who will go to the trouble. — Alex Mayfield

For a man burning to venture into the unknown, this spell of enforced idleness was torment.

The Atlantic voyage of Mayflower was not the first British trip to the new world. Henry VII had financed two expeditions in 1497 and 1498, which grabbed Chesapeake Bay and Newfoundland for His Majesty. But it was not until the last quarter of the sixteenth century, under Elizabeth, that England set about a more systematic and determined settlement of the new world. It was Elizabeth's personal astrologer and court magus, Dr John Dee, who coined the term 'British Empire'.

You've always been a tourist here. You just didn't know it.

there is a field.

You? You've always been a tourist here, you just didn't know it.

You've always been a tourist here, you just didn't know it.

La sola fuga possibile era allentare le redini della fantasia.

Imagine a sentence as a hall with a series of doors. Each door is a possible way to use what you've already written to generate new material.

She saw herself moving through another life, an exotic, difficult, satisfying life.

Rows and rows of books lined the shelves...full of ideas and images, worlds imagined, worlds perceived; full of fingerprints and sudden laughter and the sighs of readers...

Distance in a straight line has no mystery. The mystery is in the sphere.   —Thomas Mann, Joseph and His Brothers

Nothing is so hard that it can't be found by searching.

Brooke, I'm already gone. The only reason I tried to get away from you boneheads earlier was because I wanted a couple of hours to see the sights before I headed home. Crooked Street maybe. Or Treasure Island. That sweet little bridge you're all so fond of. I can't say I like the Alcatraz tour, though. It's a little too realistic.

The zeal of the stupid in her, Chris began turning pages as if it were the winter solstice gift catalog, earmarking pages and cooing in delight at the new possibilities.

Nil tam difficile est quin quaerendo investigari possit.

Nothing is so hard that it can't be found by searching.

a few false turns, we found ourselves looking

Wilderness areas are places to explore deeply yet lightly; to exercise freedom but also restraint, to manage but also leave alone, to bring us face-to-face with a dilemma in our democracy. How do we convince people to save something they may never see, touch, or hear? A starving man can't eat his illusions, let alone his principles.

Long ago travel was full of risk and hard work. The English noun "travel" was born from the word travail, which came (by way of France) from the Latin tripalium, meaning a three-staked instrument of torture. To travel was to struggle against steep odds and have no guarantees of success. It required a lot of planning and expense, and great physical endurance.

Travel this country and you move through more than geography; you move through time.

So, you know, Fermi's paradox has its answer, which is this: by the time life gets smart enough to leave its planet, it's too smart to want to go. Because it knows it won't work. So it stays home. It enjoys its home. As why wouldn't you? It doesn't even bother to try to contact anyone else. Why would you? You'll never hear back. So that's my answer to the paradox. You can call it Euan's Answer.