Quotes About Exploration

At a desk, in front of a computer, my mind goes blank, but as soon as I take off (to the supermarket, to Australia), inspiration strikes. Journeys are the midwives of books. — ALAIN DE BOTTON

The real problem has far less to do with what is really out there than it does with our resistance to finding out what is really out there.

Maybe that is the difference between pastoral counselors and spiritual directors. We go to counselors when we want help getting out of caves. We go to directors when we are ready to be led farther in. I

I read science for the same reason I read theology: because I am a seeker after truth.

Seek not to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; rather, seek what they sought.1 —Gautama Buddha

how do we develop the courage to walk in the dark if we are never asked to practice?

An unguarded face is a deep well; you don't go there casually, without ropes or lamps.

I have found things while I was lost that I might never have discovered if I had stayed on the path. I have decided to stop fighting the prospect of getting lost and engage it as a spiritual practice instead.

Reverence requires a certain pace. It requires a willingness to take detours, even side trips, which are not part of the original plan.

It is a great thing to see something familiar from an unfamiliar angle for the first time, even if it is because you have been worried and lost for longer than you would have liked.

if you always do what you have always done, then you will always get what you have always got. Extreme measures are sometimes called for, and these measures sometimes even produce results.

Most of us prefer to remain on our cow paths, where we know the language and we do not need maps because we know the way by heart. Some of us even stay behind our own fences because we do not want to be mistaken for interlopers in other people's pastures

When students first encounter the reality of multiple religious worldviews, they often race to the lowest common denominator: your truth is true for you and mine is true for me. This is their peace offering, their way of living with religious difference without fighting, but it also prevents them from exploring the differences in any meaningful way. Holy envy gives those students another way forward, especially those who are inclined toward religious absolutes.

Bay of Biscay and so down the English Channel

I believe that children in this country need a more robust literary diet than they are getting. …It does not hurt them to read about good and evil, love and hate, life and death. Nor do I think they should read only about things that they understand. '…a man's reach should exceed his grasp.' So should a child's. For myself, I will never talk down to, or draw down to, children. (from the author's acceptance speech for the Caldecott award)

My greatest strength as a child, I realize now, was my imagination. While every other kid was reading and writing, I had seven whole hours a day to practice my imagination. When do you get that space in your life, ever?

It is not the easy or convenient life for which I search, but life lived to the edge of all that I may be." — Mary Anne Radmacher

TODAY I AM GOING TO SEE WHAT THERE IS TO SEE, TO FEEL WHAT THERE IS TO FEEL, AND TO KNOW WHAT THERE IS TO KNOW.

Charlotte Evans was used to feeling grungy. As a freelancer, she traveled on a shoestring, getting stories other writers did not, precisely because she wasn't fussy about how she lived. In the last twelve months, she had survived dust while writing about elephant keepers in Kenya, ice while writing about the spirit bear of British Columbia, and flies while writing about a family of nomads in India.

At last they reached Wild River. "This is it?" Bill gawked in dismay. Jordanna joined the men to stare at the dark bed of mossy rocks. "It is wild, isn't it?" she quipped, surprising herself with her own good humor when her shoulders, her back, her legs ached.

Experimental science is fascinating, but I don't want to do it. I want other people to do it, and I'll read about it.

The question is why one should be so inwardly preoccupied at all. Why not reach out to others in love and solidarity or peer into the natural world for some glimmer of understanding? Why retreat into anxious introspection when, as Emerson might have said, there is a vast world outside to explore? Why spend so much time working on oneself when there is so much real work to be done?

when something new sparks our interest an aperture forms in some outpost of the brain, gulps down an enzyme and sprouts a branch that can actually be measured. Imagine the orchards that are cultivated in our brains as we embrace new experiences and pursue with passion those interests that once attracted us but have been sadly mislaid along the way.

Don't be satisfied with the surface. Dig deeper; that's where the magic lies.