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Life is a journey, not a destination - we determine our destiny by the direction we take.
-Anon.
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The richness of the human journey is here. Listen. Pass it on. So that there will not pass from our future the enchantment that begins with the honored words, Once upon a time, long ago and far away, in a deep forest, there lived a child - much like you.
-Anon.
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"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be."
-Douglas Adams
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In the middle of the journey of our life
I found myself astray in a dark wood
where the straight road had been lost sight of.
-Dante Alighieri, La Commedia Divina (Seamus Heaney trans.)
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But one of the things that has to be faced is…to find out who we are, where we have come from and where we are going…I am saying as you must say, too, that in order to see where we are going, we not only must remember where we have been, but we must understand where we have been.
-Ella Baker
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Furthermore, we have not even to risk the journey alone; for the heroes of all time have gone before us; the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero-path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.
-Joseph Campbell, The Hero With A Thousand Faces
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"An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered."
-G. K. Chesterton
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"Following the light of the sun, we left the Old World."
-Christopher Columbus
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The journey between what you once were and who you are now becoming is where the dance of life really takes place.
-Barbara De Angelis
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Our life is like a land journey: too even and easy and dull over long distances across the plains, too hard and painful up the steep grades; but on the summits of the mountain, you have a magnificent view - and feel exalted - and your eyes are full of happy tears - and you want to sing - and you wish you had wings! And then - you can't stay there, but you must continue your journey - you begin climbing down the other side, so busy with your footholds that your summit experience is forgotten.
-Lloyd Douglas
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"Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go."
-TS (Thomas Stearns) Eliot, (widely attributed to Emerson, possibly 'anonymous')
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We are like a ship fastened to the shore. It floats on the water of the sea, but it does not leave its moorings; it merely bobs up and down. We are like a swimmer who prefers to walk rather than take to the water. O my God, sever these moorings, loosen the thread from the wings of my soul, plunge me into the sea.
-Peter Julian Eymard, March 14, 1865
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Never measure the height of a mountain until you have reached the top. Then you will see how low it was.
-Dag Hammarskjold
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The readiness to initiate the journey cannot be forced nor can people be faulted if it has not occurred in them as yet. The level of consciousness has to have advanced to the stage where such an intention would be meaningful and attractive.
-David R. Hawkins
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The spiritual journey does not consist of arriving at a new destination where a person gains what he did not have, or becomes what he is not. It consists in the dissipation of one’s own ignorance concerning oneself and life, and the gradual growth of that understanding which begins the spiritual awakening. The finding of God is a coming to one’s self.
-Aldous Huxley, [found attributed]
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A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.
-Lao-Tzu
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"It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end."
-Ursula K. LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness, 1969
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So you set out to travel to Rome... and end up in Istanbul. You set off for Japan... and you end up on a train across Siberia. The journey, not the destination, becomes a source of wonder.
-Loreena McKennitt
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"There are many paths to the top of the mountain, but only one view."
-Harry Millner
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Where the voice of the wind calls our wandering feet,
Through echoing forest and echoing street,
With lutes in our hands ever-singing we roam,
All men are our kindred, the world is our home.
Our lays are of cities whose lustre is shed,
The laughter and beauty of women long dead;
The sword of old battles, the crown of old kings,
And happy and simple and sorrowful things.
What hope shall we gather, what dreams shall we sow?
Where the wind calls our wandering footsteps we go.
No love bids us tarry, no joy bids us wait:
The voice of the wind is the voice of our fate.
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext96/gldth10.txt
-Sarojini Naidu, Wandering Singers
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One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.
(copyrighted material)
-Mary Oliver, The Journey
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The real thing is not the goal, the real thing is the beauty of the movement. The real thing is not reaching, the real thing is the journey. Remember, the real thing is the journey, the very traveling. It is so beautiful, why bother about the goal? And if you are too bothered about the goal, you will miss the journey, and the journey is life - the goal can only be death.
-Osho [Chandra Mohan Jain]
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The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.
-M Scott Peck
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"The hardest thing in life is to know which bridge to cross and which to burn."
-David Russell
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We never with our eyes saw our own soul; yet we have a soul. We see many rivers, but we know not their first spring and original fountain; yet they have a beginning. ...[W]hen ye are come to the other side...set down your foot on the shore of glorious eternity, and look back again to the waters and to your wearisome journey, and shall see, in that clear glass of endless glory, nearer to the bottom of God's wisdom, ye shall then be forced to say, 'If God had done otherwise with me than He hath done, I had never come to the enjoying of this crown of glory.' It is your part now to believe, and suffer, and hope, and wait on...
-Samuel Rutherford, Letters , V. To LADY KENMURE ANWOTH, June 26, 1630
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Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering.
-Saint Augustine of Hippo
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"Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So... get on your way."
-Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel)
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Every step in the dark turns out in the end to have been on course after all.
-John Tarrant, Bring Me The Rhinoceros: and Other Koans to Bring You Joy (p 79)
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The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.
-J. R. R. Tolkien
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Remember what Bilbo used to say: It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.
-J. R. R. Tolkien
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Life is a journey up a spiral staircase; as we grow older we cover the ground covered we have covered before, only higher up; as we look down the winding stair below us we measure our progress by the number of places where we were but no longer are. The journey is both repetitious and progressive; we go both round and upward.
-William Butler Yeats, The Winding Stair, 1933
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Books about Journeys
