Adapted from the book Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel.
Now available on audiobook:
http://www.audible.com/pd/Travel-Adventure/Vagabonding-Audiobook/B00GCHWZHG/
1. VA G A B O N D I N G
Rolf
Potts â
31
Favorite Travel Quotes
2. 1
Wanting to travel
reflects a positive attitude.
You want to see, to grow in experience,
and presumably to become more
whole as a human being.
â Ed Buryn, Vagabonding in Europe and North Africa
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3. 2
A good
traveler has
no fixed plan,
and is not intent
on arriving.
â Lao Tzu, The Way of Life
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4. 3
For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, BUT TO GO.
I travel for travelâs sake.
The great affair is to MOVE; to FEEL THE NEEDS
and hitches of our life more nearly; to come down off
this feather-bed of civilization, and FIND the
globe granite underfoot and strewn with cutting flints.
â Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels With a Donkey
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5. 4
It is fatal to know
too much at the outset:
boredom comes as quickly to the
traveler who knows his route as to the
novelist who is overcertain of his plot.
â Paul Theroux, To the Ends of the Earth
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6. 5
A lot of us first aspired to far-ranging travel and
exotic adventure early in our teens; these ambitions are,
in fact, adolescent in nature, which I find an inspiring idea.
âŠThus, when we allow ourselves to imagine as we
once did, we know, with a sudden jarring clarity,
that if we don't go right now, we're never
going to do it. And we'll be haunted by our unrealized
dreams and know that we have sinned against
ourselves gravely.
â Tim Cahill, Lifeâs a Wild Trip
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7. 6
That is the charm of a map. It represents
the other side of the horizon where
everything is possible.
â Rosita Forbes, From Red Sea to Blue Nile
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8. 7
When you travel you experience, in a
very practical way, the act of rebirth.
You confront completely new situations, the day
passes more slowly, and on most journeys you don't
even understand the language the people speakâŠ
You begin to be more accessible to others,
because they may be able to help you in
difficult situations. â Paulo Coelho, The Pilgrimage
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9. 8
What I find is that you can
do almost anything or go
almost anywhere,
if you're not in a hurry.
â Paul Theroux, quoting Tony the beachcomber,
in The Happy Isles of Oceania
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10. 9
Travel can be a kind of monasticism on the move:
On the road, we often live more simple,
with no more possessions than we can carry,
and surrendering ourselves to chance.
This is what Camus meant when he said that âwhat
gives value to travel is fearâ â disruption, in other words,
(or emancipation) from circumstance, and all
the habits behind which we hide.
â Pico Iyer, Why We Travel
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11. 10
Before the development of
tourism, travel was conceived
to be like study, and its fruits
were considered to be the adornment
of the mind and the formation of the
judgement. The traveler was a student
of what he sought...
â Paul Fussell, Abroad
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12. Reading old travel books or
novels set in faraway places,
spinning globes, unfolding maps,
playing world music, eating in ethnic restaurants,
meeting friends in cafes...all these things are part
of never-ending travel practice, not unlike doing
scales on a piano, shooting free-throws, or meditating.
â Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage
11
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13. Traveling hopefully
into the unknown with a little
information: dead reckoning is
the way most people live their lives,
and the phrase itself seems to sum up
human existence.
12
â Paul Theroux,
Fresh Air Fiend
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14. The practice of soulful travel is to discover
the overlapping point between history
and everyday life;
the way to find the essence of every place,
every day: in the markets, small chapels,
out-of-the-way parks, craft shops.
Curiosity about the extraordinary in the
ordinary moves the heart of the traveler
intent on seeing behind the veil of tourism.
13
â Phil Cousineau,
The Art of Pilgrimage
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15. Traveler, there is no path
â paths are made by
walking
â Antonio Machado,
Cantores
14
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16. Those who visit foreign nations,
but associate only with their own countrymen,
change their climate, but not their customs.
They see new meridians, but the same men;
and with heads as empty as their pockets,
return home with traveled bodies,
but untraveled minds.
15
â Charles Caleb Colton,
Lacon
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17. But the traveler's world is
not the ordinary one, for
travel itself, even the
most commonplace,
is an implicit quest
for anomaly.
16
â Paul Fussell, Abroad
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18. We do not need to understand other people
and their customs fully to interact
with them and learn in the process;
it is making the effort
to interact without knowing all the
rules, improvising certain situations,
that allows us to grow.
17
â Mary Catherine Bateson,
Peripheral Visions
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19. The art of learning
fundamental common values is
perhaps the greatest gain of
travel to those who wish to live
at ease among their fellows.
â Freya Starke,
Perseus in the Wind
18
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20. LEAVING HOME is a kind of
forgiveness, and when you get
among strangers, you're amazed at
how decent they seem. Nobody smirks
at you or gossips about you, nobody
resents your successes or relishes
your defeats. You get to start
over, a sort of redemption.
19
â Garrison Keillor,
Leaving Home
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21. EXPLORATION IS
not so much a covering of surface
distance as A STUDY IN DEPTH:
a fleeting episode, a fragment
of landscape or a remark overheard
that may provide the only means of
understanding and interpreting areas
which would otherwise remain barren of meaning.
20
â Claude Levi-Strauss,
Tristes Tropiques
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22. Rise free from care
before the dawn, and
21
seek adventures.
Let the moon find thee by other lakes,
and the night overtake thee everywhere
at home.
There are no larger fields
than these, no worthier games
than may here be played.
â Henry David Thoreau, Walden
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23. 22
What charm can anyone find in an excursion
when he is always sure of reaching his destination,
of having horses ready waiting for him, a soft bed,
an excellent supper, and all the eases and comfort
he can enjoy in his own home!
One of the great misfortunes of
modern life is the want of any sudden surprise,
and the absence of all adventures.
EVERYTHING IS SO WELL ARRANGED.
â Theophile Gautier
Wanderings in Spain
The pleasure in traveling
consists of the obstacles, the fatigue,
and even the danger.
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24. THE USE
23
OF TRAVELING IS TO
REGULATE IMAGINATION
BY REALITY,
AND INSTEAD OF
THINKING HOW THINGS
MAY BE, TO SEE THEM
AS THEY REALLY ARE
â Samuel Johnson
from Anecdotes of Samuel Johnson
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25. Often I feel I go to some distant region of the
world to be reminded of who I really amâŠ
24
Stripped of your ordinary surroundings,
your friends, your daily routines,
your refrigerator full of your food,
your closet full of your clothes,
you are forced into direct experience.
Such direct experience inevitably
makes you aware of who it is that is having
the experience. That's not always comfortable,
but it is always invigorating.
â Michael Crichton, Travels
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26. Travel is a CREATIVE act â
NOT SIMPLY LOAFING AND INVITING YOUR SOUL,
25
but feeding on the imagination, accounting
for each fresh wonder, memorizing, and moving on
...AND THE BEST LANDSCAPES, APPARENTLY
DENSE OR FEATURELESS, HOLD SURPRISES
if they are studied patiently,
in the kind of discomfort one
can savor afterward.
â Paul Theroux,
To the Ends of the Earth
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27. Powerful men do not
necessarily make the most
eminent travelers;
26
it is rather those who take
the most interest in their work
that succeed the best;
as a huntsman says, âit is the nose
that gives speed to the houndâ.
â Francis Galton, The Art of Travel
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28. LISTEN: we are
here on earth to
fart around.
27
DON'T LET
ANYBODY TELL YOU
ANY DIFFERENT!
â Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake
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29. WE
TRAVEL
...
initially, to lose ourselves; and
we travel, next, to find ourselves.
28
to open our hearts and eyes and
learn more about the world than
our newspapers will accommodate.
to bring what little we can, in our ignorance
and knowledge, to those parts of the globe
whose riches are differently dispersed.
in essence, to become young fools again
â to slow time down and get taken in,
and fall in love once more.
â Pico Iyer, Why We Travel
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30. If you really want
to learn about
a country,
29
WORK THERE.
â Charles Kuralt, A Life on the Road
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31. People say that what
we are all seeking is
a meaning for life.
30
I don't think this is what we're really seeking.
I think what we're seeking
is an experience of
BEING ALIVE.
â Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth
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32. Round the world!
There is much in
that sound to inspire
proud feelings; but
whereto does all that
circumnavigation
conduct?
31
Only through numberless
perils to the very point
whence we started,
where those that we left
behind secure were all
the time before us.
â Herman Melville, Moby Dick
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