Pilgrim, pass by that which you cannot love.

Travel Quotes

"A traveler. I love his title. A traveler is to be reverenced as such. His profession is the best symbol of our life. Going from--towards; it is the history of every one of us."
------------------Henry David Thoreau

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness."
------------------Mark Twain

"A great traveler...is a kind of introspective; as she covers the ground outwardly, so she advances fresh interpretations of herself inwardly.
------------------Lawrence Durrell

Thus the paradox: The easier it becomes to travel widely, on the wings of supersonic jets and via the Internet, the harder it becomes to travel wisely. We are left with plenty of frequent-flier miles and passport stamps, but the gnawing suspicion grows that our travel lacks something vital. T.S. Eliot was driven to ask of the modern age
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

Taken from THE ART OF PILGRIMAGE by Phil Cousineau

Pilgrams are poets who create by taking journeys.
------------------Richard R. Niebuhr

We thirst at first.
------------------Emily Dickinson*

We live but a fraction of our lives.
------------------Phil Cousineau

We are impoverished in our longing and devoid of imagination when it comes to our reaching out to others....We need to be introduced to our longings, because they guard our mystery."
------------------Alan Jones, dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco

"Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Every day, I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts."
------------------Soren Kierkegaard

"Never trust a thought that didn't come by walking."
------------------Friedrich Nietzsche

Long ago in Cracow, there was pious but very poor rabbi named Eisik, son of Jekel. While just living his days, Eisik one night had a dream that told him to go to Prague, which was a long way away from Cracow, many days' journey. Eisik was shown a bridge that lead to the royal castle, and under that bridge was a chest full of gold. Eisik woke the next morning, and disregarded the dream. "Who can believe dreams, anyway."

The next night, he had the same dream, underneath the bridge in Prague was a hidden treasure. Eisik woke again, laughing at himself. "I should just be happy with what I have. What is the use of all this dreaming."

On the third night, he was given the same dream a third time. This he awoke, kissed his wife on the cheek, and went to Prague. He had many adventures on his way, but finally, he arrived in the grand city and found the bridge. Much to his sadness, Eisik saw that the bridge was guarded by soldiers. They would see him digging and then they would take the treasure. "It's probably not there anyway," Eisik said to himself. The captain of the soldiers saw the poor rabbi standing around, and he went up to Eisik. "Do you have any business here, Rabbi?" the captain asked him. Eisik sighed, "You will never believe this. I had a dream, three nights in a row, that told me there was gold underneath that bridge there. I came all the way from Cracow just because of that dream."

The captain shook his head at the Rabbi. "Dreams, who can believe them? Here I am, the father of a sick boy, who has no medicine for him to get well. And I have dreams of gold all the time. Why, just last night I dreamed about some joker named Eisik, son of Jekel. This Eisik had a chest of gold buried in the ground outside of his house, behind his stove, and he didn't even know about it."

"I am Eisik, son of Jekel," the Rabbi said, astonished. "I will go back to my home and look in the ground there. You look under the bridge, and then we can share whatever we find!"

The captain agreed, and Eisik went home and sure enough he found a chest full of gold, right outside his house, behind his stove. His life of poverty was over, his life had indeed changed. Not forgetting about the captain, he went back to Prague, this time in a fine coach pulled by six white horses. The captain saw the rabbi come, and he wept when he saw the gold. "Now," the rabbi said, his own eyes full of tears, "you can buy medicine for your son."

(Taken and modified from THE ART OF PILGRIMAGE by Phil Cousineau, and he got it from Martin Buber's TALES OF THE HASIDIM.)

"I have lived on the lip of insanity, wanting to know reasons, knocking on a door. It opens. I've been knocking from the inside."
------------------Mevlana Rumi, 12th century Islamic mystic

"The world is a traveler's inn."
------------------Afghan Folk Saying

"Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it."
------------------Goethe

"The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."
------------------Lao Tzu

"You cannot travel the path until you have become the path."
------------------Gautama Buddha

"The Wayless Way," said Meister Echhart, "where the Sons of God lose themselves and, at the same time, find themselves."

When a monk asked, "What is the Tao?" Master Ummon replied, "Walk on."

"One comes in order to return, not in order to stay; one fills oneself with the sacredness transpiring from the relics and one departs home."
------------------William Melczer's view of pilgrimage

"Carefully observe the way your heart draws you and then choose that way with all your strength."
------------------Old Hasidic saying

"We are all pilgrims on our own quests, like it or not, deny it or not. The structure of life is so."
------------------Robert Stone

"Welcome, Oh life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race."
------------------James Joyce

"There came a day when the clouds drifting along with the wind aroused a wanderlust in me, and I set off on a journey to roam along the seashores…"
------------------Basho

"It's not so much what you do, it's how you do it."
------------------Epictetus

"Renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and forever again."
Thoreau, reflecting on the characters inscribed on King Tching-thang's bathtub

"I enter the temple, seek the dream world of
the monks, thumb through the sutras,
feel the dustiness of this traveler's life."
------------------Yuan Hung-tao on his pilgrimage to Mount She

"The word sacred comes from sacrifice, to cut up. That means that in order to have a sacred journey, you have to give up something, sacrifice; but few people today in the West want to hear about that. Americans want the boon without the labyrinth….Pilgrimage starts the wheel, it turns the wheel of samsara, the wheel of life, and we have to live with the consequences."
------------------Anthony Lawlor

"Furthermore, we have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heories 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. And where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves. Where we had thought to travel outward, we will come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we will be with all the world."
------------------Joseph Campbell

"Experience is not what happens to you, it is what you do with what happens to you."
------------------Aldous Huxley

"If fate throws a knife at you, you can catch it either by the blade or the handle."
------------------Ancient Persian proverb

Imagine the surprise of frontiersman Daneil Boone when he was asked if he had ever been lost. "No," he replied shyly, "But I was bewildered once for three days."
------------------Phil Cousineau's ART OF PILGRIMAGE

"It's not the road ahead that wears you out-it's the grain of sand in your shoe."
------------------Old Arabian proverb

Eternal God, You are our shield,
The dagger, knife and sword we wield.
------------------Gobind Singh, the last Sikh Guru