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I must admit that while growing up I was quite the bookworm and nerd. I was the kid that sat perched in my front yard writing in my journals or who spent a summer attending Shakespeare camp to remember his sonnets by heart (true story) or who toted around a book of proverbs to live by. When I was a little girl I used to carry a book of quotes I had found hidden in my family’s library one day. The book was a collection of proverbs and sayings-organized by category of life, love, humor and more-and I always found solace in these words.
Wherever that book is now (having been lost to time as I moved from Chicago to college, college to France and France to New York) I know that the pages are still bent out of shape and marked up with years of reading and writing. I always joke that I have a quote for everything and am usually adopting a new mantra every month. I adore quotes as they hold so much inspiration and weight in so few words-often giving people pause and a much needed push to rethink their lives.
During some of the darker moments of my life, quotes have acted like a port in the storm offering up a sort of safe haven to garner confidence from. When in love, quotes seem to resonate with every emotion from falling head over heels to standing the test of time; and in traveling my favorite sayings push me outside my comfort zone and inspire me to see the world. Rather than carry around a book of proverbs, today I simply have an ongoing note in my smartphone where I jot down quotes that catch my eye. Here are a few of my favorites.
“To move, to breathe, to fly, to float, to gain all while you give. To roam the roads of lands remote, to travel is to live.”-Hans Christian Andersen
“I always wonder why birds stay in the same place when they can fly anywhere on earth. Then I ask myself the same question.” -H. Yahya
“From this vantage point Manhattan was simply so improbable, so wonderful, so obviously full of promise that you wanted to approach it for the rest of your life without ever quite arriving.”-Amor Towles, Rules of Civility: A Novel
“You’ll never cross the ocean if you don’t have the courage to lose sight of the shore.”-Christopher Columbus
“If your nerve deny you-go above your nerve.”-Emily Dickinson
“There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars.”-Jack Kerouac, On the Road
“Never did the world make a queen of a girl who hides in houses and dreams without traveling.”-Roman Payne, The Wanderess
”Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain
“Because in the end you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn-climb that goddamn mountain.”-Jack Kerouac
“No man should go through life without once experiencing healthy, even bored solitude in the wilderness, finding himself depending solely on himself and thereby learning his true and hidden strength.”-Jack Kerouac, Lonesome Traveler
“A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not why ships are built”-William G.T. Shedd
“For mine is a generation that circles the globe and searches for something we haven’t tried before. So never refuse an invitation, never resist the unfamiliar, never fail to be polite and never outstay the welcome. Just keep your mind open and suck in the experience. And if it hurts, you know what? It’s probably worth it.” - Alex Garland, The Beach
“A man of ordinary talent will always be ordinary, whether he travels or not; but a man of superior talent will go to pieces if he remains forever in the same place.”-Mozart
