The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
—Oscar Wilde, 1891
Archive
Quotes
There’s plenty of fire in the coldest flint!
—Rachel Field, 1939Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
—Publilius Syrus, c. 30 BCPeace is a natural effect of trade.
—Montesquieu, 1748Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will—whatever we may think.
—Lawrence Durrell, 1957To be too conscious is an illness—a real thoroughgoing illness.
—Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1864We die of comfort and by conflict live.
—May Sarton, 1953One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.
—G.K. Chesterton, 1911Youth is the time to go flashing from one end of the world to the other both in mind and body, to try the manners of different nations, to hear the chimes at midnight.
—Robert Louis Stevenson, 1881Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.
—E.M. Forster, 1951Every memory everyone has ever had will eventually be underwater.
—Anthony Doerr, 2006Travelers, poets, and liars are three words all of one significance.
—Richard Brathwaite, 1631The traveler with nothing on him sings in the robber’s face.
—Juvenal, c. 125