Time is a form of wealth
"Money is the wealth of the materialist, and works miracles in the realm of the physical. Time is the wealth...Read this article
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There is no poetry where there are no mistakes
"There is no poetry where there are no mistakes." --Joy Harjo, quoted in The Sun, May 2004...Read this article
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Talk about how unspoiled somewhere is, and you're almost inviting its despoilation
"It is the dilemma that every traveler faces -- especially every traveler who wants to tell his friends about the...Read this article
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There's nothing necessarily wrong about being a tourist
"There's nothing necessarily wrong about being a tourist. A tourist is somebody who happens to be more interested in the...Read this article
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The more you write, the better you get at it
"No one can give you the magic bullet that, once fired, will make you a writer. Writing is like anything...Read this article
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We have already beaten the biggest odds that we're ever going to face
"According to an article in The New Yorker, in the typical human sex act, the act that brought each of...Read this article
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On the road, people take you at face value
"If you travel, you escape being labeled with class stereotypes. I come from a very middle-class family of lawyers and...Read this article
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Foreignness is an intoxicant
"Foreignness is an intoxicant. As when we're drunk, we don't know how much it's our true selves coming out and...Read this article
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Leisure travel is still the privilege of those from rich countries
"It's easy to forget that travel is a privilege enjoyed by the citizens of the world's richest nations. Per capita,...Read this article
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Stanley Stewart on what makes good travel writing
"Good travel writing is done by good writers who travel. It is not enough to have swum through piranha-infested waters...Read this article
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Pico Iyer on the merits of shoestring travel
"Traveling on a shoestring was a good training for almost everything -- the cheaper the hotel I stay in, the...Read this article
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As good a reason as any for not postponing your travels
"Death twitches my ear. 'Live,' he says. 'I am coming.'" --Virgil, Roman poet, c. 70 - 19 BC...Read this article
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Roger Sandall on the delusions of 'romantic primitivism'
"Bohemian primitivism is [mainly] in the mind. The community yearned for is symbolic, not actual. Its undivided organic wholeness is...Read this article
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Alan Lightman on mechanical time and body time
From Alan Lightman's Einstein’s Dreams: "In this world, there are two times. There is mechanical time and there is body...Read this article
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Paul Fussell on middle-class travel idiosyncrasies
Since the New York Times just wrapped up its epic series on class in America, I thought I'd share this...Read this article
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Melody Davis on the American road
IT ONLY STARTS by Melody Davis The American road is our art, pure process of leaving. Driving doesn't end. It...Read this article
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Everywhere you go, the sky is the same color
"Everywhere you go, the sky is the same color." --Persian saying...Read this article
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David Brooks on travel snobs
The following passage is from David Brook's 2000 book Bobos in Paradise. It makes an interesting comparison to Paul Fussell's...Read this article
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"Wealth" is a relative thing, part II
"[As] a Western country becomes richer, its people overall do not become happier. The reason for this is that over...Read this article
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Restlessness and dissatisfaction are great travel motivators
"I was simply restless, quite likely because of a dissatisfaction with the recent trajectory of my life, and if there...Read this article
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Todd Pruzan on cultural stereotypes
"We all paint the people we've never met and the places we've never seen in broad strokes, based on what...Read this article
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Travel writing must confront the real world
"Though many landscapes are increasingly sullied, that need not spell the decline of travel writing. It does mean that travel...Read this article
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Travel writers are the last great generalists
Lonely Planet Travel Writing author Don George was intereviewed by World Hum this week. Here's my favorite outtake: "When I...Read this article
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The most vivid travel experiences find you by accident
"The most vivid travel experiences usually find you by accident, and the qualities that will make you fall in love...Read this article
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"Remote" destinations are now associated with war and danger
"It is now a commonplace to say that there are no more remote corners of the globe — that the...Read this article
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Ernest Hemingway on what happens when a place is deemed "untouched"
"We ate dinner at Madame Lecomte's restaurant on the far side of the island. It was crowded with Americans and...Read this article
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Travelers (and hosts) are personal ambassadors
"I went back and forth between Cuba and the United States a lot at the end of the '80s, when...Read this article
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The ideal of hip is inimical to the idea of travel
"In traveling, I don't want to be counseled on what to enjoy. I cling to the hope that visiting a...Read this article
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Decisions can be harder than actions
"Decisions are far more difficult to make than actions are to take. We often put off doing something for as...Read this article
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Tourism can be a risky investment
"Tourism has become so popular a tool for economic development that we cannot help but wonder if there will be...Read this article
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We live in a good age (comparatively speaking)
"It’s sometimes argued that there’s no real progress; that a civilization that kills multitudes in mass warfare, that pollutes the...Read this article
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The trouble with resisting temptation
"The trouble with resisting temptation is that it may never come again." Note: Michael Shapiro passed along the above quote,...Read this article
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True epiphany lies in the unexpected
"That is at bottom the only courage that is demanded of us: to have the courage for the most strange,...Read this article
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Wanderlust can be a lifelong endeavor
"I suspect it's impossible for some people to stay in one place for good, once they've left the city of...Read this article
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Pico Iyer on the importance of seeing the world
"I think the most dangerous thing in a world that is ever more connected is to close your eyes and...Read this article
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You have already won the lottery
"There is still an overwhelming social compulsion -- an insanity of consensus, if you will -- to get rich from...Read this article
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Journeys into the world are equally external and internal
"I soon realized that no journey carries one far unless, as it extends into the world around us, it goes...Read this article
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Sometimes it's better to just sit and watch
"It takes an enormous effort to avoid all theories and just see -- just experience directly. But, for a time,...Read this article
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Tim Cahill on what you can learn from your destination
"What's always struck me as strange is that you read about these tragedies in which soldiers from one country, say...Read this article
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Alain de Botton on travel dreams
"…[T]ravel (like love) is an attempt to follow a dream into reality." --Alain de Botton, On Love (1993)...Read this article
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Pico Iyer on the advantages of traveling alone
"When you travel alone you quickly find that you make many more friends because people invite you into their lives...Read this article
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Brad Newsham on why you should be "in the moment" as you travel
"When seeing a new place, I often think: I am going to come back here later -- when I am...Read this article
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Bill Bryson on the joy of foreign places
"Is there anything, apart from a really good chocolate cream pie and receiving a large unexpected check in the mail,...Read this article
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William Least Heat-Moon on how travel is a new beginning
"When you're traveling, you are what you are, right there and then. People don't have your past to hold against...Read this article
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Paul Theroux on the importance of traveling slowly
"Travel is transition, and at its best it is a journey from home, a setting forth. I hated parachuting into...Read this article
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All hotels are surrogates for home
"All hotels are surrogates for home, some of them more luxurious, some of them less. Even the lowly ones we...Read this article
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Jonathan Raban on the advantages of traveling alone
"Traveling with a companion, with a wife, with a girlfriend, always seems to me like birds in a glass dome,...Read this article
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Arthur Frommer on why travel should be more than mere sightseeing
"I've always felt that travel is a serious subject whose rewards go well beyond that of entertainment and recreation. The...Read this article
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Live for today -- because time and chance happen to us all
"All share a common destiny -- the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, the clean and the...Read this article
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Sasha Cagen on why travel is for lovers
"It's much cleaner to hook up with someone in a foreign city, or even across the state line, than to...Read this article
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Neil Armstrong on the appeal of non-lunar destinations
8664 http://slots-online.fateback.com/roulette.htm online roulette...Read this article
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A quick note about history and culture
"It might be a good idea if the various countries of the world occasionally swap history books, just to see...Read this article
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Travel works best with a minimum of baggage
"Unaccustomed to direct experience, we can come to fear it. We don't want to read a book or see a...Read this article
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Paul Theroux's litmus test for dictatorship
"Any country which displays more than one statue of a living politician is a country which is headed for trouble."...Read this article
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David Sedaris on how cultural stereotypes cut both ways
"I'd never thought much about how Americans were viewed overseas until I came to France and I was expected to...Read this article
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Success means controlling your own time
"Success means controlling your own time. If you can gain control over 60 percent of the time in your life,...Read this article
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"Wealth" is a relative thing
“Look at advertising: its sole function is to make us feel that certain things are missing from our lives. So...Read this article
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Edward Abbey on the pleasures of simple reality
"For my own part, I am pleased enough with surfaces -- in fact, they seem to me to be of...Read this article
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Is beer the cornerstone of civilization?
"In addition to being at the heart of Mesopotamian culture, beer may even have been the foundation for the whole...Read this article
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Don't overplan your travels, part II
"If you set off on down the road with specific agendas and goals, you will at best discover the pleasure...Read this article
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Walt Whitman on the great outdoors
"Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons, It is to grow in the open air...Read this article
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Taras Grescoe on the implicit phoniness in seeking out unspoiled places
"Strolling through the Karen village [in Thailand], feeling voyeuristic as I glimpsed scenes of family intimacy, part of me hoped...Read this article
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Direct experience offers what ideas and opinions cannot
"Often I feel I go to some distant region of the world to be reminded of who I really am....Read this article
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True experience begins when we break out of our routines
"What is an experience? Something that breaks a polite routine and for a brief period allows us to witness things...Read this article
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Living an authentic life in an age of image and spin
"I find the very image-conscious culture that we live in to be incredibly oppressive. ...It fascinates me, especially now in...Read this article
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Shakespeare weighs in on the contradictions of travel
"A traveller! By my faith, you have great reason to be sad: I fear you have sold your own lands...Read this article
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We can see better what we don't have
"One archetype that hits me very forcefully, as it does many people, is that when I'm wandering around the Himalayas,...Read this article
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Time is your only possession (and you were born rich)
"To our so-called modern way of thinking, time is money. As a result, we all have very little time. ...It's...Read this article
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Travel need not be "extreme" for it to affect your life
"Eventually I realized that many of the most important changes in my life had come about because of my travel...Read this article
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Live your time lavishly
"I don't pretend to understand what the physicists mean by time, but for people, it isn't so-and-so many measured units;...Read this article
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Elisabeth Eaves on the allure of travel
"I was obsessed with the idea of travel -- not so much to see specific places, but rather because I...Read this article
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Jonathan Raban on the definition of travel
"Travel. It was an intransitive verb. It didn't involve any destinations. It was going to the going's sake, to be...Read this article
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Ravi Zacharias on the trappings of wealth
"In a culture where the possibility of wealth and the acquisition of things is so defining of success, we end...Read this article
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Jack Nicholson on the importance of leisure
"I don’t think people have a very good understanding of leisure and the importance it plays in our lives. People...Read this article
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Charles Plymell on the secret of youth
"It is hard to notice age in those who dream." --Charles Plymell, "In Memory of My Father" (1977) Note: Though...Read this article
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Robert Byron on travel and the senses
"A spiritual necessity...travel must rank with the more serious forms of endeavor. Admittedly there are other ways of making the...Read this article
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Adventure is equal parts external and internal
"You can't see the teeth on a buzz-saw. ...Too much diversion can keep us from knowing how miserable or how...Read this article
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Life is an active pursuit
"There are some things in life, and they may be the most important things, that we cannot know by research...Read this article
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Travel teaches you the limits of home
"Elsewhere is a negative mirror. The traveler recognizes the little that is his, discovering the much he has not had...Read this article
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Pico Iyer on the fickleness of our travel desires
"As tourists, we have reason to hope that the quaint anachronism we have discovered will always remain 'unspoiled,' as fixed...Read this article
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Paulo Coelho on the possibilities that come when making a choice
"When someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that will carry him to places he...Read this article
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Spalding Gray on how you can tell when you're having an adventure
"Oh, looking for adventure, are ya? Well you can tell you're having a real adventure when you wished you were...Read this article
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Taras Grescoe on how we can misunderstand the places we visit
"The problem is that, unversed in the local language, their vision framed by the boilerplate of literature, [travelers] often fail...Read this article
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Some simple logic about work and life, from Edward Abbey
"I don't believe in doing work I don't want to do in order to live the way I don't want...Read this article
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Travel is a naturally spiritual undertaking
"Fortunately, embracing the spiritual side of travel doesn't require that you don a robe and lose your mind. What we...Read this article
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Henry Miller on the crippling distractions of the modern world
"We clutter the earth with our inventions, never dreaming that possibly they are unnecessary -- or disadvantageous. We devise astounding...Read this article
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Pico Iyer on why travel is important
"Travel has woken me up, in many ways. It's taught me how provincial I and my assumptions are. It's expanded...Read this article
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Tim Cahill on the inherent contradiction of adventure
"An adventure is never an adventure when it’s happening. Challenging experiences need time to ferment, and adventure is simply physical...Read this article
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Klaus Westerhausen on how "independent travel" has come to resemble mass travel
"Today's travelers are following an institutionalized and sanitized version of the travel culture pioneered by those early drifters. Their ever-increasing...Read this article
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Chuck Palahniuk on how we so often avoid the present moment
"…The other American myth is that if we can just get away from one other, then we'll be happy. …We...Read this article
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Paul Fussell on why "tourism" is not travel
"Tourism simulates travel, sometimes quite closely. You do pack a suitcase or two and proceed abroad with passport and travelers...Read this article
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Geoff Dyer on the catch-22 of overseas living
"The paradox of nomadism. You keep moving because you're searching for a place to stay. Once you realize you can...Read this article
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Sage advice from Friar Laurence
"Be patient, for the world is broad and wide." --William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act Three, Scene Three Note: Back...Read this article
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Paul Theroux on why optimism is key to travel
"A traveler has no power, no influence, and no identity. That is why a traveler needs optimism and heart, because...Read this article
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An Estonian travel proverb
"If you go only once around the room, you are wiser than he who stands still." --Estonian proverb...Read this article
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Beware self-proclaimed experts of other cultures
"When any Westerner tells you that he knows the East like a book and pretends to be an authority, beware,...Read this article
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Edward Abbey on escaping from workaday life
"We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope; without it the life of the cities would...Read this article
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Phil Cousineau on the process of dreaming up journeys
"Reading old travel books or novels set in faraway places, spinning globes, unfolding maps, playing world music, eating in ethnic...Read this article
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Walt Whitman on the ecstatic importance of this life
"Whoever you are! motion and reflection are especially for you, The divine ship sails the divine sea for you. Whoever...Read this article
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Paul Theroux on the importance of traveling by road
"Flying from one capital city to another is not travel to me. Travel, especially in Africa, must be overland and...Read this article
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Lewis Lapham on why media focuses on negative news of the world
"The bad news is what sells the good news. In other words, the way it works --and McLuhan makes this...Read this article
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Tom Robbins on one's first taste of travel
"Perhaps the most terrible (or wonderful) thing that can happen to an imaginative youth, aside from the curse (or blessing)...Read this article
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Dave Barry on air travel in developing nations
"Never board a commercial aircraft if the pilot is wearing a tank top." --Dave Barry's Only Travel Guide You'll Ever...Read this article
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Thomas Swick on the true meaning of travel
"Today, I think of travel as anything that extends one's realm of experience or expands one's lexicon of acquired convictions...Read this article
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Americans are nomadically challenged
"Only 11% of U.S. citizens even hold passports. Three times that number of people watch NASCAR races, and if there's...Read this article
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Johnny Cash on hitting the road
Country music legend Johnny Cash died today. He was 71 years old. "Pull up the collar on my traveling coat...Read this article
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Nature loves the idea of the individual, but not the individual himself
"Are we ready to think of all humanity as a living tree, carrying on splendidly without us? We easily regard...Read this article
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Fishing kills
"In every arable soil in the world we grow grain over tombs -- sure, we know this. But do not...Read this article
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We live in holy times
"There were no formerly heroic times, and there was no formerly pure generation. There is no one here but us...Read this article
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We live in ordinary times
"These times of ours are ordinary times, a slice of life like any other. Who can bear to hear this,...Read this article
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Dean MacCannell on the exploitative side of commercial tourism
"The main mistake made by pro-tourist planners is that they see tourism only in traditional economic terms as a new...Read this article
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John Steinbeck on vagabonding as a lifelong addiction
"When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature...Read this article
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Henry Miller on chance encounters
"We attribute much to chance meetings, refer to them as turning points in our life, but these encounters could never...Read this article
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Jim Heintz on the ironical appeal of souvenir t-shirts
"To academics and freelance philosophers who theorize about the difficulty of achieving authenticity in the postmodern world, the souvenir T-shirt...Read this article
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Ernest Hemingway on Paris and memory
"There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from...Read this article
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David Sedaris on his fear of French people
"My fear had nothing to do with the actual French people. What scared me was the idea of French people...Read this article
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Evelyn Waugh on the varied reputation of Paris
"The characteristic thing about Paris is not so much the extent -- though that is vast -- as the overwhelming...Read this article
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Mark Twain on Americans in France
"The people of those foreign countries are very, very ignorant. They looked curiously at the costumes we had brought from...Read this article
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William Dalrymple on travel in a shrinking world
"Such are the humiliations of the travel writer in the late twentieth century: go to the ends of the earth...Read this article
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Davydd J. Greenwood on the complexities inherent in cross-cultural tourism
"Are we correct that all cultural values are being destroyed? Or are they once again changing, under the press of...Read this article
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Taras Grescoe on how to stop being a tourist
"To stop being a tourist, sometimes all you have to do is start standing still." --Taras Grescoe, End of Elsewhere:...Read this article
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Rolf Potts on traveling slowly
"Vagabonding is not like bulk shopping: The value of your travels does not hinge on how many stamps you have...Read this article
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Claude Levi-Strauss on the complexity of the travel experience
"Travel is usually thought of as a displacement in space. This is an inadequate conception. A journey occurs simultaneously in...Read this article
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Claude Levi-Strauss on the true task of exploration
"Exploration is not so much a covering of surface distance as a study in depth: a fleeting episode, a fragment...Read this article
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Claude Levi-Strauss on the threat of global monoculture
"Journeys, those magic caskets full of dreamlike promises, will never again yield up their treasures untarnished. A proliferating and overexcited...Read this article
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Claude Levi-Strauss on the social reinvention that comes with travel
"Not only does a journey transport us over enormous distances, it also causes us to move a few degrees up...Read this article
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Pope John Paul II on the advantages of world tourism
"Tourism enables people to use part of their free time to contemplate the goodness and beauty of God in his...Read this article
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Edward Abbey on why we travel and explore
"Reproduction and mere survival have never been good enough for humankind. We torture one another, we torture ourselves, we torture...Read this article
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Rolf Potts on getting off the tourist trail
"Strangely, few people (even Lonely Planet-clutching "independent" travelers) think to stray from the accepted travel routes. It's almost as if...Read this article
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Paul Fussell's famous rant on the hypocrisy of "anti-tourists"
From Abroad (1980): "As I have said, it is hard to be a snob and a tourist at the same...Read this article
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Carsten Jensen on the world's uncharted territory
"Our world harbors an uncharted territory, no longer white spaces on the map but black spaces, erected by political terrorism,...Read this article
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Henry David Thoreau on what lies beyond the monuments
"Many are concerned about the monuments of the West and the East -- to know who built them. For my...Read this article
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Ed Readicker-Henderson on the limits of guidebooks
"When you're headed out with your happy travel dreams, the guidebook is your magic key, it's your oracle, where all...Read this article
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Walker Percy ponders why sightseers prefer to be alone
"How does one see the thing better when others are absent? Is looking like sucking: the more lookers, the less...Read this article
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Professor Cahill's Travel 101: Rule #15
"Schedule a day of rest every now and then. Contrary to what you might read, sudden insights seldom happen at...Read this article
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Professor Cahill's Travel 101: Rule #11
"Rule 11: Eat what is put in front of you. They are not making fun of you. The rooster's head...Read this article
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Professor Cahill's Travel 101: Rule #8 (in part)
"There are places where you are expected to bargain and sharpies who want to take advantage of you. Unfortunately, too...Read this article
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Professor Cahill's Travel 101: Rule #7
"Rule 7: Read guidebooks. Guidebooks, books on the country, and books by local authors can help you refine the nature...Read this article
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Professor Cahill's Travel 101: Rule #6
"Rule 6: Stop whining. If you're cold and wet, it's a good bet that everyone else in your party is...Read this article
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Professor Cahill's Travel 101: Rule #5
"Boredom greases the cogs in the machinery of marvels. …Oh, God, will you be bored. The three days waiting for...Read this article
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Ian Littlewood on how travel can be the enemy of tyranny
"Tyrants never like their subjects to travel: as long as there are no grounds of comparison, there is no basis...Read this article
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Ian Littlewood on the fickle addictiveness of travel
"What keeps the traveler in motion is the possibility that over the next hill, round the next corner, across the...Read this article
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Ian Littlewood on the defiant joy that comes at the beginning of a journey
"When our spirits lift at the start of a journey, there is usually an element of relief to be leaving...Read this article
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Ian Littlewood on the emotional detachment of travel
"It is one of the seductions of travel that it allows us to enjoy the extremes of human emotion and...Read this article
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Jeff Greenwald on the slow pace of time abroad
"Back home in the Wild West, time whips by with the relentless and terrible purpose of a strangling vine filmed...Read this article
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Phyllis Rose on expectations and reality
"But professional imaginer or not, when you are at the destination you've dreamed of all your life, you're liable to...Read this article
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Pico Iyer on the perception of "paradise"
"A foreigner tends to see paradise where a native sees purgatory, insofar as a foreigner is in a privileged position...Read this article
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Richard Halliburton on freedom and youth
"Youth -- nothing else worth having in the world...and I had youth, the transitory, the fugitive, now, completely and abundantly....Read this article
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Phil Cousineau on the extraordinary in the ordinary
"The practice of soulful travel is to discover the overlapping point between history and everyday life, the way to find...Read this article
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Rolf Potts on simplicity in anticipation of travel
"Travel by its very nature demands simplicity. If you don’t believe this, just go home and try stuffing everything you...Read this article
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Paulo Coelho on the world as a threatening place
"Most people see the world as a threatening place, and, because they do, the world turns out, indeed, to be...Read this article
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Bill Barich on the heightened state that travel allows
"Travel spoils you for regular life. When you're moving from country to country in blithe ignorance, you're usually granted the...Read this article
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A note on human population, from The Economist
"Demographers like to dramatize this recent population growth by asking a spooky question. Of all the people who have ever...Read this article
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de Botton on the perks of traveling alone
"It seemed an advantage to be traveling alone. Our responses to the world are crucially molded by the company we...Read this article
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de Botton on the open-minded state that comes with travel
"What, then, is a traveling mind-set? Receptivity might be said to be its chief characteristic. Receptive, we approach new places...Read this article
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de Botton on the heightened romanticism of exotic lands
"To the appeal that an attractive person might possess in one's own country is added, in an exotic land, an...Read this article
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de Botton on travel as a medium for introspection
"Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships, or trains....Read this article
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de Botton on travel as a search for meaning
"If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics...Read this article
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Thomas Merton on the beggars of Calcutta
"But the routine of the beggars is heart-rending. The little girl who suddenly appeared at the window of my taxi,...Read this article
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Rolf Potts on preparation v. improvisation
"The goal of preparation is not knowing exactly where you’ll go, but being confident nonetheless that you’ll get there. This...Read this article
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Claude Levi-Strauss on the traveler's perceived loss of the past
"I wished I had lived in the days of real journeys, when it was still possible to see the full...Read this article
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Theron Nunez on how host communities bend to accommodate tourism
"Tourists are less likely to borrow from their hosts than their hosts are from them, this precipitating a chain of...Read this article
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Mark Twain on the mind-expanding power of travel
"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad,...Read this article
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Philip Caputo on the modern definition of "adventure travel"
"'Adventure travel' is a term I'm not entirely fond of, but I suppose we need it to distinguish modern modes...Read this article
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Rolf Potts on travel judgment
Good judgment can come from bad experiences; good experiences can come from bad judgment. --Rolf Potts, Vagabonding (2003)...Read this article
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Donald Ross on how travel affects host cultures
"To travel somewhere is almost always to support someone and to exploit someone -- often the same person.” --Donald Ross,...Read this article
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Douglas Rushkoff on fear and optimism
"Optimism is dangerous, because optimists don't believe in worst-case scenarios, and worst-case scenarios are what are used to frighten us...Read this article
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Graham Greene on American good intentions
"Oh, I know your motives are good, they always are... I wish sometimes you had a few bad motives, you...Read this article
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Hunter S. Thompson on traveling into the unknown
"With the palms zipping past and the big sun burning down on the road ahead, I had a flash of...Read this article
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Josiah Tucker on travel motivations
"Persons who propose to themselves a scheme for traveling, generally do it with a view to obtain one or more...Read this article
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Evelyn Waugh on budget travel, misadventure, and travel writers
"There is a new type of traveler which is represented by nearly all the young men and women who managed...Read this article
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Klaus Westerhausen on the jadedness of travelers' ghettos
"With the arrival of ever-increasing numbers of visitors at traveler centers such as Thamel in Kathmandu or Koh Phangan in...Read this article
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Rolf Potts on the importance of earning your own way
"Ironically, the best litmus test for measuring your vagabonding gumption is not found in travel, but in the process of...Read this article
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Mary Karr on leaving home
"No road offers more mystery than that first one you mount from the town you were born to, the first...Read this article
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Nicholas Howe on the connection between travel reading and travel writing
"For as long as people have been writing about their journeys, they have been telling tales of the strange and...Read this article
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Alain de Botton on the sublime
"The sublime is a feeling provoked by certain kinds of landscape that are very large, very impressive and dangerous. Places...Read this article
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Charles Bukowski on the dubious allure of beaches
"What was the fascination of the beach? Why did people like the beach? Didn't they have anything better to do?...Read this article
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Ed Buryn on travel desire
"Wanting to travel reflects a positive attitude. You want to see, to grow in experience, and presumably to become more...Read this article
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Walt Whitman on personal freedom
"From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary lines, / Going where I list, my own master...Read this article
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Rolf Potts on the contradictions of "budget travel"
"Few things are more ridiculous than the spectacle of a "budget traveler" losing his temper at a rickshaw driver over...Read this article
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Dean MacCannell on why tourist attractions are tourist attractions
"In the establishment of modern society, the individual act of sightseeing is probably less important than the ceremonial ratification of...Read this article
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William Sutcliffe on the journey v. the destination
"I had assumed that traveling was the crap bit you had to tolerate in order to get to the places...Read this article
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Pico Iyer on quitting
"Quitting, for me, means not giving up, but moving on; changing direction not because something doesn't agree with you, but...Read this article
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Davydd J. Greenwood on the commodification of culture
"Worldwide, we are seeing the transformation of cultures into 'local color', making peoples' cultures extensions of the modern mass media....Read this article
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A Moorish travel proverb
"He who does not travel does not know the value of men." --quoted in Bruce Chatwin's The Songlines (1987)...Read this article
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Rolf Potts on the tourist/traveler distinction
"In reality, travel is not a social contest, and vagabonding has never represented a caste on the tourist/traveler hierarchy. Depending...Read this article
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Charles Kuralt on working overseas
"If you really want to learn about a country, work there." --Charles Kuralt, A Life on the Road (1990)...Read this article
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Tony the Beachcomber on traveling slow
"What I find is that you can go anywhere, you can do just about anything, if you're not in a...Read this article
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Tanya Shaffer on the kindness of strangers
"Here's what I love about travel: Strangers get a chance to amaze you. Sometimes a single day can bring a...Read this article
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Erve Chambers on tradition and "authenticity"
"Richard Handler and Jocelyn Linnekin have contended that our tendency to judge authenticity in terms of the faithfulness by which...Read this article
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T.E. Lawrence on the ambiguity of "going native"
"In my case, the efforts for these years to live in the dress of the Arabs, and to imitate their...Read this article
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Erla Zwingle on Westernization
"Critics of Western culture blast Coke and Hollywood but not organ transplants and computers. Boosters of Western culture can point...Read this article
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Rolf Potts on ethno-tourism
"As isolated cultures come into closer contact with modern visitors, they naturally become more and more likely to seek modern...Read this article
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Walt Whitman on miracles
"Why, who makes much of a miracle? / As to me I know of nothing else but miracles, / Whether...Read this article
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Thomas Friedman on globalization
"The writer Thomas Wolfe said, 'You can't go home again,' but I fear he was wrong. In the world of...Read this article
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Henry Miller on life as a mysterious journey
"No one takes a straight-cut line through life. Often we fail to stop at the stations indicated on the timetable....Read this article
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Douglas Coupland on why so few people go vagabonding
"option paralysis: The tendency, when given unlimited choices, to make none." --Douglas Coupland, Generation X (1991)...Read this article
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Finding a prison in wealth: a warning from the Bible
"Whoever loves money never has money enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income. This too is meaningless."...Read this article
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Edward Abbey on the importance of going on foot
"Look here, I want to say, for godsake fellas get out of themthere machines, take off those fucking sunglasses and...Read this article
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Rolf Potts on vision
"'Seeing' as you travel is somewhat of a spiritual exercise: a process not of seeking interesting surroundings, but of being...Read this article
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Lewis Lapham on why the media will never give a balanced view of the world
"The media is based on personality, it's based on celebrity, and it's based on a world that never was. At...Read this article
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Walker Percy on "spoiled" places
"The problem is to find an "unspoiled" place. "Unspoiled" does not mean only that a place is left physically intact;...Read this article
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Dave Eggers on isolation
"But dropping out of touch is still possible. It's so easy. It doesn't take long, just about anywhere, to get...Read this article
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Richard Halliburton on packing
"The pleasure of travel increases in direct proportion to the decrease of baggage." --Richard Halliburton, Royal Road to Romance (1925)...Read this article
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Patrick Kavanagh on epiphany
"O unworn world enrapture me, encapture me in a web / Of fabulous grass and eternal voices by a beech,...Read this article
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Richard Todd on returning to places
"Returning to a place is one of the little pleasures of travel: you perceive it differently over the years, and...Read this article
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Rolf Potts on travel preparation
"You can't ever dream up the perfect travel formula while you're still sitting at home. What seems like paradise when...Read this article
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Henry David Thoreau on finding the present
“In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of...Read this article
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Freya Stark on the art of travel
"Travel does what good novelists also do to the life of everyday, placing it like a picture in its frame...Read this article
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Jeffrey Tayler on writing about one's travels
"My writing derived from the conviction I conceived during my college years: one should lead one’s life as if one...Read this article
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David Sedaris on life abroad
"What I found appealing in life abroad was the inevitable sense of helplessness it would inspire. Equally exciting would be...Read this article
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Jean-Paul Sartre on adventure
"'What sort of adventures?" I asked him, astonished. 'All sorts, Monsieur. Getting on the wrong train. Stopping in an unknown...Read this article
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Chuck Palahniuk on the danger of possessions
"You buy furniture. You tell yourself this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Buy the...Read this article
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Rolf Potts on the spiritual side of travel
"Too often on the road, people seek the spiritual side of life in the same determined way they might join...Read this article
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Dean MacCannell on what defines a travel attraction
"The point is that anything that is remarked, even little flowers or leaves picked up off the ground and shown...Read this article
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Rosita Forbes on the anticipation of travel
"That is the charm of a map. It represents the other side of the horizon where everything is possible. It...Read this article
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LeRoi Jones on closed-mindedness
"Luxury, then, is a way of / being ignorant, comfortably / An approach to the open market / of least...Read this article
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Herman Melville on coming home
"Round the world! There is much in that sound to inspire proud feelings; but whereto does all that circumnavigation conduct?...Read this article
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Rolf Potts on finding adventure
"The secret of adventure is not to carefully seek it out, but to travel in such a way that it...Read this article
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Paul Theroux on discovering the new
"The profoundest satisfaction in travel is a sense of discovery, the private thrill of seeing something new or seeing it...Read this article
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Walt Whitman on the allure of the road
"You air that serves me with breath to speak! / You objects that call from diffusion my meanings and give...Read this article
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Annie Dillard on why we should travel
"Beauty and grace are performed whether or not we sense them. The least we can do is try to be...Read this article
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Paul Fussell on humility
"Travelers learn not just foreign customs and curious cuisines and unfamiliar beliefs and novel forms of government. They learn, if...Read this article
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Mark Twain on travel snobbery
"We wish to learn all the curious, outlandish ways of all the different countries, so that we can 'show off'...Read this article
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John Steinbeck on the unexpected
"Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process, a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a...Read this article
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Phil Cousineau on travel preparation
"Mapping out dozens of deeply focused trips around the world has convinced me that preparation no more spoils the chance...Read this article
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Rolf Potts on cultural awareness
"Cultural awareness is often the positive product of rather negative experiences -- and no amount sensitivity training can compare to...Read this article
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Jeff Greenwald on why we travel
"There are deeper reasons to travel -- itches and tickles on the underbelly of the unconscious mind. We go where...Read this article
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Three quotes on travel and new beginnings
"When you travel, you experience, in a very practical way, the act of rebirth. You confront completely new situations, the...Read this article
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Ralph Bagnold on budget travel
"When I was very young a big financier once asked me what I would like to do, and I said,...Read this article
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A.R. Ammons on finding new challenges
"I see narrow orders, limited tightness, but will / not run to that easy victory: / still around the looser,...Read this article
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Rolf Potts on package vacations
"Purchasing a package vacation to find a simpler life is kind of like using a mirror to see what you...Read this article
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Theophile Gautier on adventure and modern life
"The pleasure of traveling consists in the obstacles, the fatigue, and even the danger. What charm can any one find...Read this article
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Ed Buryn on the unexpected
"Bear in mind that the special advantage of vagabonding is the experience of not really knowing what happens next, which...Read this article
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Pico Iyer on travel goals
"The final destination of a journey is not, after all, the last item on the agenda, but rather some understanding,...Read this article
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Tim Cahill on travel dreams
"A lot of us first aspired to far-ranging travel and exotic adventure early in our teens; these ambitions are, in...Read this article
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