Echoes

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

Traveling offers you a hundred roads to adventure, and gives your heart wings.

He who lives sees much. He who travels sees more.

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

At the bottom of the fall we were able to stand again on dry land. The rope could not be recovered. We had flung down the adze from the top of the fall and also the logbook and the cooker wrapped in one of our blouses. That was all, except our wet clothes, that we brought out of the Antarctic, which we had entered a year and a half before with well-found ship, full equipment, and high hopes. That was all of tangible things; but in memories we were rich. We had pierced the veneer of outside things. We had "suffered, starved and triumphed, groveled down yet grasped at glory, grown bigger in the bigness of the whole. We had seen God in His splendours, heard the text that Nature renders." We had reached the naked soul of man.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.

Never did I think so much, never did I realize my own existence so much, never was I so much alive, so much myself, as in those journeys which I made alone and on foot.

But do not ask me where I am going, As I travel in this limitless world, Where every step I take is my home.

I set out alone, having neither fellow-traveller in whose companionship I might find cheer, nor caravan whose party I might join, but swayed by an overmastering impulse within me and a desire long-cherished in my bosom to visit these illustrious sanctuaries.

A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.

The explorers of the past were great men and we should honour them. But let us not forget that their spirit lives on. It is still not hard to find a man who will adventure for the sake of a dream or one who will search, for the pleasure of searching, not for what he may find.

A gift to those who contemplate the wonders of cities and the marvels of traveling.

In each moment the fire rages, it will burn away a hundred veils. And carry you a thousand steps toward your goal.

Do not follow in the footsteps of the old masters, but seek what they sought — and find it in the mountains, the rivers, and the open sky.

Man is a dream of a shadow. But when god-given brightness comes, a shining light rests on men, and life is sweet.

We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us.

Life is an unfoldment, and the further we travel the more truth we can comprehend.

With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things.

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of autumn.

I believe it is in our nature to explore, to reach out into the unknown. The only true failure would be not to explore at all.

I don't know if I particularly want to be remembered for anything. I have enjoyed great satisfaction from my climb of Everest and my trips to the poles. But there's no doubt, either, that my most worthwhile things have been the building of schools and medical clinics. That has given me more satisfaction than a footprint on a mountain.

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men — that is genius.

The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark.

No single event can awaken within us a stranger whose existence we had never suspected. To live is to be slowly born.