Quotes by Explorers

The perfect journey is never finished, the goal is always just across the next river, round the shoulder of the next mountain. There is always one more track to follow, one more mirage to explore.
Rosita Forbes
A beautiful day begins with a beautiful mindset. Every day you wake up, think about what a privilege it is to simply be alive and healthy. Stop focusing on the negatives and everything that could go wrong and start thinking about what could go right. Better yet, think of everything that already is right. Be thankful for nights that turned into mornings, friends who turned into family and past dreams and goals that turned into realities. Use this mindset of positivity to fuel an even brighter today and tomorrow.
John Geiger
Let those who wish have their respectability- I wanted freedom, freedom to indulge in whatever caprice struck my fancy, freedom to search in the farthermost corners of the earth for the beautiful, the joyous, and the romantic.
Richard Halliburton
I may say that this is the greatest factor: the way in which the expedition is equipped, the way in which every difficulty is foreseen, and precautions taken for meeting or avoiding it. Victory awaits him who has everything in order, luck, people call it. Defeat is certain for him who has neglected to take the necessary precautions in time, this is called bad luck.
Roald Amundsen
Do what thy manhood bids thee do.
Sir Richard Burton
I wouldn't give a tinker's damn for a man who isn't sometimes afraid. Fear's the spice that makes it interesting to go ahead.
Daniel Boone
The Church says that the Earth is flat, but I know that it is round. For I have seen the shadow of the earth on the moon and I have more faith in the Shadow than in the Church.
Magellan
It is a well-known fact that very often, putting the period of boyhood out of the argument, the older we grow the more cynical and hardened we become; indeed, many of us are only saved by timely death from moral petrification, if not from moral corruption.
H. Rider Haggard
Using time, pressure and patience, the universe gradually changes caterpillars into butterflies, sand into pearls, and coal into diamonds. You’re being worked on too, so hang in there. Just because something isn’t apparent right now, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. It’s not until the end do you realize, sometimes your biggest blessings were disguised by pain and suffering. They were not placed there to break you, but to make you.
John Geiger
Traveling leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.
Ibn Battuta
The beckoning counts, not the clicking latch behind you
Freya Stark
All, or the greatest part of men that have aspired to riches or power, have attained thereunto either by force or fraud, and what they have by craft or cruelty gained, to cover the foulness of their fact, they call purchase, as a name more honest. Howsoever, he that for want of will or wit useth not those means, must rest in servitude and poverty.
Walter Raleigh
A doctor may know more than a peasant, but a peasant and a doctor know more together.
Dan Buettner
It is not truth but opinion that can travel the world without a passport.
Walter Raleigh
Merciful Father.... I have squandered my days with plans of many things.This was not among them. But at this moment, I beg only, to live the next few minutes well.For all we ought to have thought and have not thought... All we ought to have said and have not said. All we ought to have done and have not done. I pray thee, God for forgiveness.
Ahmed Ibn Fadlan
Nature can be so soothing to the tormented mind
Alexander von Humboldt
... on these expanded membranes [butterfly wings] Nature writes, as on a tablet, the story of the modifications of species, so truly do all changes of the organisation register themselves thereon. Moreover, the same colour-patterns of the wings generally show, with great regularity, the degrees of blood-relationship of the species. As the laws of nature must be the same for all beings, the conclusions furnished by this group of insects must be applicable to the whole world.
Henry Walter Bates
Surely my lord will not hide his beautiful white legs!" exclaimed Infadoos regretfully. But Good persisted, and once only did the Kukuana people get the chance of seeing his beautiful legs again. Good is a very modest man. Henceforward they had to satisfy their aesthetic longings with his one whisker, his transparent eye, and his movable teeth.
H. Rider Haggard
In the desert I had found a freedom unattainable in civilization; a life unhampered by possessions, since everything that was not a necessity was an encumbrance. I had found too, a comradeship inherent in the circumstances, and the belief that tranquility was to be found there.
Wilfred Thesiger
So much learning," one of my Jesuit teachers has said, "so little wisdom." To put it another way, a civilization does become more technologically skilled and more learned about science, and perhaps even a little smarter as well, when it is permitted to grow for hundreds of years and spread itself from pole to pole; but we also have more tools to turn out as badly as our ancestors said we might.
Charles Pellegrino
The sea is dangerous and its storms terrible, but these obstacles have never been sufficient reason to remain ashore... Unlike the mediocre, intrepid spirits seek victory over those things that seem impossible... It is with an iron will that they embark on the most daring of all endeavors... to meet the shadowy future without fear and conquer the unknown.
Ferdinand Magellan
Often I have found that the one thing that can save is the thing which appears most to threaten ... one has to go down into what one most fears and in that process ... comes a saving flicker of light and energy that even if it does not produce the courage of a hero at any rate enables a trembling mortal to take one step further.
Laurens van der Post
Historically, the Germans had a habit of associating the names of objects with the sounds they made. After bell makers-turned-cannon-makers learned that by closing off the mouth of the cannon before lighting the fuse, the entire cannon could be made to explode, the device they invented became known as the 'bum' (for boom!). In keeping with this tradition, the first one-thousand-pound bomb was dubbed 'ein laussen bum' (meaning, "a loud boom"). After the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, they called the fission device 'ein grossen laussen bum' (or, "a big loud boom"). The next obvious step was the fusion, or H-bomb, which was pronounced 'ein grossen laussen bum all ist kaput!
Charles Pellegrino
Our sole illumination was a dim and foul-smellingblubber lamp, which really only served to make thedarkness visible.
Frank A. Worsley
Superhuman effort isn't worth a damn unless it achieves results.
Ernest Shackleton
I am just going outside and may be some time." Reportedly the last words of Lawrence Oates according to Captain Robert Falcon Scott, who commanded the ill-fated expedition to the South Pole 1911/12.
Captain Lawrence Edward Grace Oates
And as for myself, I tell you, I have had too much luck these last years. Do you believe that a man's luck can run forever? I know that it can't. For myself, I must somehow erect a bulwark against the ill fortune that is certain.
Gontran De Poncins
I am glad to see that you have enough imagination not to be altogether a fool... Yes, it is want of imagination that makes people fools; they won't believe what they can't understand.
H. Rider Haggard
...For like a rugged tree you are hard and sound at the core.
H. Rider Haggard
There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do.
Freya Stark
All our acts have sacramental possibilities.
Freya Stark
Do we ever have to abandon all hope? Is it not perhaps a good thing that by refusing to give in to the evidence, the dreams that lie half awake in us all may persist?
Théodore Monod
For every first-class dog that entered the lifeboats, twenty-nine steerage women and nineteen children died. Emily Badman and Kathy Gilnagh seemed destined to be counted among the lost, having found themselves penned in behind a drawn gate, deep within the stern. An armed, junior officer stood on the other side. "Following orders," he insisted. "It's not time for you to go up.
Charles Pellegrino
Excellence is the result of loving more than others think is necessary, dreaming more than others think is practical, risking more than others think is safe, and doing more than others think is possible. Every day is a golden opportunity to learn, practice gratitude, and positively impact the world around you. Do not ask for instant fulfillment in your life, but for patience to accept your current frustrations. Do not ask for perfection in all you do, but for the wisdom to make better choices. Do not ask for more before saying, “THANK YOU” for everything you have already received.
John Geiger
I could not possibly have been placed in circumstances more highly favorable for study and exploration than those which I now enjoy. I am free from the distractions constantly arising in civilized life from social claims. Nature offers unceasingly the most novel and fascinating objects for learning. The only drawbacks to this solitude are the want of information on the progress of scientific discovery in Europe and the lack of all the advantages arising from an interchange of ideas.
Alexander von Humboldt
In the West we cling to the past like limpets. In Haiti the present is the axis of all life. As in Africa, past and future are but distant measures of the present, and memories are as meaningless as promises.
Wade Davis
In traveling, there is nothing like dissecting people's statements, which are usually colored by their estimate of the powers or likings of the person spoken to, making all reasonable inquiries, and then pertinaciously but quietly carrying out one's own plans.
Isabella L. Bird
...there were only fifteen thousand polar bears in the world, and five billion of me. To let one of them devour my all-too-common flesh would, if only slightly, help adjust the grievous imbalance.
Lawrence Millman
Isn't it strange that we talk least about the things we think about most?
Charles Lindbergh
Love of learning is a pleasant and universal bond since it deals with what one is and not what one has.
Freya Stark
...I don't know where a utopia is supposed to be, or where one could be found. I sometimes think that it is the place where fear and doubt end with the realization that around you is everything you need, and there is nothing else to find.
Kira Salak
It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves
Sir Edmund Hillary
Of the gladdest moments in human life, methinks, is the departure upon a distant journey into unknown lands. Shaking off with one mighty effort the fetters of Habit, the leaden weight of Routine, the cloak of many Cares and the slavery of Civilization, man feels once more happy.
Richard Francis Burton
Though the face before me was that of a young woman of certainly not more than thirty years, in perfect health and the first flush of ripened beauty, yet it bore stamped upon it a seal of unutterable experience, and of deep acquaintance with grief and passion. Not even the slow smile that crept about the dimples of her mouth could hide the shadow of sin and sorrow. It shone even in the light of those glorious eyes, it was present in the air of majesty, and it seemed to say: 'Behold me, lovely as no woman was or is, undying and half-divine; memory haunts me from age to age, and passion leads me by the hand--evil have I done, and with sorrow have I made acquaintance from age to age, and from age to age evil shall I do, and sorrow shall I know till my redemption comes.
H. Rider Haggard
There is only one "now." Realize how rich you are in it. Right now you are creating history…your legacy. Make your time count. Do not wish your moments away. Do not ruin today by focusing on another time and place. If we counted our blessings more often, instead of our money, we would be a lot richer. Keep money on your mind but out of your heart. Never get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life for yourself. Cultivate your spiritual growth. The real measure of your wealth is how much you’d be worth if you lost all your money.
John Geiger
Organized religion is making Christianity political rather than making politics Christian.
Laurens van der Post
God, send me anywhere, only go with me. Lay any burden on me, only sustain me. And sever any tie in my heart except the tie that binds my heart to Yours.
David Livingstone
I can't say I was ever lost but I was bewildered once for three days.
Daniel Boone
It doesn’t matter if you work at a fast food joint or if you are the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Your job title does not define your purpose. The size of your paycheck does not make you worthy. What makes you valuable is your contribution to the world and the legacy that you leave behind. Stop defining yourself by what you do, and start defining yourself by who you are!
John Geiger
Suffering raises up those souls that are truly great it is only small souls that are made mean-spirited by it.
Alexandra David-Neel
If you only do what others have already done, you will only feel what others have already felt. However, if you choose to achieve something that no one has ever done, then you will have a satisfaction that no one else has ever had.
Edmund Hillary
The meat smelt rank and was very tough, the soup was greasy and of a curious flavour, but it was a wonderful meal after all these hungry weeks.
Wilfred Thesiger
I have no home in the sense that is generally understood and so there is nothing to prevent me enjoying to the uttermost the spirit of wanderlust that has entered my soul. I am never lonely. How can I be when there is so much to see and admire in the world?
Gertrude Benham
Shall a mangrave his sorrows upon a stone when he hath but need to write them onthe water? Nay, oh /She/, I will live my day, and grow old with mygeneration, and die my appointed death, and be forgotten.
H. Rider Haggard
Curiosity is the most powerful thing you own. Imagination is a force that can actually manifest a reality.
James Cameron
A woman that's too soft and sweet is like tapioca pudding-fine for them as likes it.
Osa Johnson
This aspect of animated nature, in which man is nothing, has something in it strange and sad....Here, in a fertile country, adorned with eternal verdure, we seek in vain the traces of the power of man; we seem to be transported into a world different from that which gave us birth.
Alexander von Humboldt
The world in which you were born is just one model of reality. Other cultures are not failed attempts at being YOU: they are unique manifestations of the human spirit.
Wade Davis
In real life, the big things and the little things are inextricably mixed up together, so in Libya at one moment, one worried because one's native boots were full of holes, and at the next, perhaps, one wondered how long one would be alive to wear them.
Rosita Forbes
False love, desire, and beauty frail, adieu! Dead is the root whence all these fancies grew.
Walter Raleigh