How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!
As tho’ to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge, like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
Quotations about:
adventure
Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.
It is by going down into the abyss
that we recover the treasures of life.Where you stumble,
there lies your treasure.The very cave you are afraid to enter
turns out to be the source of
what you are looking for.
The damned thing in the cave
that was so dreaded
has become the center.Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) American writer, professor of literature
In Diane K. Osbon, ed., Reflections on the Art of Living: A Joseph Campbell Companion, “In the Field” (1991)
(Source)
Quoted extensively, and mis-cited to a variety of Campbell's published works. I have not been able to confirm a primary source for it.
Never turn down the chance of an adventure, unless such chances are coming thick and fast, and maybe not even then.
Mignon McLaughlin (1913-1983) American journalist and author
The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, ch. 4 (1966)
(Source)
Make your choice, adventurous Stranger,
Strike the bell and bide the danger,
Or wonder, till it drives you mad,
What would have followed if you had.C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer, literary scholar, lay theologian [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Magician’s Nephew, ch. 4 “The Bell and the Hammer” (1955)
(Source)
Inscription below the bell in Charn.
It’s simply not an adventure worth telling if there aren’t any dragons.
J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973) English writer, fabulist, philologist, academic [John Ronald Reuel Tolkien]
(Misattributed)
Variant: "It simply isn’t an adventure worth telling if there aren’t any dragons."
Actually found in Sara Ban Breathnach, Simple Abundance, "February 16: At the End of Our Exploring" (2005). Breathnach quotes an actual Tolkien warning about dragons earlier on the page, apparently leading people to misattribute this phrase of hers to Tolkien.
More discussion: Not a Tolkien quote: It simply isn't an adventure worth telling if there aren't any dragons - thetolkienist.com.
Your body is not a temple, it’s an amusement park. Enjoy the ride.
Anthony Bourdain (1956-2018) American chef, author, travel documentarian
Kitchen Confidential, “Second Course” (2000)
(Source)
While often framed around Bourdain's self-destructive lifestyle, in this context he's discussing being adventuresome when selecting places to dine, including taking some risks in order to gain new food experiences.
It must be made clear to men that the narrow path that leadeth unto life is as crowded with adventure as the broad path that leadeth to destruction.
Learning and living. But they are really the same thing, aren’t they? There is no experience from which you can’t learn something. … And the purpose of life, after all, is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) First Lady of the US (1933-45), politician, diplomat, activist
You Learn By Living, Introduction (1960)
We pay for security with boredom, for adventure with bother.
Peter De Vries (1910-1993) American editor, novelist, satirist
Comfort Me With Apples (1956)
(Source)
A common fallacy in much of the adverse criticism to which science is subjected today is that it claims certainty, infallibility and complete emotional objectivity. It would be more nearly true to say that it is based upon wonder, adventure and hope.
Cyril Norman Hinshelwood (1897-1967) British chemist and Nobel laureate
“Classics among the intellectual disciplines,” Presidential Address to the Classical Association, Hull, UK (1959-04-09)
Quoted in the Sunday Times (1959-05-17), and in E. J. Bowen's obituary of Hinshelwood, in Chemistry in Britain, Vol. 3 (1967), p. 534.
Art is an adventure. When it ceases to be an adventure, it ceases to be art.
Robert Ardrey (1908-1980) American playwright, screenwriter and science writer
The Hunting Hypothesis: A Personal Conclusion Concerning the Evolutionary Nature of Man (1976)
Life never gives us what we want at the moment that we consider appropriate. Adventures do occur, but not punctually.
E. M. Forster (1879-1970) English novelist, essayist, critic, librettist [Edward Morgan Forster]
A Passage to India, ch. 3 (1924)
(Source)
Back in the nineteen-hundreds it was a wonderful experience for a boy to discover H. G. Wells. There you were, in a world of pedants, clergymen and golfers, with your future employers exhorting you to “get on or get out”, your parents systematically warping your sexual life, and your dull-witted schoolmasters sniggering over their Latin tags; and here was this wonderful man who could tell you about the inhabitants of the planets and the bottom of the sea, and who knew that the future was not going to be what respectable people imagined.
George Orwell (1903-1950) English writer [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]
“Wells, Hitler, and the World State,” Horizon (Aug 1941)
(Source)
When you sell a man a book you don’t sell him just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue — you sell him a whole new life.
Christopher Morley (1890-1957) American journalist, novelist, essayist, poet
Parnassus on Wheels, ch. 4 (1917)
(Source)
When all the world is young, lad,
And all the trees are green;
And every goose a swan, lad,
And every lass a queen;
Then hey for boot and horse, lad,
And round the world away;
Young blood must have its course, lad,
And every dog his day.Charles Kingsley (1819-1875) English clergyman, historian, essayist, novelist (pseud. "Parson Lot")
“Water Babies,” Song 2, st. 1 (1863)
(Source)
If the universe is bigger and stranger than I can imagine, it’s best to meet it with an empty bladder.
John Scalzi (b. 1969) American writer
Old Man’s War (2005)
Everything is possible for an eccentric, especially when he is English.
MINSTREL: [singing]
He was not in the least bit scared to be mashed into a pulp,
Or to have his eyes gouged out and his elbows broken,
To have his kneecaps split and his body burned away,
And his limbs all hacked and mangled, brave Sir Robin!
His head smashed in, and his heart cut out,
And his liver removed, and his bowels unplugged,
And his nostrils raped, and his bottom burnt off,
And his penis —SIR ROBIN: That’s enough music for now, lads.
Monty Python (contemp.) British comedy troupe
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
Phileas Fogg had won his wager, and had made his journey around the world in eighty days. To do this he had employed every means of conveyance — steamers, railways, carriages, yachts, trading-vessels, sledges, elephants. The eccentric gentleman had throughout displayed all his marvellous qualities of coolness and exactitude. But what then? What had he really gained by all this trouble? What had he brought back from this long and weary journey?
Nothing, say you? Perhaps so; nothing but a charming woman, who, strange as it may appear, made him the happiest of men!
Truly, would you not for less than that make the tour around the world?
[Phileas Fogg avait gagné son pari. Il avait accompli en quatre-vingts jours ce voyage autour du monde! Il avait employé pour ce faire tous les moyens de transport, paquebots, railways, voitures, yachts, bâtiments de commerce, traîneaux, éléphant. L’excentrique gentleman avait déployé dans cette affaire ses merveilleuses qualités de sang-froid et d’exactitude. Mais après ? Qu’avait-il gagné à ce déplacement? Qu’avait-il rapporté de ce voyage?
Rien, dira-t-on? Rien, soit, si ce n’est une charmante femme, qui — quelque invraisemblable que cela puisse paraître — le rendit le plus heureux des hommes!
En vérité, ne ferait-on pas, pour moins que cela, le Tour du Monde?]
Jules Verne (1828-1905) French novelist, poet, playwright
Around the World in Eighty Days, ch. 37 (1873)
(Source)
Wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the forest, a little boy and his bear will always be playing.
A. A. Milne (1882-1956) English poet and playwright [Alan Alexander Milne]
House at Pooh Corner, ch. 10 (1928)
Adventure is something you seek for pleasure, or even for profit, like a gold rush or invading a country; for the illusion of being more alive than ordinarily, the thing you will to occur; but experience is what really happens to you in the long run; the truth that finally overtakes you.
Katherine Anne Porter (1890-1980) American journalist, essayist, author, political activist [b. Callie Russell Porter]
“St. Augustine and the Bullfight” (1955)
I need some encouragement. I need to ask myself, “What would an Apollo astronaut do?” He’d drink three whiskey sours, drive his Corvette to the launchpad, then fly to the moon in a command module smaller than my Rover. Man those guys were cool.
Andy Weir (b. 1972) American programmer and writer
The Martian (2011)
The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way,
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973) English writer, fabulist, philologist, academic [John Ronald Reuel Tolkien]
The Lord of the Rings, Vol. 1: The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 1, ch. 1 “A Long-expected Party” (1954)
(Source)
Sung by Bilbo as he leaves Bag End. Two chapters later, Frodo sings the same song when walking with Sam, Merry, and Pippin, but substitutes "weary" for "eager."
All of life is a foreign country.
Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) Canadian-American novelist and poet
Letter to John Clellon Holmes (24 Jun 1949)
Frank O’Connor, the Irish writer, tells in one of his books how, as a boy, he and his friends would make their way across the countryside, and when they came to an orchard wall that seemed too high and too doubtful to try and too difficult to permit their voyage to continue, they took off their hats and tossed them over the wall — and then they had no choice but to follow them. This Nation has tossed its cap over the wall of space, and we have no choice but to follow it.
Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.
The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of a sport, as you might say. But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually — their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn’t. And if they had, we shouldn’t know, because they’d have been forgotten.
J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973) English writer, fabulist, philologist, academic [John Ronald Reuel Tolkien]
The Lord of the Rings, Vol. 2: The Two Towers, Book 4, ch. 8 “The Stairs of Cirith Ungol” [Sam] (1954)
(Source)
Come, my friends.
‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.
John Augustus Shedd (1859-1928) American writer, educator
Salt from My Attic (1928)
Variants:
More information on this quotation here. Sometimes (mis)attributed to William Greenough Thayer Shedd.- "Ships in harbor are safe, but that is not what ships are built for."
- "A ship in port is safe. But that’s not what ships were built for." (used by Grace Hopper)
- "A ship is always safe at shore, but that is not what it is built for." (frequently misattributed to Albert Einstein)