Nicolas Bouvier Quotes
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They say that love and tears are learned without any master; and I may say that there is no great need of studying at the court to learn envy and revenge.
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Ambition is a devouring fire, who can poise it? It is a wind, who can fathom it? It is an abyss, who is able to recount the sources and issues thereof?
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We should render thanks to God for having produced this temporal light, which is the smile of heaven and joy of the world, spreading it like a cloth of gold over the face of the air and earth, and lighting it as a torch by which we might behold His works.
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The cloud which appeared to the prophet Ezekiel carried with it winds and storms, but it was environed with a golden circle, to teach us that the storms of afflictions, which happen to God's children, are encompassed with brightness and smiling felicity.
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Traveling outgrows its motives. It soon proves sufficient in itself. You think you are making a trip, but soon it is making you - or unmaking you.
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A journey does not need reasons. Before long, it proves to be reason enough in itself. One thinks that one is going to make a journey, yet soon it is the journey that makes or unmakes you.
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Traveling provides occasions for shaking oneself up but not, as people believe, freedom. Indeed it involves a kind of reduction: deprived of one’s usual setting, the customary routine stripped away like so much wrapping paper, the traveller finds himself reduced to more modest proportions - but also more open to curiosity, to intuition, to love at first sight.
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The famous Apollonius being very early at Vespasian's gate, and finding him stirring, from thence conjectured that he was worthy to govern an empire, and said to his companion, This man surely will be emperor; he is so early.
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It often happens that those of whom we speak least on earth are best known in heaven.
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In the end, the bedrock of existence is not made up of the family, or work, or what others say or think of you, but of moments like this when you are exalted by a transcendent power that is more serene than love. Life dispenses them parsimoniously; our feeble hearts could not stand more.
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After all, one travels in order for things to happen and change; otherwise you might as well stay at home.