Nicolas Bouvier Quotes & Sayings

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. — Nicolas Bouvier

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. — Nicolas Bouvier

At home what is 'wonderful' tends to be an exception that's arranged; it is useful, or at least edifying. In Persia it might just as well spring from an oversight, or a sin, or a catastrophe which, by breaking the normal run of events, offers life unexpected scope for unfolding its splendours before eyes that are always ready to rejoice in them. — Nicolas Bouvier

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. — Nicolas Bouvier

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. — Nicolas Bouvier

That day, I thought that I held something important and that my life would be changed. But nothing of this nature is acquired definitively. Like water, the world traverses you, and for a while, lends you its colours. It then draws back, leaving you once again to face the emptiness that one carries in oneself, to face that central insufficiency of the spirit that one must learn to live with, to fight, and which, paradoxically, is possibly our surest driving force. — Nicolas Bouvier

Beyond a certain degree of hardship or misery, life often revives and heals the scars. As time passed, deportation [to the concentration camps for the young woman] had become a kind of voyage and even, thanks to the almost terrifying capacity of memory to transform horror into courage, a voyage that she could easily mention. Any way of seeing the world is good, as long as one returns. — Nicolas Bouvier

After all, one travels in order for things to happen and change; otherwise you might as well stay at home. — Nicolas Bouvier

That day, I really believed that I had grasped something and that henceforth my life would be changed. But insights cannot be held for ever. Like water, the world ripples across you and for a while you take on its colours. Then it recedes, and leaves you face to face with the void you carry inside yourself, confronting that central inadequacy of soul which you must learn to rub shoulders with and to combat, and which, paradoxically, may be our surest impetus. — Nicolas Bouvier

The over-ripe, golden autumn which had taken hold of the town tugged at our heartstrings. The nomadic life makes you sensitive to the seasons: you rely on them, even become part of the season itself, and each time they change, it seems to have to tear yourself away from a place where you have learned to live. — Nicolas Bouvier

The splendid wooden mosque - which you can find if you search - nobody would think of showing you, being less aware of what they have than what they lack. They lack technology: we want to get out of the impasse into which too much technology has led us, our sensibilities saturated to the nth degree with Information and a Culture of distractions. We're counting on their formulae to revive us; they're counting on ours to live. Our paths cross without mutual understanding, and sometimes the traveler gets impatient, but there is a great deal of self-centeredness in such impatience. — Nicolas Bouvier