A Very Long Journey Quotes & Sayings

When I was a child and told my mother I didn't felt this was my planet, she thought I was schizophrenic or autistic. When later I finished a college degree and started working in different countries, she called me monster and started threatening me. Nearly 40 years later, when I was making a living from the books I wrote based on what I know, and making 6 times more money than she ever will, she apologized. I'm just not sure why or what she was apologizing for. I had already forgiven her ignorance when realizing nobody would ever believe the truth but myself. I had to go the whole way alone. Nobody was going to come with me on this very long, painful and challenging journey that humans call life but for me was much more than that, it was my mission, of changing their whole future far beyond the time when I'm gone. She was never my mother but merely the human body that gave me birth. In that sense, I am a monster, because I had no love. I had to find that too, on my own. — Robin Sacredfire

Asteroids are deep-space bodies orbiting the Sun, not the Earth, and traveling to one would mean sending humans into solar orbit for the very first time. Facing those challenges of radiation, navigation and life support on a months-long trip millions of miles from home would be a perfect learning journey before a Mars trip. — Rusty Schweickart

Our world, seemingly global, is in reality a planet of thousands of the most varied and never intersecting provinces. A trip around the world is a journey from backwater to backwater, each of which considers itself, in its isolation, a shining star. For most people, the real world ends on the threshold of their house, at the edge of their village, or, at the very most, on the border of their valley. That, which is beyond is unreal, unimportant, and even useless, whereas that which we have at our fingertips, in our field of vision, expands until it seems an entire universe, overshadowing all else. Often, the native and the newcomer have difficulty finding a common language, because each looks at the same place through a different lens. The newcomer has a wide-angle lens, which gives him a distant diminished view, although with a long horizon line, while the local always employs a telescopic lens that magnifies the slightest detail. — Ryszard Kapuscinski

Blood had long since ceased to beat from one end to the other, but one could sense, from passages marked with fresher traces of wheels and hooves, that once the meaning and even the very idea of a long journey was lost, sleep had not descended over it in one fell swoop: it had continued to steal a march here and there, in a discontinuous way, and over short distances, like a laborer who feels his cart jolt on a section of Roman road that crosses his field ... — Julien Gracq

And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our own feet, and learn to be at home. — Wendell Berry

A cold coming we had of it, Just the worst time of the year For a journey, and such a long journey: The ways deep and the weather sharp, The very dead of winter. — T. S. Eliot

Dear girl, it will be a very long road if you spend more time looking backwards than forward. — Soman Chainani

It is clearly not the journey for everyone. People succeed in as many ways as there are people. Some can be completely fulfilled with destinations that are much closer to home and more comfortable. But if you long to keep going, then I hope you are able to follow my lead to the places I have gone. To within a whisper of your own personal perfection. To places that are sweeter because you worked so hard to arrive there. To places at the very edge of your dreams. — Michael Johnson

There are certain constant factors to be found in true success whether it be the success of an Andrew Carnegie or of a Mahatma Gandhi. These are the essential factors, independent of wealth or achievement, poverty or asceticism. These are the dynamic factors in success, the very bone and sinew of it. The first constant factor is purpose. One must know that in whatever he does he is moving forward toward a goal. Aimlessness is the worst enemy of success. One can hardly feel successful in a bog. But as long as one has purpose he feels that his energies and creative thought are taking him somewhere, and there is satisfaction in the journey just as there is despair whenever we feel, as we often insightfully put it, that we are getting nowhere. — Og Mandino

A booby woos his mate with a story of abundance; a bee dances out a story of food. Whatever line we draw between instinct and awareness does not change that the story is there from the outset, long before there are poets to recite it or scribes to record it. So it is that what we still think of as our unique heritage, the thing that sets us apart, what the gods have given us, the magic moment of "Let there be light," is perhaps only a passage on a much longer journey, one that is primal beyond reckoning and that goes back to the very beginnings of life itself. — Nino Ricci

I always believe that Kar-Wai has a complete script: he just doesn't show it to us. He wants us to experience and explore the character. He gives you a lot of space, and you know every time will be a very long journey. You just live in the character, and that's very different from other directors. — Tony Leung Chiu-Wai

Death, Andre, the prior thought, as he now buckled up his saddlebags for a long journey, and not the sort of death unleashed here, either. Death in the very oldest Catholic sense, as in Saint John's Gospel and the Didache: death of the soul as opposed to the road of life. For there are only two ways, dear Father Andre . . . but did anyone ever actually teach you that? It is only these simplest and plainest things we find so hard, anymore. — Michael Morow

Tukum is at times forgetful about his pigs, being readily distracted by other children, dragonflies, puddles of water, and wild foods.
Nevertheless, Tukem is a very proud little boy, and since his nami lives Lukigin, where his mother has already gone, he has decided to go away for good. This morning he put on his thin neck the cowrie collar with its brief string of shells which is his sole belonging, he smeared his body with pig grease until it shone, in order to make a fine impression at Lukigin ... Then he set off alone on the long journey in the sun across the woods and fields, a small brown figure with a flat head and pot belly. His back was turned on Wuperainma, his pigs and his friends, his childhood, and he clutched a frail stick in his hand. — Peter Matthiessen

One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time. — Andre Gide

All that can best be expressed in words should be expressed in verse, but verse is a slow thing to create; nay, it is not really created: it is a secretion of the mind, it is a pearl that gathers round some irritant and slowly expresses the very essence of beauty and of desire that has lain long, potential and unexpressed, in the mind of the man who secretes it. God knows that this Unknown Country has been hit off in verse a hundred times...

Milton does it so well in the Fourth Book of Paradise Lost that I defy any man of a sane understanding to read the whole of that book before going to bed and not to wake up next morning as though he had been on a journey. — Hilaire Belloc

These were the attributes and qualities on whose basis the Prophet (May the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) wanted to build a new society, the most wonderful and the most honorable society ever known in history. On these grounds, he strove to resolve the longstanding problems, and later gave humanity the chance to breathe a sigh of relief after a long exhausting journey on dark and gloomy avenues. Such lofty morals lay at the very basis of creating a new society with integrated members who would be immune to all fluctuations of time, and powerful enough to change the whole course of humanity. — Safiur-Rahman Al-Mubarakpuri

It helps, I think, to consider ourselves on a very long journey: the main thing is to keep to the faith, to endure, to help each other when we stumble or tire, to weep and press on. — Mary Caroline Richards

Life's been one tough little shit, but there's a very obvious reason why she hasn't let me get too comfy, settle too long or sink too deep. She knows she has to kick me in the ass sometimes to get me moving on my journey. — Jennifer DeLucy

In our quest for living a pure, focused life that pleases God, we all hit the wall at one time or another. What do we do then? Give up ... Not an option. I have had times when the road has gotten long ... Those periods can be very challenging. When they happen, I go to God and ask for His strength for the journey. — Rebecca St. James

Now, at the end of the long journey from Vegas, as I turned into Patriots Landing and drove past the twin white lions, the fearful clench of my stomach finally eased. I glanced at the rearview mirror and let out a breath of relief at what I didn't see as I passed the very model house where my wife and I had made our choice. The roads were lined with examples of all the houses we considered that day, each looking neatly squared away on its suitably sized lot, the Carter Braxtons, the George Wyeths, even the insipid Patrick Henrys with their fake-brick fronts. — William Lashner

I wanted to do my part to help preserve that golden age of travel ... I step aboard The Patron Tequila Express railcar, and I go back in time to the days when a long journey was something fun and very special. — John Paul DeJoria

It's a long journey and along the journey you'll get tired. But if, when you're very, very tired and you're about to give up and you think: — Frederick Lenz

I really believe that at the start of the journey the condemned man, sitting in the tumbril, must feel that an infinite life still stretches ahead of him. However, the houses roll by one by one, the tumbril rumbles on - oh, that's nothing, it's still a long way to the turning into the next street, and he continues to look keenly to the left and the right at the thousands of indifferently curious people with their eyes riveted upon him, and he continues vaguely to imagine that, like all of them, he is still a human being. But here's the turning into the next street! Never mind though, never mind, still a whole street to go. And no matter how many houses he passes, he still thinks: "There are still a lot of houses." And so to the very end, right up until they reach the town square. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Then one day, from the window of a car (the destination of that journey is now forgotten), I saw a billboard by the side of the road. The sight could not have lasted very long; perhaps the car stopped for a moment, perhaps it slowed down long enough for me to see, large and looming shapes similar to those in my book, but shapes that I had never seen before. and yet, all of a sudden, I knew what they were; I heard them in my head, they metamorphosed from black lines and white spaces into a solid, sonourous, meangingful reality. I had done this all by myself. No one had performed the magic for me. I and the shapes were alone together, revealing ourselves in a silently respectful dialogue. Since I could turn bare lines into a living reality, I was all-poweful. i could read. — Alberto Manguel

Going to a concert can sometimes be very difficult. It can be a long journey. There's the ticket prices. But when the music goes to the community - not the community coming to the concert - they say, 'Wow! I didn't know that this music was so amazing!' — Gustavo Dudamel

Martial arts is a life journey. One of the things my teacher taught me a long time ago was that everyone's path to the mastery of a certain system is different. Some people's path is a very direct route, where others might wind back and forth if you are injured or something. — Ryan Potter

My first and foremost goal when I joined the Yankees was to win the world championship. Certainly, it's been a long road and very difficult journey. But I'm just happy that after all these years we were able to win and reach the goal that I had come here for. — Hideki Matsui

A journey may be long or short, but it must start at the very spot one finds oneself. — Jim Stovall

The novelist Thomas Wolfe, recalling a lifelong struggle with illness, wrote in his last letter, "I've made a long voyage and been to a strange country, and I've seen the dark man very close." I had not made the journey myself, and I had only seen the darkness reflected in the eyes of others. But surely, it was the most sublime moment of my clinical life to have watched that voyage in reverse, to encounter men and women returning from the strange country - to see them so very close, clambering back. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

Getting a handle on why wolves do what they do has never been an easy proposition. Not only are there tremendous differences in both individual and pack personalities, but each displays a surprising range of behaviors depending on what's going on around them at any given time. No sooner will a young researcher thing, 'That's it, I've finally got a handle on how wolves respond in a particular situation,' than they'll do something to prove him at least partially wrong. Those of us who've been in this business for very long have come to accept a professional life full of wrong turns and surprises. Clearly, this is an animal less likely to offer scientists irrefutable facts than to lure us on a long and crooked journey of constant learning. — Douglas W. Smith