Ten Quotes About Adversity

Matt — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 09:15:20 +0000

We enjoy travelling among strange cultures and pushing our bodies in outdoors activities because we love exploration and adversity. In overcoming adversity, we prove to ourselves, time and time again, that we are not confined by social norms nor limited by our bodies. Overcoming adversity makes us feel free.

In honour of the opening of the 2012 climbing season on Mount Everest, here are ten quotes about adversity.

Adversity causes some men to break; others to break records.
~ William Arthur Ward

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.
~ Horace

For gold is tried in the fire and acceptable men in the furnace of adversity.
~ George Santayana

Adversity is the first path to truth.
~ Lord Byron

Adversity is the state in which man most easily becomes acquainted with himself.
~ John Wooden

Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes monsters.
~ Victor Hugo

You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.
~ Walt Disney

By adversity are wrought the greatest works of admiration, and all the fair examples of renown, out of distress and misery are grown.
~ Samuel Daniel

By trying we can easily endure adversity. Another man’s, I mean.
~ Mark Twain

Adversity is the diamond dust Heaven polishes its jewels with.
~ Thomas Carlyle

Lead photo by ` TheDreamSky

The post Ten Quotes About Adversity appeared first on XpatMatt.

Ten Quotes About Walking

Matt — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 03:52:31 +0000

Why would I write a list of walking quotes? Today wrote a a query letter to a magazine editor about an article about different walks that a person can take in Taiwan. While looking up quotations to use in the query I suddenly remembered how much I used to enjoy walking. When I first started traveling, whenever I arrived in a new city, after putting my things in a hostel, the first thing I would do was walk down random streets and alleys and I wouldn’t stop until I had gotten myself good and lost. That would usually take one or two hours, and finding my way back several more. One my first trip outside of North America ( I was 18 at the time) I spent eight hours lost in Madrid at night. It was the most exciting thing that I had ever done. I explored cobblestone alleys and unknown plazas and wandered among centuries old pillars holding up centuries old roofs. I saw gangs of street hoods and tapa bars filled with overweight, overly made-up prostitutes — things I’d never seen before in my life. I was even accosted by one extremely persistent old hooker missing several teeth who insisted in walking arm-in-arm with me and chattering away to me in Spanish even though it was obvious that I didn’t speak Spanish and wasn’t going to give her any money.

Walking is the best way to see a place. If you drive, you watch the road. In a taxi, the city moves past too quickly. Riding a bicycle is even too fast and distracting. Walking is the only way to really examine the people, the shops, the art, and the trash. The only way to feel the texture of a city at ground level is with your feet.

So, in celebration of my remembrance of my favorite way to explore, here are ten quotes about the glory of walking:

An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.
~ Henry David Thoreau

My father considered a walk among the mountains
as the equivalent of churchgoing.
~ Aldous Huxley

Walking is the great adventure, the first meditation,
a practice of heartiness and soul primary to humankind.
Walking is the exact balance between spirit and humility.
~ Gary Snyder

In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.
~ John Muir

There is nothing like walking to get the feel of a country. A fine landscape is like
a piece of music; it must be taken at the right tempo. Even a bicycle goes too fast.
~ Paul Scott Mowrer

Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time.
~ Steven Wright

I would walk along the quais when I had finished work or when I was trying to think something out. It was easier to think if I was walking and doing something or seeing people doing something that they understood.
~ Ernest Hemingway

All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche

It is a great art to saunter.
~ Henry David Thoreau

Meandering leads to perfection.
~ Lao Tzu

The post Ten Quotes About Walking appeared first on XpatMatt.

quotes Archives

Ten Quotes About Adversity

Ten Quotes About Walking