INDEX OF QUOTATIONS
“Nothing is hidden beneath the sun.” Leonardo da Vinci
From The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, vol. 2, chapter 44: ‘Allegory’. Translated by Edward Maccurdy.
First published in 1939 by Reynal & Hitchcock, New York.
“From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.”
Franz Kafka
From Beim Bau der Chinesischen Mauer / The Great Wall of China. First published in German by Gustav
Kiepenheuer Verlag, Cologne, in 1931, and in English by Martin Secker, London, in 1933, in a translation by
Willa and Edwin Muir.
“The skillful traveller leaves no traces of his wheels or footsteps.” Tao Te Ching
From the Tao Te Ching, chapter 27. Translated by James Legge. First published in English in 1891 in Sacred
Books of the East, vol. 39: Sacred Books of China by Oxford University Press.
“I wondered much what motive Nature could have had in twisting the roots and branches of the trees into such
strange fantastic contortions.” Mary Seacole
From Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands, published in 1857 by William Blackwood &
Sons, Edinburgh.
“Who knows the flower best? The one who reads about it in a book? Or the one who finds it wild on the moun-
tainside?” Alexandra David-Néel
From My Journey to Lhasa / Voyage d'une Parisienne à Lhassa, first published in 1927, in French by Librairie
Pion and in English by William Heinemann Ltd., London and by Harper & Brothers, New York.
“Wander but a few paces from the encampment, and listen in the profound of the solitude to the low and melancholy
sigh of the night wind, which sweeps the light surface of the sand.” W. H. Bartlett
From The Nile Boat; Or, Glimpses of the Land of Egypt, published in 1849 by Arthur Hall, Virtue & Co., London.
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but in seeing with new eyes.” Marcel Proust
From La Prisonnière (À la recherche du temps perdu, vol. 5). First published in French by Éditions Grasset
between 1913 and 1923, then in English in 1929 by Chatto & Windus, London, and Alfred A. Knopf, New
York, in a translation by C. K. Scott Moncrieff. This oft-quoted maxim is, in fact, an adaptation of Proust’s
original, which in Scott Moncrieff’s translation reads: “The only true voyage of discovery, the only fountain of
Eternal Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through
the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that
each of them is…”
“You ask me why I live in the green hills. I smile and make no reply, my heart at peace.” Li Bai
Li Bai (also called Li Bo, Li Pai or Li Po) wrote more than 1,000 poems in China in the 8th Century. His work
was initially popularized in English by Ezra Pound’s translations, collected in the 1915 volume Cathay, pub-
lished by Elkin Matthews, London.
“Here I am, where I am supposed to be.” Isak Dinesen
From Out of Africa. First published in 1937 by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York.
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“Traveling — it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.” Ibn Battuta
From The Travels. First published in English in London in 1829 by J. Murray, Parbury, Allen & Co. and Howell
& Stuart, in a translation from the Arabic by Samuel Lee.
“The morning moisture, the clouds, the bodies of water — I become part of it.” Navajo (Diné) song
The Navajo people, who call themselves Diné (literally ‘The People’), have been resident in the southwestern
USA for at least six centuries. The lyric excerpted here is one line of a chant used in sacred cermonies.
“The sea is everything… it is the ‘Living Infinite’.” Jules Verne
From Vingt Mille Lieues Sous Les Mers: Tour du Monde Sous Marin. This line is spoken by Captain Nemo
in Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea: An Underwater Tour of the World, first published in English
in 1873, by Sampson Low in London and by James R. Osgood & Co. in Boston, in a translation by Lewis
Page Mercier.
“At first, a few scattered wild plants and flowers, the outposts or advanced guard of vegetation, showed themselves
timidly among the sand-hills, where some imperceptible moisture sustained their verdure.” James Augustus St. John
From Egypt and Nubia, Their Scenery and Their People, published by Chapman and Hall Ltd, London, in 1845.
“Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises, sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.” William Shakespeare
From The Tempest. This line is voiced by the half-human, half-monster Caliban in Act 3, scene 2 of Shake-
speare’s The Tempest, likely written between 1610 and 1611.
“If you want to tell anything to Heaven, tell it to the wind.” Oji proverb
From Wit and Wisdom from West Africa: Or, A Book of Proverbial Philosophy, Idioms, Enigmas, and Laconisms,
(chapter 3: Proverbs in the Oji Tongue). compiled by Richard F. Burton, published by Tinsley Brothers, London,
in 1865. The Oji language is known today as the Akuapem (or Akuapem Twi) dialect of the Akan language,
spoken across southern Ghana and southeastern Ivory Coast.
“What are heavy? Sea-sand and sorrow; What are brief? Today and tomorrow; What are frail? Spring blossoms and
youth; What are deep? The ocean and truth.” Christina Rossetti
From Sing-Song: A Nursery Rhyme Book, first published in 1893 by Macmillan and Co., London.
“We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to
grow, to love… and then we return home.” Aboriginal Australian proverb
The Westernized term ‘Aboriginal Australian’ encompasses numerous peoples who have lived in Australia for
more than 50,000 years. Although popular online, this proverb has proved impossible (at least for us) to trace
to a specific source or English translation.
“I gazed around with rapture, and felt more of that spontaneous pleasure which gives credibility to our expectation of
happiness, than I had for a long, long time.” Mary Wollstonecraft
From Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark, first published in 1796 by
J. Johnson, London.
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