“I wish sometimes that there was still a bit of adventure in the world. That wandering the world and the nations within it was both less dangerous from threat of war or terror and yet risky in that you were facing the unknown and the elements. To step onto a boat knowing that you took your life in your hands just for the chance to see a minaret or the pyramids or the rising temple in the distance. Knowing that you were going where few dared to tred. In a place that would take months to reach. Seeing things that others only dreamed of. To know that you were setting off into a world neither micromanaged nor constantly watched and guarded and known. To be unknown in a world that was unknown. Perhaps it is simply the romantic novels speaking or the spirit in me that was raised on stories of the great explorers of old. But it feels as though so much of the world is either politically frightening or simply has been seen a million times by a million eyes and photographs. They say that with globalization, the world continually shrinks. I feel that is true, and tragic in some way. There is something glorious in the idea of a very large world. One that has unknown possibilities and potential and newness to it. One that is too large to lay out on a computer screen and cannot be summarized in a geography book. Yes, although coming together is a wonderful thing and a miracle of our time, I wish sometimes that there was still a bit of adventure in the world.”
“But a planet can also become dark because of “too strong a desire for security … the greatest evil there is.” Meg resists her father’s analysis. What’s wrong with wanting to be safe? Mr. Murry insists that “lust for security” forces false choices and a panicked search for safety and conformity. This reminded me that my grandmother would get very annoyed when anyone would talk about “the power of love.” Love, she insisted, is not power, which she considered always coercive. To love is to be vulnerable; and it is only in vulnerability and risk—not safety and security—that we overcome darkness.”
“There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life.
” Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget, that until the day God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words, ‘Wait and Hope.”
For, verily, great love springs from great knowledge of the beloved object, and if you little know it, you will be able to love it only little or not at all. **Leonardo da Vinci
“For just one second, look at your life and see how perfect it is. Stop looking for the next secret door that is going to lead you to your real life. Stop waiting. This is it: there’s nothing else. It’s here, and you’d better decide to enjoy it or you’re going to be miserable wherever you go, for the rest of your life, forever.”
“Did not learned men, too, hold, till within the last twenty-five years, that a flying dragon was an impossible monster? And do we not now know that there are hundreds of them found fossil up and down the world? People call them Pterodactyles: but that is only because they are ashamed to call them flying dragons, after denying so long that flying dragons could exist.”