Never Say "No" To A Vacation

From intrepid adventurers to relaxing tourists, short vacations, even lengthy Sabbaticals are the necessary rechargers we all at some time require. Some thoughts and observations to consider just in case anyone is questioning the value of some time off.

“Every person needs to take one day away.? A day in which one consciously separates the past from the future.? Jobs, family, employers, and friends can exist one day without any one of us, and if our egos permit us to confess, they could exist eternally in our absence.? Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for.? Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us.”? ?Maya Angelou – U.S. writer, activist.

“A vacation is what you take when you can no longer take what you’ve been taking.” ?Earl Wilson – U.S. journalist.

“Vacation time is something we all accrue, but only the wisest of us recognize its importance.”? Andrea Goeglein, PhD – U.S. writer, activist, business counselor.

“As you grow older, you learn a few things. One of them is to actually take the time you’ve allotted for vacation.” ?John Battelle – U.S. writer, journalist, entrepreneur.

“Neglecting vacation is neglecting success because every success needs accumulated positive energy!” ?Mehmet Murat Ildan – Turkish playwright.

“Some of your best ideas come when you’re on vacation.” ?Gautam Singhania – Indian journalist.

“Jobs fill your pocket, but adventures fill your soul.” ?Jaime Lyn Beatty Thi – U.S. actress, singer.

"Vacations mean a change of pace, a gentleness with ourselves, a time of rest and renewal, and a time to stretch ourselves and encounter new people, new lands, new ways, and new options." ?Anne Wilson Schaef –U.S. clinical psychologist, author.

“The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.”? Christopher McCandless – U.S. adventurer.

“If you think adventure is dangerous, try routine; it is lethal.” ?Paulo Coelho – Brazilian novelist, songwriter.

“There is no adventure without risk, and no exhilaration like adventure.”? ?A.R. Ivanovich – U.S. novelist.

“Travelers understand, instinctively and by experience, that travel and adventure change and elongate time, even while navigating the deadlines of airline and train departures.”? Paul Sheehan – Australian writer.

“Adventure rewrites the routine of our lives and wakes us sharply from the comforts of the familiar. It allows us to see how vast the expanse of our experience. Our ability to grow is no longer linear but becomes unrestricted to any direction we wish to run.” Josh Gates – U.S. television host, producer.

“Some adventures require nothing more than a willing heart and the ability to trip over the cracks in the world.”? Seanan McGuire – U.S. author.

“During those days of whirling about the globe, I had an epiphany: travel was the only area of my life where I had no expectations. I anticipated nothing while fully engaging each moment. What bred adventure, surprise and deep experience was not knowing, surrendering to now and letting go of control.”? Gina Greenlee – U.S. writer.

“Life never gives us what we want at the moment that we consider appropriate. Adventures do occur, but not punctually.”? E.M. Forster – U.K. author.

“The most fulfilling adventures happen when you start your journey without knowing where you’re going, because only then are you free to experience the unexpected detours you’re meant to take.”? A.J. Darkholme – Canadian author.

?“It is only in adventure that some people succeed in knowing themselves - in finding themselves. … You cannot discover new oceans unless you dare to lose sight of the shore.” Andre Gide – French author.

“Here today, up and off to somewhere else tomorrow! Travel, change, interest, excitement! The whole world before you, and a horizon that's always changing!”? Kenneth Grahame – U.K. author.

“Adventure should be 80 percent, I think this is manageable, but it's good to have that last 20 percent where you're right outside your comfort zone. Still safe, but outside your comfort zone." Edward Michael Bear Grylls – U.K. survival expert, adventurer, television presenter.

“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.” Neale Donald Walsch – U.S. author.

“So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.”? Jon Krakauer – U.S writer, mountaineer.

“Some beautiful paths can't be discovered without getting lost.”? Erol Ozan – U.S. academic, writer.

“But the beauty is in the walking -- we are betrayed by destinations.” Gwyn Thomas – Welsh writer, dramatist.

“I've been doing long-distance backpacking since 2002 when I hiked the Appalachian Trail. You start to calm down and relax and get into the slower rhythm of nature.” John Mackey – U.S. writer, entrepreneur, co-founder of Whole Foods Market.

“Distance changes utterly when you take the world on foot. A mile becomes a long way, two miles literally considerable, ten miles whopping, fifty miles at the very limits of conception. The world, you realize, is enormous in a way that only you and a small community of fellow hikers know. … You have no engagements, commitments, obligations, or duties; no special ambitions and only the smallest, least complicated of wants; you exist in a tranquil tedium, serenely beyond the reach of exasperation, ‘far removed from the seats of strife,’ ?as the early explorer and botanist William Bartram put it. … Walking for hours and miles becomes as automatic, as unremarkable, as breathing. At the end of the day you don’t think, ‘Hey, I did sixteen miles today,’ any more than you think, ‘Hey, I took eight-thousand breaths today.’ ?It’s just what you do.”? Bill Bryson – U.S travel writer.

"Trips and vacations are so much more. These experiences show you what's possible and challenge you to examine the paths you'll take in the future." ?Blake Mycoskie – U.S. American entrepreneur, author, philanthropist.

“Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.” ?Gustave Flaubert – French novelist.

“Never hesitate to go far away, beyond all seas, all frontiers, all countries, all beliefs.” ?Amin Maalouf – Lebanese born/French author.

“Leave home, leave the country, leave the familiar. Only then can routine experience—buying bread, eating vegetables, even saying hello—become new all over again.”? Anthony Doerr – U.S. author.

“But that's the glory of foreign travel, as far as I am concerned. I don't want to know what people are talking about. I can't think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Suddenly you are five years old again. You can't read anything, you have only the most rudimentary sense of how things work, you can't even reliably cross a street without endangering your life. Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses.”? Bill Bryson – U.S. travel writer.

“When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable.”? Clifton Fadiman – U.S. author.

“There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.”? Robert Louis Stevenson - Scottish novelist, essayist, poet, travel writer.

"I can’t think of anything that excites a great sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. … I love the feeling of being anonymous in a city I’ve never been before." ?Bill Bryson – U.S. travel writer.

“To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.” ?Freya Stark – U.S./Italian explorer, travel writer.

“Personally I like going places where I don't speak the language, don't know anybody, don't know my way around and don't have any delusions that I'm in control. Disoriented, even frightened, I feel alive, awake in ways I never am at home.”? Michael Mewshaw – U.S. author.

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”? Mark Twain – U.S. writer.

“If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion, and avoid the people, you might better stay home.”? James A. Michener – U.S. author.

“Like Salvador Dali’s paintings of watches melting in the sand, time wanders at its own curious pace whenever you’re on vacation in a foreign country.”? Laurie Nadel – U.S. author.

“Serendipity was my tour guide, assisted by caprice.”? Pico Iyer – U.K. writer.

“In my personal opinion, you miss out on the beauty of the moment if you go in planning what the moment is. It's like having a vacation too jam-packed with activities. You miss all of the sunsets.” Brie Larson – U.K. actress.

“Remember that happiness is a way of travel – not a destination.” ?Roy M. Goodman – U.S. politician, businessman.

“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”? Terry Pratchett – U.K. humorist.

“The wish to travel seems to me characteristically human: the desire to move, to satisfy your curiosity or ease your fears, to change the circumstances of your life, to be a stranger, to make a friend, to experience an exotic landscape, to risk the unknown.”? Paul Theroux – U.S. novelist, travel writer.

“With age, comes wisdom. With travel, comes understanding.”? Sandra Lake – Canadian writer.

“Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.”? Pat Conroy – U.S. writer.

“If the Internet were everything it is cracked up to be, we would all stay at home and be brilliantly witty and insightful. Yet with so much contradictory information available, there is more reason to travel than ever before: to look closer, to dig deeper, to sort the authentic from the fake; to verify, to smell, to touch, to taste, to hear and sometimes - importantly - to suffer the effects of this curiosity.”? Paul Theroux - U.S. novelist, travel writer.

“Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability.” Sam Keen -U.S. author, academic, philosopher.

"No, I didn't get a thing done, but I sure soaked up every minute of the memory we were making, and I count it all as time well wasted." Brad Paisley – U.S. singer, songwriter.

“Vacation is an opportunity to embrace your true self, whether that means finding rest and relaxation, pursuing personal growth, or simply enjoying life's pleasures.”? Shabira Banu Hussain Sumbhaniya – Indian writer.

“Stop dreaming about your bucket list and start living it!” Annette White – U.S. writer, photographer, adventurer.

“Live your life by a compass, not a clock.”? Erica Jong – U.S. writer.

“I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.” ?Susan Sontag – U.S. writer.

"This is what holidays, travels, vacations are about. It is not really rest or even leisure we chase. We strain to renew our capacity to wonder, to shock ourselves into astonishment once again." Shana Alexander – U.S. journalist.

"Vacations are a good thing. They give you a break from the routine and let your mind and body get refreshed while you supposedly spend some time doing some activities that you don't normally get to do. Vacations are also a bad thing. Why? Because they end." ?Jim Clark – U.K. author.

"Too much work, too much vacation, too much of any one thing is unsound." ?Walter Annenberg – U.S. businessman, investor, Philanthropist, diplomat.

"A vacation should be just long enough for the boss to miss you, and not long enough for him to discover how well he can get along without you." ?Jacob Morton Braude – U.S. writer.

“Work, Travel, Save, Repeat.” ?Anonymous.

“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.” Douglas Adams – U.K. author, humorist, screenwriter.

"Travel far, travel often, and travel without regrets." Oscar Wilde – Irish poet, playwright.

“Don't let your luggage define your travels, each life unravels differently.”?? Shane Koyczan – Canadian writer.

“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.”? Lewis Carroll – U.K. author.

“Oh, the places you will go!” Dr. Suess (Theodor Seuss Geisel) - U.S. children's author, cartoonist.

"No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow." ?Lin Yutang - Chinese inventor, linguist, novelist.

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