Quotes to Inspire You

I love quotes! I know there are people who don’t, but I have found them extremely helpful. There are two kinds of people who can benefit greatly from quotes: people  who over-think everything, and people who are lazy thinkers. I won’t tell you which I am, but suffice it to say I try to live my life by simple quotes that have stood the test of time. At their best they cut through all the fog and indecision and give clear, concise directions as how to best live my life. Here are some of my favorites that pertain to the cheap, green, RV lifestyle. I hope they help you as much as they have helped me.

 Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. – Mark Twain

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.
– Henry David Thoreau

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. – Henry David Thoreau

 It is not the end of the physical body that should worry us. Rather, our concern must be to live while we’re alive -to release our inner selves from the spiritual death that comes with living behind a façade designed to conform to external definitions of who and what we are. – Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

 By confronting us with irreducible mysteries that stretch our daily vision to include infinity, nature opens an inviting and guiding path toward a spiritual life. – Thomas More

 And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. – Anais Nin

 Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books. – John Lubbock

 Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul. – John Muir

 Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair. – Kahlil Gibran

 For every person who has ever lived there has come, at last, a spring he will never see. Glory then in the springs that are yours. – Pam Brown

I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order. – John Burroughs

 I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in. – George Washington Carver

In wilderness I sense the miracle of life, and behind it our scientific  accomplishments fade to trivia. – Charles Lindbergh

 Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better. – Albert Einstein

One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today. – Dale Carnegie

 Man’s heart away from nature becomes hard. – Standing Bear

Climb up on some hill at sunrise. Everybody needs perspective once in a while, and you’ll find it there. – Robb Sagendorph

 All I want is to stand in a field and to smell green, to taste air, to feel the earth want me, Without all this concrete hating me. – Phillip Pulfrey

 If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy, if a blade of grass springing up in the fields has power to move you, if the simple things of nature have a message that you understand, rejoice, for your soul is alive. – Eleonora Duse

 I’ve made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener, I’m convinced of the opposite. – Bertrand Russell

 Once you have heard the lark known the swish of feet through hill-top grass and smelt the earth made ready for the seed, you are never again going to be fully happy about the cities and towns that man carries like a crippling weight upon his back. – Gwyn Thomas

 You will find something more in woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you that which you can never learn from masters. – St. Bernard

Seize the Day: Live

When it comes down to dying, I want to know what it is like to have really lived. – Lou Whittaker

Every man dies. Not every man really lives. – Braveheart

 Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways. – Stephen Vincent Benét

 To always be intending to live a new life, but never find time to set about it – this is as if a man should put off eating and drinking from one day to another till he be starved and destroyed. – Walter Scott

 To change one’s life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly. No exceptions. – William James

 Men for the sake of getting a living forget to live. – Margaret Fuller

 Death twitches my ear.  “Live,” he says, “I am coming.” – Virgil

 Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out. – Oliver Wendell Holmes

 Use your health, even to the point of wearing it out. That is what it is for. Spend all you have before you die; do not outlive yourself. – George Bernard Shaw

 The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. – Jack London

 We are always getting ready to live but never living. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

 Real generosity toward the future in giving all to the present. – Albert Camus

Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call today his own:
He who, secure within, can say,
Tomorrow, do thy worst, for I have lived today. – John Dryden

 Follow Your Dreams

 Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined. – Henry David Thoreau

 Happy are those who dream dreams and are willing to pay the price to make them come true. – Anonymous

 You’ll never achieve your dreams if they don’t become goals. – Anonymous

 Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

 Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore. – Andre Gide

 It’s the most unhappy people who most fear change. – Mignon McLaughlin

 Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe. – Anatole France

 He who would travel happily must travel light. – Antoine de St. Exupery

 All I want is to stand in a field
and to smell green, to taste air,
to feel the earth want me,
Without all this concrete hating me.
– Phillip Pulfrey

If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy,
if a blade of grass springing up in the fields has power to move you,
if the simple things of nature have a message that you understand,
rejoice, for your soul is alive.
– Eleonora Duse

Life is not lost by dying;
life is lost minute by minute,
day by dragging day,
in all the thousand small uncaring ways.
– Stephen Vincent Benét

To always be intending to live a new life, but never find time to set about it–this is as if a man should put off eating and drinking from one day to another till he be starved and destroyed. – Walter Scott

 Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe. – Anatole France

 Possessions

 My riches consist not in the extent of my possessions, but in the fewness of my wants. – J. Brotherton

 In our rich consumers’ civilization we spin cocoons around ourselves and get possessed by our possessions. – Max Lerner

 It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly. – Bertrand Russell

 Unnecessary possessions are unnecessary burdens. If you have them, you have to take care of them! There is great freedom in simplicity of living. It is those who have enough but not too much who are the happiest. – Peace Pilgrim

 Everything we possess that is not necessary for life or happiness becomes a burden, and scarcely a day passes that we do not add to it. – Robert Brault,

 To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter; to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird’s nest or a wildflower in spring—these are some of the rewards of the simple life. – John Burroughs

 The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak. – Hans Hofmann

 I like to walk about among the beautiful things that adorn the world; but private wealth I should decline, or any sort of personal possessions, because they would take away my liberty. – George Santayana

 Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful. – William Morris

 Our life is frittered away by detail…Simplify, simplify, simplify! …Simplicity of life and elevation of purpose. – Henry Thoreau

 Anything you cannot relinquish when it has outlived its usefulness possesses you, and in this materialistic age a great many of us are possessed by our possessions. – Peace Pilgrim

 Frugality is one of the most beautiful and joyful words in the English language, and yet one that we are culturally cut off from understanding and enjoying. The consumption society has made us feel that happiness lies in having things, and has failed to teach us the happiness of not having things. – Elise Boulding

 Happiness consists, not in possessing much, but in being content with what we possess. He who wants little always has enough. – Zimmermann

 Everything we possess that is not necessary for life or happiness becomes a burden, and scarcely a day passes that we do not add to it. – Robert Brault

 Adventure

 Adventure is worthwhile in itself. – Amelia Earhart

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is not safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. – Helen Keller

 The test of an adventure is that when you’re in the middle of it, you say to yourself, “Oh, now I’ve got myself into an awful mess I wish I were sitting quietly at home.” And the sign that something’s wrong with you is when you sit quietly at home wishing you were out having lots of adventure. – Thornton

Any coward can sit in his home and criticize a pilot for flying into a mountain in a fog. But I would rather, by far, die on a mountainside than in bed. What kind of man would live where there is no daring? And is life so dear that we should blame men for dying in adventure. Is there a better way to die? – Charles Lindbergh, Jr.

 Never forget that life can only be nobly inspired and rightly lived if you take it bravely and gallantly, as a splendid adventure in which you are setting out into an unknown country, to meet many a joy, to find many a comrade, to win and lose many a battle. – Annie Besant

 The galleries are full of critics. They play no ball, they fight no fights. They make no mistakes because they attempt nothing. Down in the arena are the doers. They make mistakes because they try many things. The man who makes no mistakes lacks boldness and the spirit of adventure. He is the one who never tries anything. His is the brake on the wheel of progress. And yet it cannot be truly said he makes no mistakes, because his biggest mistake is the very fact that he tries nothing, does nothing, except criticize those who do things. – David M. Shoup

 A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are built for. ” – John A. Shedd

 Life is NOT a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming — ’WOW, what a ride!!! ” – Anonymous

 Life is a fatal adventure. It can only have one end. So why not make it as far-ranging and free as possible. – Alexander Eliot

 Without adventure civilization is in full decay. ” – Alfred North Whitehead

 Every man can transform the world from one of the monotony and drabness to one of excitement and adventure. – Irving Wallace

 Money

 Society drives people crazy with lust and calls it advertising. – John Lahr

 Debt is the slavery of the free. – Publilius Syrus

 We make ourselves rich by making our wants few. – Henry Thoreau

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. – Henry David Thoreau

 Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. There is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of its filling a vacuum, it makes one. If it satisfies one want, it doubles and trebles that want another way. – Benjamin Frankin

 Travel

 Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” – Mark Twain

 The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page. – St. Augustine

 When we get out of the glass bottle of our ego and when we escape like the squirrels in the cage of our personality and get into the forest again, we shall shiver with cold and fright. But things will happen to us so we don’t know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in. – D. H. Lawrence

 To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world. – Freya Stark

 Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living. – Miriam Beard

 Not all those who wander are lost. – J. R. R. Tolkien

 I think that travel comes from some deep urge to see the world, like the urge that brings up a worm in an Irish bog to see the moon when it is full. – Lord Dunsany