Ella Maillart Quotes

You do not travel if you are afraid of the unknown, you travel for the unknown, that reveals you with yourself.

The sooner we learn to be jointly responsible, the easier the sailing will be.

The timelessness of a concept has to be woven into the running warp of dying time, vertical power has to be wedded to the horizontal earth.

I had to live in the desert before I could understand the full value of grass in a green ditch.

Humanity is made up of an infinity of different individuals. Each of us travels for motives exclusively his own.

It is always our own self that we find at the end of the journey. The sooner we face that self, the better.

I did not want to be depressed by the gap existing between my weakness and my ambition.

There is only one valid species of voyage, which is walk towards the men.

Words are impotent to describe certain emotions.

When the heart speaks, its language is the same under all latitudes.

One travels to escape from it all, but that is the great illusion: It cannot be done, since one travels with one's mind.

Only when one is able to grasp wideness can one possess it.

I wanted to learn a few foreign languages, and therefore I had to go abroad.

Travel can also be the spirit of adventure somewhat tamed, for those who desire to do something they are a bit afraid of.

The state of minds vary according to the angle under which one examines them.

One travels to learn once more how to marvel at life in the way a child does.

Certain travellers give the impression that they keep moving because only then do they feel fully alive.

The true traveller is the one urged to move about for physical, aesthetic, intellectual as well as spiritual reasons.

I refuse to imprison our acts in the rigid mould of sentences.

I gained direct knowledge of the life of the poor in big towns: I have lived the narrowing mechanism of its conditioning and feared it.

Happiness is the intoxication produced by the moment of poise between a satisfactory past and an immediate future, rich with promise.

The usual channels of university studies or secretarial work did not appeal to me. I cherished difficult dreams through confidence in myself.

From the beginning, I wanted to live my own life, and patiently I shored up that desire against wind and tide.

One of the main points about travelling is to develop in us a feeling of solidarity, of that oneness without which no better world is possible.

That idea of escapism ... these words could sum up my life.

One travels to run away from routine, that dreadful routine that kills all imagination and all our capacity for enthusiasm.

When I look at something, it is certain that for an instant I am one with what I see.

Those who appreciate the ways of simple tribes, where every activity is direct and immediately understandable, are able to live among them.

The wideness of the horizon has to be inside us, cannot be anywhere but inside us, otherwise what we speak about is geographic distances.

We want to feel that this earth is all ours, like our parents' house when we were children.

I am sure that instinctively we wish to be everything, to possess it - why cut the rose or marry the man, otherwise?