To be effortlessly yourself is a blessing, an ambrosia. It is like a few tiny little puffs of opium which lift you ever so slightly off the hard surface of the world.

Laurie Colwin

Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world…would do this, it would change the earth.

William Faulkner

<<>>

Happy Birthday, America!!

I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, “This is what it is to be happy.”

Sylvia Plath

Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget, that until the day God will deign to reveal the future… all human wisdom is contained in these two words, “Wait and hope.”

Alexandre Dumas

We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again- to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more.

Pico Iyer