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The Journey Is the Destination: A Book of Quotes With Commentaries

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R. Alan Woods

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“We are not easy to help. Nor are we easy to be around. Nobody with a serious illness is easy to be around. Although not obviously physically disabled, we struggle to get things done. Our energy levels are dangerously low. Sometimes, we find it hard to talk. We get angry and frustrated. We fall into despair. We cry, for no apparent reason. Sometimes we find it difficult to eat, or to sleep. Often, we have to go to bed in the afternoon or all day. So do most people with a serious illness. We are no different.”

“A bookish man, he read widely, but rarely in search of new knowledge. Instead, he sought confirmation of his preexisting fantasy about an orient that lay almost on Europe’s doorstep. This dream drove him across the ocean sea, where he saw and heard things already in his own head; sirens, cannibals, subjects of the great Kahn, even an island off Hispaniola inhabited by Amazons. Other men of his day had clearer vision. “The hidden half of the globe is brought to light,” Peter Martyris, an Italian historian in the Spanish court wrote upon Columbus’ return from his first voyage in 1493. The next year, Martyris became the first European to refer to the Indies as “Ab orbe novo.” The New World. Yet Columbus never grasped the immensity of what he’d done. The more he saw, the less he learned. Mysticism, and dreams of the Orient kept overwhelming the evidence of his own senses.”

“You don't need to cut out the heart in your chest so other people can breathe. You just need to let them use their lungs. The right of someone to breathe does not detract from your heartbeat. We must not fear the lives that others live. Someone else going to Heaven doesn't mean you're going to Hell. Someone else going to Hell does not mean you're going to burn too. We must not fear the freedom that others have. You don't need to stop breathing so other people can keep their lungs. You just need to let them breathe. Why don't we all put a final end to the limitations that we think we are born into? They're not real. They don't exist.”