Quotations about Adventure
...he retained to his last hour his taste for the adventurous, the singular, and the uncommon, and never was steady enough to pursue perseveringly the drudgery of life. ~The O'Hara Family (Michael Banim), The Ghost-Hunter and His Family, 1833
And the strongest emotion was that life was as precious as it was puzzling. It was an ecstacy because it was an adventure; it was an adventure because it was an opportunity. ~G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
I am the Spirit of Adventure!
I am that which rules mankind!
To every man I come. Have you heard my voice? You? You?
I am coming. Heed my call!...
Come ye! Come ye! I will show you the paths of wilderness.
I will teach you the silence thereof.
I will show you men's crowded cities
And teach you loneliness there.
With me you may scale the mountains;
With me you may cross the seas.
You shall have laughter and tears.
I will give you a strong man's heart.
Hunger, thirst, weariness, you shall know them all,
But I will give you Freedom!
~Henrietta Wiches, "Adventure"
Adventures are things that happen that aren't supposed to happen. ~Percy Keese Fitzhugh, Roy Blakeley: Lost, Strayed or Stolen, 1921
Well; keep good quarter and good care to-night:
The day shall not be up so soon as I,
To try the fair adventure of to-morrow.
~William Shakespeare, King John, c.1596
Perhaps the greatest adventure in life is that period between the ignorance of knowledge and the knowledge of ignorance, called Middle Age. ~Kenneth Alfred Evelyn Alexander, "The I.O.U.'s Have It," 1931
To pitch my tent with no prosy plan,
To range and to change at will;
To mock at the mastership of man,
To seek Adventure's thrill.
~Robert W. Service (1874–1958), "A Rolling Stone," 1912
Strickland had burst the bonds that hitherto had held him. He had found, not himself, as the phrase goes, but a new soul with unsuspected powers... a spirituality, troubling and new, which led the imagination along unsuspected ways, and suggested dim empty spaces, lit only by the eternal stars, where the soul, all naked, adventured fearful to the discovery of new mysteries. ~W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence, 1919
Adventure stands at every cross-road and only the dun-grey kind with the one-way mind ignore him. But the variety-artist knows what his nose knows and goes where his nose goes, for it's hinged, although apparently unhinged, and if it leads him into trouble it also teaches him the scent of it. ~Kenneth Alfred Evelyn Alexander (c.1890–1953), "The One-Way Mind," in The New Zealand Railways Magazine, 1931 June 1st
It is only in adventure that some people succeed in knowing themselves — in finding themselves. ~André Gide
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. ~Helen Keller, Let Us Have Faith, 1940
But what civilization was not founded on adventure, and how long could one exist without it? What justifies the risk of life? Some answer, the attainment of knowledge. Some say wealth, or power, is sufficient cause. I believe the risks are justified by the sheer love of the life I lead. ~Charles Lindbergh
The traveler was active; he went strenuously in search of people, of adventure, of experience. The tourist is passive; he expects interesting things to happen to him. He goes "sight-seeing"... ~Daniel J. Boorstin, The Image: or, What Happened to the American Dream, 1962
I think it's about adventure. 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 Wilder
Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul. ~W. Somerset Maugham
Now nothing happened the next week except going to school, and gee whiz, there's no adventure in that. ~Percy Keese Fitzhugh, Roy Blakeley: Lost, Strayed or Stolen, 1921
In gardening, go lightly on caution, heavily on adventure, and see what comes out. ~Ruth Stout, "It Ain't Necessarily So," How to Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back, 1955
If life is not an adventure it's a sad venture, and drear at the price. After all life is after all; it is not what you make it, but what it makes you. ~Kenneth Alfred Evelyn Alexander (c.1890–1953), "Live Wires and Dead Marines," in The New Zealand Railways Magazine, 1931 June 1st
Without adventure civilization is in full decay. ~Alfred North Whitehead
Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science. ~Edwin Powell Hubble, "The Exploration of Space," c.1933