Quotes and passages on getting away

A one-day holiday can at times
be better than a one-week
vacation if you totally unplug
for that one day!

Catherine Pulsifer

A note: The idea of getting away isn't just about taking a vacation and seeing new places.
Rather, it also has to do with leaving behind the routine, the normal, the known, in order
to explore other ways of living and of thinking and of being. So the quotations on this page
are about vacations, but they're also about traveling and stretching limits and being open to
learning new things about our own lives by visiting places and people where lives tend to be
different than the lives we know at home.

We need changes from the duties and the cares of our accustomed everyday life. They are necessary for healthy, normal living. We need occasionally to be away from our friends, our relatives, from the members of our immediate households. Such changes are good for us; they are good for them. We appreciate them better, they us, when we are away from them for a period, or they us. Ralph Waldo Trine

Every person needs to take one day away. A day in which one consciously separates the past from the future. Jobs, family, employers, and friends can exist one day without any one of us, and if our egos permit us to confess, they could exist eternally in our absence. Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for. Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us. Maya Angelou Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now

Only an open mind still has room for new knowledge. What is outgrown and used up must be discarded to make room for what is yet to be learned. And much of the best thinking is done alone--in deserts, on beaches, in bed, behind closed doors. It is why we say we need to get away--to escape from clutter and busyness--to hear ourselves think. Robert Fulghum

Getting away from everything teaches you exactly what you love. Elite Daily

Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you
can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra
colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming
back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.

Terry Pratchett

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If you're brave enough to say goodbye, life will reward you with a new hello.

Paulo Coelho

Vacations mean a change of pace, a gentleness with ourselves, a time
of rest and renewal, and a time to stretch ourselves and encounter
new people, new lands, new ways, and new options.

Anne Wilson Schaef

I have never believed that vacations are luxuries.
They are our necessities – just like shelter, clothes,
and food, they make us feel like humans and not
like animals that care only for survival.

Alexander Babinets

Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are
confronted, no solutions searched for. Each of us needs to
withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us.

Maya Angelou

The opportunity to step away from everything and take
a break is something that shouldn’t be squandered.

Harper Reed

Go outside. Don’t tell anyone and don’t bring your phone. Start walking and keep walking until you no longer know the road like the palm of your hand, because we walk the same roads day in and day out, to the bus and back home and we cease to see. We walk in our sleep and teach our muscles to work without thinking and I dare you to walk where you have not yet walked and I dare you to notice. Don’t try to get anything out of it, because you won’t. Don’t try to make use of it, because you can’t. And that’s the point. Just walk, see, sit down if you like. And be. Just be, whatever you are with whatever you have, and realise that that is enough to be happy. There’s a whole world out there, right outside your window. You’d be a fool to miss it.

Charlotte Eriksson

Is there a place you can go to break away for a little while?
If you haven’t yet built your tree house,
it’s never too late to start.

Gina Greenlee

Jobs fill your pocket, but adventures fill your soul.

Jamie Lyn Beatty

As you grow older, you learn a few things. One of them
is to actually take the time you’ve allotted for vacation.

John Battelle

To get away from one’s working environment is, in a sense, to
get away from one’s self; and this is often the chief
advantage of travel and change.

Charles Horton Cooley

Trips and vacations are so much more. These experiences show
you what’s possible and challenge you to examine
the paths you’ll take in the future.

Blake Mycoskie

A one day holiday can at times be better than a one-week
vacation if you totally unplug for that one day!

Catherine Pulsifer

But that’s the glory of foreign travel, as far as I am concerned.
I don’t want to know what people are talking about. I can’t think
of anything that excited a greater sense of childlike wonder than
to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything.
Suddenly you are five years old again. You can’t read anything,
you have only a rudimentary sense of how things work, you can’t
even reliably cross the street without endangering your life.
Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses.

Bill Bryson

If you think adventure is dangerous, try routine; it’s lethal.

Paulo Coelho

Stripped of your ordinary surroundings, your friends, your daily
routines, your refrigerator full of food, your closet full of clothes--
with all this taken away, you are forced into direct experience. Such
direct experience inevitably makes you aware of who it is that is
having the experience. That’s not always comfortable,
but it is always invigorating.

Michael Crichton

Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out
over and over again in the quietest chambers. The mind
can never break off from the journey.

Pat Conroy

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.

H. Jackson Browne

Travel has a way of stretching the mind. The stretch comes not
from travel’s immediate rewards, the inevitable myriad new sights,
smells and sounds, but with experiencing firsthand how others do
differently what we believed to be the right and only way.

Ralph Crawshaw