When I have a bit of a wobble about going (as I am quite a lot at the moment), I think of this:
"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." -- Mark Twain
And when I think of what I want to get out of my trip, I like what these people have said:
"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing." -- Helen Keller
"Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living." –- Miriam Beard
"Without new experiences, something inside of us sleeps. The sleeper must awaken." -- Frank Herbert
"Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind." -- Seneca
"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
"Of the gladdest moments in human life, is the departure upon a distant journey into unknown lands. Shaking off with one mighty effort the fetters of Habit, the leaden weight of Routine, the cloak of many Cares and the slavery of Home, one feels once more happy. The blood flows with the fast circulation of childhood . . . A journey, in fact, appeals to Imagination, to Memory, to Hope, the three sister Graces of our moral being." -- Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton
"The true worth of your travels lies not in where you come to be at the journey's end, but in who you come to be along the way." -- Author Unknown
And when I'm debating on whether I CAN squeeze in my hair straighteners...
"He who would travel happily must travel light." -- Antoine de St. Exupery
"When preparing to travel, lay out all your clothes and all your money. Then take half the clothes and twice the money." -- Susan Heller
But maybe most importantly, when I worry about how life back home will have changed beyond recognition, and I'll have been forgotten:
"No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow." -- Lin Yutang
