“As a general rule of biology, migratory species are less 'aggressive' than sedentary ones.There is one obvious reason why this should be so. The migration itself, like the pilgrimage, is the hard journey: a 'leveller' on which the 'fit' survive and stragglers fall by the wayside.The journey thus pre-empts the need for hierarchies and shows of dominance. The 'dictators' of the animal kingdom are those who live in an ambience of plenty. The anarchists, as always, are the 'gentlemen of the road'.”
“Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road.”
“Because of its search for comprehensiveness, his narrative is an organically multidirectional movement rather than a straight journey on a highway interrupted by less important deviations to the margins: where is the main road if so many cities are to be visited? We can still imagine one road, but then it is a road that meanders everywhere, a road that wanders itself.”
“The geographical pilgrimage is the symbolic acting out of an inner journey. The inner journey is the interpolation of the meanings and signs of the outer pilgrimage. One can have one without the other. It is best to have both.”
“And thus ever by day and night, under the sun and under the stars, climbing the dusty hills and toiling along the weary plains, journeying by land and journeying by sea, coming and going so strangely, to meet and to act and react on one another, move all we restless travellers through the pilgrimage of life.”
“Sluggish and sedentary peoples, such as the Ancient Egyptians-- with their concept of an afterlife journey through the Field of Reeds-- project on to the next world the journeys they failed to make in this one.”