Henry Morton Stanley Quotes

The realities of the world seldom measure up to the sublime designs of human imagination.

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

You expect certain things. You build up in your mind how it's supposed to go down. When you get a record deal, you think you're supposed to get X, Y, and Z. It doesn't happen like that. You're like 'Oh, this isn't as exciting as I thought it was going to be.'

I've got enough miles under my belt to know that whatever you envision in your mind, even if it comes true, will only keep a shape in the most general way.

If you read a lot, nothing is as great as you've imagined. Venice is - Venice is better.

I made a boy's mistake, common enough, of thinking that real life was knowing many things and many people, living dangerously in faraway places, crossing the sea, or starting a power company on the Columbia River, a steamship line in Bolivia.

Whatever happens in the world is real, what one thinks should have happened is projection. We suffer more from our fictitious illusion and expectations of reality.

There are so many things I want to do. Like, I want to get an artist, a musician, a photographer, and a bunch of dancers that I know and just travel across Africa and just film it and just see what happens. Do and learn as much as I possibly can. Luckily, I have a lot more time.

It's odd, because I used to see pictures, on telly or wherever, of what I now know to be Shaftesbury Avenue and I used to wonder what that amazing street with all the lights was. Well, now I know. I think when you get a wee taste of something, it maybe isn't what you thought it was.

What happens when your dream comes true - when the spotlight is on and then it moves away?

I mean, the idea that Bar could have sent him off on a Grand Tour. But he wasn't the least bit interested. Why? Why isn't he interested in the world? Because here's the bad news for him: He's in the world now.

Reality is the name we give to our disappointments.

A lot of preconceived notions that I had about fame and status and money and joy and pain, and all of these things that I thought I knew, I didn't.

The land of literature is a fairy land to those who view it at a distance, but, like all other landscapes, the charm fades on a nearer approach, and the thorns and briars become visible.

I work a lot in Africa: Texas and Africa have the best sunsets on the planet, that I've ever seen.

I thought everything would be different in America. It wasn't.

Sean is so funny. One time he went to Ireland for two weeks with his mother, and Ireland is so beautiful, and he got back; we were like, 'How was it?' and he was like, 'Ugh I was so bored.'

Maybe when I was a kid, when you have those crazy dreams about what music is going to be like - a string of No. 1 hits, a limo, and a fairground in your back garden - and then you start as a musician, and you realize very, very quickly, that's not how things work. So I just let go of all that stuff.

The beauty of reading is that it lets you travel in a way you could never know.

Traveling is a fool's paradise.

I always see those of whom I have heard well with a slight disappointment. They are so much better than the great herd, and yet the heavens are not shivered into diamonds over their heads.

Mind the gap - it's the distance between life as you dream it and life as it is.

People are disappointed that you aren't exactly who they thought you were, as opposed to somebody who's just walking around trying to get some laundry done.

Dreams fulfilled are imperfect.

The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality.