Joseph Banks Quotes

Now my eyes are turned from the South to the North, and I want to lead one more Expedition. This will be the last... to the North Pole.

Were it believed that vacant places could be had at the North Pole, the road there would be lined with dead Virginians.

Until now I have never really lived! Life on earth is a creeping, crawling business. It is in the air that one feels the glory of being a man and of conquering the elements. There is an exquisite smoothness of motion and the joy of gliding through space. It is wonderful!

...rapid motion through space elates one.

Learning how to fly, for me, was so euphoric.

Whenever I dream about flying, it's the best feeling in the world.

I used to love the feeling of running, of running too far. It made my skin tingle.

On 15 July 2007, I swam across an open patch of sea at the North Pole to highlight the melting of the Arctic sea ice.

Singing is like a celebration of oxygen.

Playing lifts you out of yourself into a delirious place.

I can feel the wind go by when I run. It feels good. It feels fast.

So much of motion, is so much of life, and so much of joy, and to stand still, or get on but slowly, is death and the devil.

You've never lived till you've flown!

If I'm left high and dry at the end of this wild journey, just taking it is a great feeling.

If it's enough money, I'll play the North Pole.

Nothing will ever equal that moment of joyous excitement which filled my whole being when I felt myself flying away from the earth. It was not mere pleasure; it was perfect bliss. Escaped from the frightful torments of persecution and of calumny, I felt that I was answering all in rising above all.

Can this be happiness, this terrifying freedom?

To me, the stage is like the free zone. That's what makes it exhilarating. For whatever reason, there's this weird little square where it's kind of a romper room for adults.

As long as the world keeps spinning, I'll keep riffing.

The plane seems exultant now, even arrogant. We did it, we did it! We're up, above you. We were dependant on you just now, prisoners fawning on you for favors, for wind and light. But now, we are free. We are up! We are off! Like someone singing ecstatically, climbing, soaring- a sustained note of power and joy.

Oh the wild joys of living! The leaping from rock to rock ... the cool silver shock of the plunge in a pool's living waters.

Radar revs the engine as to say hustle, and we are running through the parking lot, Ben's robe flowing in the wind so that he looks vaguely like a dark wizard, except that his pale skinny legs are visible, and his arms hug plastic bags. I can see the back of Lacey's legs beneath her dress, her calves tight in midstride. I don't know how I look, but I know how I feel: Young. Goofy. Infinite.

Just for fun I flew in huge banking arcs, taking deep breaths, enjoying the feel of my newly weightless hair. The stylist had called it “wind tossed.” If only she knew.

That was another incredible thing: the opportunity to be in Greenland, a place I had read about in NatGeo a decade before. Suddenly I was staying there and hiking there, and we took a mini iceberg out of the water and chipped it up and used it as ice cubes and made cocktails with it. It's surreal.

Everything in me feels fluttering and free, like I could take off from the ground at any second. Music, I think, he makes me feel like music.