Maarten Quotes

Truth has a power only the courageous can handle. ~ Anthon St. Maarten

We carry within us all the mystical power we need to transform our world. ~ Anthon St. Maarten

When it comes to naming things, vanity and flattery are dull motivations best suited for deciding on a child's middle name. Much more interesting are the descriptive names that suggest a story or happening of interest. ~ J. Maarten Troost

Happiness already exists in your life. All you need to do is tune into it. And you can start doing that right now. ~ Anthon St. Maarten

Few things are more enjoyable than lingering over the atlas and plotting a trip. ~ J. Maarten Troost

One sincere truth from a stranger is more likely to move your life forward...than anything your friends and family may tell you to spare your feelings. ~ Anthon St. Maarten

Purpose, joy and inner peace are the only status symbols worth having. ~ Anthon St. Maarten

We don't think much about climate change and rising sea levels here in the U.S. Beyond a few gardeners, birders and hikers who notice the changes in our own ecosystem, we live on, blissfully unaware of our changing Earth. Our storms - Katrina, Sandy - are dismissed as once-in-a-century events. ~ J. Maarten Troost

We live in a reputation economy. People are judged based on their online visible choices, behaviours, accomplishments and mistakes. Every comment you leave, person you connect to, photo you upload, or review you get, contributes to the permanent record of your online reputation. ~ Maarten Schafer

I was simply restless, quite likely because of a dissatisfaction with the recent trajectory of my life, and if there is a better, more compelling reason for dropping everything and moving to the end of the world, I know not what it is. ~ J. Maarten Troost

It is pointless to embark on any journey if you do not believe yourself worthy of the destination. ~ Anthon St. Maarten

The gift of sobriety is clarity and a sense of connection - and travel only enhances that. ~ J. Maarten Troost

It was, to reiterate, to stress, to accentuate the point, to leave no doubt, hot. ~ J. Maarten Troost

Each day dawns with the promise of a personal miracle. Find some magic today. Even just a little bit can go a very long way. ~ Anthon St. Maarten

Fortunately, due to a terrible misunderstanding, I soon found myself working as a consultant to the World Bank. I am not exactly sure what it was that led the World Bank to believe I had any expertise in infrastructure finance. I had never even balanced a checkbook. I hadn't even tried. There is not much reason to balance a checkbook when your checking account rarely tops the three-figure mark. And so, to the Third World countries who had the misfortune of working with me on their infrastructure projects, I wish to apologize. ~ J. Maarten Troost

I had, of course, witnessed hundreds of people in a casino before, mindlessly dropping coins into slot machines. They don't play for money in America. It's true. The big payout is incidental to most gamblers. It's the numbness they're after. Not so in China. No one had that look of glazed stupor often found in American casinos. ~ J. Maarten Troost

Like many air travelers, I am aware that airplanes fly aided by capricious fairies and invisible strings. ~ J. Maarten Troost

It was as if the sensory overload that is American life had somehow led to sensory deprivation, a gilded weariness, where everything is permitted and nothing appreciated. ~ J. Maarten Troost

Until one nation ceases its attempts to dominate another, there will never be true freedom. Until one religion relinquishes its quest to prove its god superior to that of another, there shall never be world peace. We will never truly prosper or experience lasting harmony, until we refrain from preaching the gospel of our own moral values and our personal preferences by forcing it upon others. ~ Anthon St. Maarten

It is an unfortunate reality for innate idlers that our modern world requires one to hold a job to maintain a sustainable existence. Idling, I find, if immensely underrated, even vilified by some who see inactivity as the gateway for the Evil One. ~ J. Maarten Troost

Your soul knows the shortest, safest route to your true destiny. Why is your ego behind the wheel? ~ Anthon St. Maarten

Personally I regard idling as a virtue, but civilized society holds otherwise. ~ J. Maarten Troost

Look for a wave shaped like an A.

An A.

Hmm.

I saw Zs and H's and Vs. I saw the Hindi alphabet and the Thai alphabet. I saw Arabic script. I saw no As.

Finally I gave up, and chose the next wave that would have me, which turned out to be a poor move.

There is a moment, shortly after one accepts the imminence of one's demise, when it occurs that you could be elsewhere: that if you simply left the house a little later, or lingered over a Mai Tai, you would not be here now confronting your mortality. This moment occurred just as I encountered a very large (from my perspective), rare and surprising wave. A wave that was pitching and howling, and it really had no business being where it was - underneath me.

The demon wave picked me up, and after that I have only a a vague recollection of spinning limbs, a weaponized surf board, and chaotic white water, churning together over a reef.

I decided surfing was not for me. I generally no longer engage in adrenaline rush activities that carry with them a strong likely hood of life-altering injury. (p. 138)
~ J. Maarten Troost

I made arrangements with Bitaki, a teammate on the soccer team I played with, to go fishing with his brothers, who typically worked the waters off Maiana, the nearest island south of Tarawa. When I mentioned to Sylvia that I was going, she said: "No, you're not." "And what do you mean by 'No, you're not'?" I determined right then that I would go out fishing every week. No, every day. I would become a professional fisherman. I would become sun-browned and sea-weathered. I would smell like fish. I would be a Salty Dog. "I mean," Sylvia said, "that when the engine dies and you start drifting, which will happen, because things like that do seem to happen to you, you will not survive two days. Your skin will fry, you will collapse from dehydration, and because you will be the most useless person on the boat, you will be regarded by the others as a potential food source." I didn't like the imagery here. ~ J. Maarten Troost

Nevertheless, while I may not have completely understood what Holy Communion was all about, Catholicism did allow me to see the nuances in cannibalism. Eating the flesh of another human being, I understood, might not always be a really, really bad thing to do. If you were a good Catholic, you had some every Sunday. ~ J. Maarten Troost

For what is life, a good life, but the accumulation of small pleasures? ~ J. Maarten Troost

No one who claims this to be a small world has ever flown across the Pacific. ~ J. Maarten Troost

The longer we spent on Tarawa the more Sylvia and I came to realize that to live on Tarawa is to experience a visceral form of bipolar disorder. There is the ecstatic high, when you find yourself swept away in a lagoonside maneaba rumbling to the frenzied singing and dancing of hundreds of rapturous islanders. And there are the crushing lows, when you succumb to a listless depression, brought about by the unyielding heat, sporadic sickness, pitiless isolation, food shortages, and the realization that so much of what ails Tarawa, the overpopulation and all its attendant health and social problems, need not be as bad as it is. ~ J. Maarten Troost

It is a remarkably easy thing to do, pointing out the faults of others and suggesting remedies or courses of action in an argumentative and pedantic sort of way, and I am still amazed that there are many people in the American media who are paid very big money to do this. ~ J. Maarten Troost

In order to complete our amazing life journey successfully, it is vital that we turn each and every dark tear into a pearl of wisdom, and find the blessing in every curse. ~ Anthon St. Maarten

Don't get me wrong. Sacramento is a lovely place, particularly for those with a fondness for methamphetamines. For the meth-addled, Sacramento had conveniently placed a Greyhound bus station just yards from the statehouse where Austria's finest was sworn in as governor of the great state of California. ~ J. Maarten Troost

Failing to meet your true destiny is a tragic act of free will. ~ Anthon St. Maarten

We arrive and depart this life alone. Every moment in-between is a unique opportunity to experience as much love and belonging as we can possibly muster. Instead we obsess over petty differences and turn our backs on those we are supposed to love. ~ Anthon St. Maarten

There's a reason that there are oodles of young Aussies, Germans, Japanese, even Chinese backpackers traipsing around the world. They are unencumbered by debilitating student loans. No such luck for the American Theater Arts major with $120,000 in loans. ~ J. Maarten Troost

We are not supposed to all be the same, feel the same, think the same, and believe the same. The key to continued expansion of our Universe lies in diversity, not in conformity and coercion. Conventionality is the death of creation. ~ Anthon St. Maarten

Empaths and Lightworkers did not arrive on this planet to lead a cheerful carnival parade into a perfect New Earth paradise. There is much work to be done before anyone will ever enter that promised land. ~ Anthon St. Maarten

Everything you do in every moment matters. A single thought can change your world. ~ Anthon St. Maarten

I'm off to an island nation where formal wear consists of a leaf tired around a penis. ~ J. Maarten Troost

You can read and read, but nothing eclipses experience. ~ J. Maarten Troost

Every challenge of the human self expands the divinity of the higher self. ~ Anthon St. Maarten

Quite some years ago, I started travelling the planet. I thought this would learn me something about the world we live in. I was wrong ... It learned me something about myself. It changed me. And nothing will ever again be black-and-white again. ~ Maarten Schafer

The wounded mind must be reset like a fractured bone. It cannot heal itself without spiritual realignment. ~ Anthon St. Maarten

Escapism, we are led to believe, is evidence of a deficiency in character, a certain failure of temperament, and like so many -isms, it is to be strenuously avoided. 'How do you expect to get ahead?,' people ask. But the question altogether misses the point. The escapist doesn't want to get ahead. He simply wants to get away. ~ J. Maarten Troost

Many of us dream of a better, safer, more caring world, without recognizing that it all begins with creating and maintaining a deeper love in our own home. The seeds of world peace should be planted in our own backyard. ~ Anthon St. Maarten

POEM – MY AMAZING
TRAVELS
[My composition in my book Travel Memoirs with Pictures]


My very first trip I still cannot believe
Was planned and executed with such great ease.
My father, an Inspector of Schools, was such a strict man,
He gave in to my wishes when I told him of the plan.

I got my first long vacation while working as a banker
One of my co-workers wanted a travelling partner.
She visited my father and discussed the matter
Arrangements were made without any flutter.

We travelled to New York, Toronto, London, and Germany,
In each of those places, there was somebody,
To guide and protect us and to take us wonderful places,
It was a dream come true at our young ages.

We even visited Holland, which was across the Border.
To drive across from Germany was quite in order.
Memories of great times continue to linger,
I thank God for an understanding father.

That trip in 1968 was the beginning of much more,
I visited many countries afterward I am still in awe.
Barbados, Tobago, St. Maarten, and Buffalo,
Cirencester in the United Kingdom, Miami, and Orlando.

I was accompanied by my husband on many trips.
Sisters, nieces, children, grandchildren, and friends, travelled with me a bit.
Puerto Rico, Los Angeles, New York, and Hialeah,
Curacao, Caracas, Margarita, Virginia, and Anguilla.

We sailed ~ Brenda Mohammed

I travel the world. I Take nothing but pictures, kill nothing but time and leave nothing but footprints. ~ Maarten Schafer