J. Maarten Troost famous quotes

04-17-2025

Like many highly educated people, I didn't have much in the way of actual skills.
-- J. Maarten Troost

#Skills #People #Way
Like many air travelers, I am aware that airplanes fly aided by capricious fairies and invisible strings.
-- J. Maarten Troost

#Airplane #Fairy #Invisible
Personally I regard idling as a virtue, but civilized society holds otherwise.
-- J. Maarten Troost

#Virtue #Civilized Society #Civilized
Paradise was always over there, a dayâ€™s sail away. But itâ€™s a funny thing, escapism. You can go far and wide and you can keep moving on and on through places and years, but you never escape your own life. I, finally, knew where my life belonged. Home.
-- J. Maarten Troost

#Moving #Home #Years
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

#Appreciated #Deprivation #Weariness
Bwenawa brought my attention to two wooden planks raised about four feet above the ground. On the ledges were lagoon fish sliced open and lying in the sun, the carcasses just visible through an enveloping blizzard of flies. "You see, " said Bwenawa. "The water dries in the sun, leaving the salt. It's kang-kang [tasty]. We call it salt fish." "Ah," I said. "In my country we call it rotten fish.
-- J. Maarten Troost

#Country #Lying #Two
No one who claims this to be a small world has ever flown across the Pacific.
-- J. Maarten Troost

#World #Claims #Small World
It is often said that Americans have no sense of history. Ask a college student who Jimmy Carter was and they will likely reply that he was a general in the Civil War, which occurred in 1492, when Americans dumped tea into the Gulf of Tonkin, sparking the First World War, which ended with the invasion of Grenada and the development of the cotton press.
-- J. Maarten Troost

#War #College #Tea
I had grown accustomed to life being interesting and adventure ridden and, rather childishly, I refused to believe that this must necessarily come to an end and that the rest of my life should be a sort of penance for all the reckless, irresponsible, and immensely fun things Iâ€™d done before.
-- J. Maarten Troost

#Fun #Believe #Adventure
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

#Moving #Compelling Reason #World

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