These pilgrimage quotes will inspire you. Pilgrimage a pilgrim’s journey.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging pilgrimage quotes, pilgrimage sayings, and pilgrimage proverbs.
Famous Pilgrimage Quotes
- “Pilgrimage is a powerful metaphor for any journey with the purpose of finding something that matters deeply to the traveler.” ~ Phil Cousineau
- “Life is a long pilgrimage from fear to love.” ~ Paulo Coelho
- “The geographical pilgrimage is the symbolic acting out 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.” ~ Thomas Merton
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“We are invited to make a pilgrimage – into the heart and life of God.” ~ Dallas Willard
- “I am convinced that pilgrimage is still a bona fide spirit-renewing ritual. But I also believe in pilgrimage as a powerful metaphor for any journey with the purpose of finding something that matters deeply to the traveler. With a deepening of focus, keen prepartion, attention to the path below our feet, and respect for the destination at hand, it is possible to transform, even the most ordinary journey into a sacred journey, a pligrimage.” ~ Phil Cousineau
- “[A] journey becomes a pilgrimage as we discover, day by day, that the distance traveled is less important than the experience gained.” ~ Ernest Kurtz
- “The object of pilgrimage is not rest and recreation – to get away from it all. To set out on a pilgrimage is to throw down a challenge to everyday life.” ~ Huston Smith
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“Real love is a pilgrimage. It happens when there is no strategy, but it is very rare because most people are strategists.” ~ Anita Brookner
- “Hiking – I don’t like either the word or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains – not hike! Do you know the origin of that word ‘saunter?’ It’s a beautiful word. Away back in the Middle Ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going, they would reply, “A la sainte terre,’ ‘To the Holy Land.’ And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not ‘hike’ through them.”” ~ John Muir
- “The paradox: there can be no pilgrimage without a destination, but the destination is also not the real point of the endeavor. Not the destination, but the willingness to wander in pursuit characterizes pilgrimage. Willingness: to hear the tales along the way, to make the casual choices of travel, to acquiesce even to boredom. That’s pilgrimage — a mind full of journey.” ~ Patricia Hampl
- “The Christian life is a pilgrimage from earth to heaven, and our task is to take as many as possible with us as we make this journey.” ~ Warren W. Wiersbe
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“The boat is safer anchored at the port; but that’s not the aim of boats.” ~ Paulo Coelho
- “In all trouble you should seek God. You should not set Him over against your troubles, but within them. God can only relieve your troubles if you in your anxiety cling to Him. Trouble should not really be thought of as this thing or that in particular, for our whole life on earth involves trouble; and through the troubles of our earthly pilgrimage we find God.” ~ Saint Augustine
- “Pilgrimage to the place of the wise is to find escape from the flame of separateness.” ~ Rumi
- “Life is a pilgrimage. The wise man does not rest by the roadside inns. He marches direct to the illimitable domain of eternal bliss, his ultimate destination.” ~ Sivananda
- “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 travelers through the pilgrimage of life.” ~ Charles Dickens
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“Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pilgrimage of the heart.” ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel
- “As I make my slow pilgrimage through the world, a certain sense of beautiful mystery seems to gather and grow.” ~ A. C. Benson
- “Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pilgrimage of the heart. Audacious longing, burning songs, daring thoughts, an impulse overwhelming the heart, usurping the mind–these are all a drive towards serving Him who rings our hearts like a bell. It is as if He were waiting to enter our empty, perishing lives.” ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel
- “Pilgrimage means being alert to the times when all that’s needed is a trip to a remote place to simply lose yourself, and to the times when what’s needed is a journey to a sacred place, in all its glorious and fearsome masks, to find yourself.” ~ Phil Cousineau
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“I laugh when I hear that the fish in the water is thirsty. I laugh when I hear that people go on pilgrimage to find God.” ~ Kabir
- “There is no moment of delight in any pilgrimage like the beginning of it.” ~ Charles Dudley Warner
- “I remember my first lesson on the pilgrimage was the lesson of receiving. I had been on the giving side for many years and I needed to learn to accept as gracefully as I had been able to give, in order to give the other fellow the joy and blessing of giving. It’s so beautiful when you live to give. To me it’s the only way to live because as you give you receive spiritual blessings.” ~ Peace Pilgrim , Spiritual pilgrimage quotes
- “Pilgrimages of mind or walking meditation – bringing moments of illumination in which the sense of relationship to the rest of existence suddenly stands out with startling and unexpected clarity.” ~ David Fontana
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“To pray is no small thing. It is nothing less than a sacred pilgrimage into the heart of the whole world.” ~ Wayne Muller
- “What we choose to love is very important for what we love leads our eyes, ears, and hearts on a pilgrimage that shapes the texture of our lives.” ~ Wayne Muller
- “I feel a complete protection on my pilgrimage. God is my shield. There are no accidents in the Divine Plan nor does God leave us unattended. No one walks so safely as those who walk humbly and harmlessly with great love and great faith.” ~ Peace Pilgrim
- “My turning point was my pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. It was then that I, who had dedicated most of my life to penetrate the ‘secrets’ of the universe, realized that there are no secrets. Life is and will always be a mystery.” ~ Paulo Coelho
- “We thought of life by analogy with a journey, a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end, and the thing was to get to that end, success or whatever it is, maybe heaven after you’re dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played.” ~ Alan Watts
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“Within my body are all the sacred places of the world, and the most profound pilgrimage I can ever make is within my own body.” ~ Saraha
- “Christ is already in that place of peace, which is all in all. He is on the right hand of God. He is hidden in the brightness of the radiance which issues from the everlasting throne. He is in the very abyss of peace, where there is no voice of tumult or distress, but a deep stillness–stillness, that greatest and most awful of all goods which we can fancy; that most perfect of joys, the utter profound, ineffable tranquillity of the Divine Essence. He has entered into His rest. That is our home; here we are on a pilgrimage, and Christ calls us to His many mansions which He has prepared.” ~ John Henry Newman
- “Give my scallop-shell of quiet, My staff of faith to walk upon, My scrip of joy, immortal diet, My bottle of salvation, My gown of glory, hope’s true gage; And thus I’ll take my pilgrimage.” ~ Walter Raleigh
- “Religion points to that area of human experience where in one way or another man comes upon mystery as a summons to pilgrimage.” ~ Frederick Buechner
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“What if the healing of the world utterly depends on the ten-thousand invisible kindnesses we offer simply and quietly throughout the pilgrimage of each human life?” ~ Wayne Muller
- “For in their hearts doth Nature stir them so Then people long on pilgrimage to go And palmers to be seeking foreign strands To distant shrines renowned in sundry lands.” ~ Geoffrey Chaucer
- “Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed The dear repose for limbs with travel tired; But then begins a journey in my head To work my mind, when body’s work’s expired: For then my thoughts-from far where I abide- Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee And keep my drooping eyelids open wide, Looking on darkness which the blind do see: Save that my soul’s imaginary sight Presents thy shadow to my sightless view, Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night, Makes black night beauteous and her old face new. Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind, For thee, and for myself no quiet find.” ~ William Shakespeare
- “We don’t think about pilgrimage in this country. We don’t think about meditation. The idea of taking a six-week walk is totally foreign to most Americans. But it’s probably exactly what we need.” ~ Emilio Estevez
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“Christian living means dying with Christ and rising again. That, as we saw, is part of the meaning of baptism, the starting point of the Christian pilgrimage.” ~ N. T. Wright
- “Over time, each day has become another stretch on an endless pilgrimage road. The terrain of this sacred journey has become fluid and ever-shifting. Every step of the way is an arrival, but not a place to linger.” ~ Anthony Lawlor
- “Hiking. I don’t like either the word or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains…the se mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not ‘hike’ through them.” ~ John Muir
- “Life is a continuity always and always. There is no final destination it is going towards. Just the pilgrimage, just the journey in itself is life, not reaching to some point, no goal – just dancing and being in pilgrimage, moving joyously, without bothering about any destination.” ~ Rajneesh
- “The journey to sacred places is the most common way that people travel in India. They are always going on pilgrimages to sacred places. They are always undertaking spiritual journeys to visit the great shrines in the Himalayan tier of pilgrimage places; these places are called tirthas, a word that means “crossing place,” a place where you can cross the river to the far shore but also cross over into another dimension of life. Cross over to heaven, in one sense it’s used.” ~ Diana L. Eck
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“There are ways to stimulate being prolific, and part of that is making pilgrimages, and being open to listening, changing up the routine.” ~ Tori Amos
- “Man is a creature who walks in two worlds and traces upon the walls of his cave the wonders and the nightmare experiences of his spiritual pilgrimage.” ~ Morris West
- “If the desert is holy, it is because it is a forgotten place that allows us to remember the sacred. Perhaps that is why every pilgrimage to the desert is a pilgrimage to the self. There is no place to hide and so we are found.” ~ Terry Tempest Williams
- “A PILGRIM IS A WANDERER WITH A PURPOSE. A pilgrimage can be to a place – that’s the best known kind – but it can also be for a thing. Mine is for peace, and that is why I am a Peace Pilgrim.” ~ Peace Pilgrim
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“I am simply a pilgrim beginning the last leg of his pilgrimage on this earth.” ~ Pope Benedict XVI
- “The word sacred comes from sacrifice, to cut up. That means that in order to have a sacred journey, you have to give up something, sacrifice; but few people today in the West want to hear about that. Americans want the boon without the labyrinth.Pilgrimage starts the wheel, it turns the wheel of samsara, the wheel of life, and we have to live with the consequences.” ~ Anthony Lawlor
- “O You who are mad about Your creature! true God and true Man, You have left Yourself wholly to us, as food, so that we will not fall through weariness during our pilgrimage in this life, but will be fortified by You, celestial nourishment” ~ St. Catherine of Siena
- “We must never stop dreaming. Dreams provide nourishment for the soul, just as a meal does for the body.” ~ Paulo Coelho
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“And what’s a life? – a weary pilgrimage, Whose glory in one day doth fill the stage With childhood, manhood, and decrepit age.” ~ Francis Quarles
- “This evening I wish to suggest that we Christians should accompany people on their pilgrimages. Specifically we should travel with people as they search for the good, the true and the beautiful.” ~ Timothy Radcliffe
- “Poetry for me has been a long pilgrimage, a journey and a growing relationship with the unknown.” ~ David Whyte
- “When I was 40, I wrote my first book, The Pilgrimage, and I said to myself, “why did it take so long for me to write this book?” Because my dream, since I was 10 years old, was to be a writer. I said, I have to revisit my life using a metaphor, and the metaphor was basically this boy that has a dream and has to go far away to realize that his dream is close to him.” ~ Paulo Coelho
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“The soul passeth from form to form; and the mansions of her pilgrimage are manifold.” ~ Georg Hermes
- “Races and religions may have changed, but the marketplace, the living quarters, pilgrimage sites, places of worship, have remained the same. Venus is replaced by the Virgin, but the same life goes on.” ~ Pablo Picasso
- “Human life, from the cradle to the grave, is a school. At every period of his existence man wants a teacher. His pilgrimage upon earth is but a term of childhood, in which he is to be educated for the manhood of a brighter world. As the child must be educated for manhood upon earth, so the man must be educated upon earth, for heaven; and finally that where the foundation is not laid in time, the superstructure can not rise for eternity.” ~ John Quincy Adams
- “The hajj is one of the five essential practices of Islam; when they make the pilgrimage to Mecca, Muslims ritually act out the central principles of their faith.” ~ Karen Armstrong
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“Common sense and nature will do a lot to make the pilgrimage of life not too difficult.” ~ W. Somerset Maugham
- “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’.” ~ Bruce Chatwin
- “As a writer I try to operate within a framework of Christian principles, and the words that are important to me are religious words: witness, pilgrimage, intention.” ~ William Zinsser , Religious pilgrimage quotes
- “We see in these swift and skillful travelers a symbol of our life, which seeks to be a pilgrimage and a passage on this earth for the way of heaven.” ~ Pope Paul VI
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“I felt in need of a great pilgrimage, so I sat still for three days and God came to me.” ~ Kabir
- “So important, indeed, is it (Light), and so much does it pervade with its influence the whole Masonic system, that Freemasonry itself anciently received, among other appellations, that of Lux, or Light, to signify that it is to be regarded as that sublime doctrine of Divine Truth by which the path of him who has attained it is to be illuminated in his pilgrimage of life.” ~ Albert Mackey
- “God’s breath in man returning to his birth, The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage.” ~ George Herbert
Pilgrimage is a journey of a pilgrim; especially: one to a shrine or a sacred place.
