Tao Te Ching
Marco Polo
1254 – 1324 CE
Epitome of adventurous business, political, and geographical exploration
Merchant par excellence, adventurous explorer, successful administrator for Kublai Khan in China, and popular author; Marco Polo became an inspiration for Christopher Columbus, the import-export global economy, and for most of the explorers who came after him. Setting off from Europe when only 17 years old, he spent 24 years in China becoming the governor of Hangzhou, returned to find his city of Venice at war with Genoa, tried to help but only ended up in jail where he described his travels to a cellmate who used them to write the famous book, Travels of Marco Polo. The difficulty and danger of travel in those days in illustrated by survival statistics: on their journey back from China, more than 600 people began with them but only 18 survived the 2-year journey to Hormuz. Later he expanded his business interests to become very wealthy, married and had three children. Frequently accused of exaggeration and fabrication, on his deathbed he responded to this criticism by saying, "I have not told half of what I saw."
Eras
Unlisted Sources
Travels of Marco Polo
Quotes by Marco Polo (5 quotes)
“If a married man goes to a distance from home to be absent for 20 days, his wife has a right to take another husband. The men, on the same principle, marry wherever they happen to reside.”
from Travels of Marco Polo
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“And there he did abide [the Buddha] leading a life of great hardship and sanctity, and keeping great abstinence, just as if he had been a Christian. Indeed, and had he but been so, he would have been a great saint of Our Lord Jesus Christ, so good and pure was the life he led.”
from Travels of Marco Polo
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“I speak and speak, ... but the listener retains only the words he is expecting. ... It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear.”
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“The Emperor's Mint and the way it is wrought is such that you might say the he has the Secret of Alchemy in perfection, and you would be right. For he makes his money after this fashion.”
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“the idolaters say that it is the sepulchre of Sagamoni Borcan [Shakyamuni Buddha], before whose time there were no idols. They hold him to have been the best of men, a great saint in fact, and the first in whose name idols were made.”
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Quotes about Marco Polo (2 quotes)
“No man would believe them; and the people of Venice gave to the youngest and most garrulous of them the nickname 'Marco Millions,' because his tale was full of numbers so large and marvelous. Marco accepted this fate with good cheer, for they had brought back with them many precious stones that gave them such wealth”
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“Travels of Marco Polo is one of the great books of history. It opens this world of the 13th century to our imaginations— it led directly to the discovery of America... [it gave Columbus] an exaggerated idea of the extent of Asia... and this project of sailing into the sunset became the ruling purpose of his life.”
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