The Entire World Is as a Foreign Land

The man who finds his homeland sweet is still a tender beginner; he to whom every soil is as his native one is already strong; but he is perfect to whom the entire world is as a foreign land. The tender soul has fixed his love on one spot in the world; the strong man has extended his love to all places; the perfect man has extinguished his.

From boyhood I have dwelt on foreign soil, and I know what grief sometimes the mind takes leave of the narrow hearth of a peasant's hut, and I know, too, how frankly it afterwards disdains marble firesides and panelled halls.

~Hugh of St. Victor, 12th century theologian and mystic,
from his Didascalicon, Book 3, Ch. 18