Memorable travel quotes are like messages found on the beach; beautiful, timeless, and read at just the right moment.
Editor’s Introduction – Tim Patterson: I’m typing on the deck of a hostel in a little Uruguayan surf town called Punta del Diablo.
Travelers are chatting around me; the usual conversation about where they came from and where they’re going next. Down on the beach, surfers are catching the last waves of the day and men driving horse-drawn carts haul firewood into town.
In many ways this is an idyllic scene, but to be honest, for a while today I was feeling a bit tired and jaded about travel. When you’re on the road too long the spark of newness fades, and travel can feel like a long, pointless slog, a detour from loved ones and from life.
Then I started reading the quotes you’ll find below. Some made me laugh. Some made me wince.
But all of them rang true, and reminded me of why I travel: to learn and grow, to challenge myself, stretch my limits and foster an appreciation of both the world at large and the chair waiting in front of the woodstove back home.
I hope you’ll find similar inspiration in these quotes. Without further ado…
The 50 Most Inspiring Travel Quotes Of All Time
1. “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” – Mark Twain
2. “The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.” – St. Augustine
3. “There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.” – Robert Louis Stevenson
4. “The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.” – Samuel Johnson
5. “All the pathos and irony of leaving one’s youth behind is thus implicit in every joyous moment of travel: one knows that the first joy can never be recovered, and the wise traveler learns not to repeat successes but tries new places all the time.” – Paul Fussell
6. “Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.” – Jack Kerouac
7. “He who does not travel does not know the value of men.” – Moorish proverb
8. “People travel to faraway places to watch, in fascination, the kind of people they ignore at home.” – Dagobert D. Runes
9. “A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.” – John Steinbeck
10. “No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.” – Lin Yutang
11. “Your true traveler finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty-his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure.” – Aldous Huxley
12. “All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.” – Samuel Johnson
13. “For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.” – Robert Louis Stevenson
“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” – Henry Miller
14. “Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things – air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” – Cesare Pavese
15. “One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” – Henry Miller
16″A traveler without observation is a bird without wings.” – Moslih Eddin Saadi
17. “When we get out of the glass bottle of our ego and when we escape like the squirrels in the cage of our personality and get into the forest again, we shall shiver with cold and fright. But things will happen to us so that we don’t know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in.” – D. H. Lawrence
18. “To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.” – Freya Stark
19. “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain
20. “Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” – Miriam Beard
21. “All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.” – Martin Buber
22. “We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure. There is no end to the adventures we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.” – Jawaharial Nehru
23. “Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travelers don’t know where they’re going.” – Paul Theroux
24. “To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.” – Bill Bryson
25. “Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
26. “Two roads diverged in a wood and I – I took the one less traveled by.” – Robert Frost
27. “A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” – Lao Tzu
28. “There is no moment of delight in any pilgrimage like the beginning of it.” – Charles Dudley Warner
29. “A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.” – Lao Tzu
30. “If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay at home.” – James Michener
31. “The journey not the arrival matters.” – T. S. Eliot
32. “A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles.” – Tim Cahill
33. “I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.” – Mark Twain
34. “Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quiestest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.” – Pat Conroy
“A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” – Lao Tzu
35. “Not all those who wander are lost.” – J. R. R. Tolkien
36. “Like all great travelers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.” – Benjamin Disraeli
37. “Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.” – Maya Angelou
38. “Too often travel, instead of broadening the mind, merely lengthens the conversation.” – Elizabeth Drew
39. “Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe”……Anatole France
40. “Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind.” – Seneca
41. “What you’ve done becomes the judge of what you’re going to do – especially in other people’s minds. When you’re traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don’t have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.” – William Least Heat Moon
42. “I soon realized that no journey carries one far unless, as it extends into the world around us, it goes an equal distance into the world within.” – Lillian Smith
43. “To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.” – Aldous Huxley
44. “Travel does what good novelists also do to the life of everyday, placing it like a picture in a frame or a gem in its setting, so that the intrinsic qualities are made more clear. Travel does this with the very stuff that everyday life is made of, giving to it the sharp contour and meaning of art.” – Freya Stark
45. “The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it.” – Rudyard Kipling
46. “Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.” – Paul Theroux
47. “The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.” – G. K. Chesterton
48. “When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable.” – Clifton Fadiman
49. “A wise traveler never despises his own country.” – Carlo Goldoni
50. “Adventure is a path. Real adventure – self-determined, self-motivated, often risky – forces you to have firsthand encounters with the world. The world the way it is, not the way you imagine it. Your body will collide with the earth and you will bear witness. In this way you will be compelled to grapple with the limitless kindness and bottomless cruelty of humankind – and perhaps realize that you yourself are capable of both. This will change you. Nothing will ever again be black-and-white.” – Mark Jenkins
What quotes did we miss? Which one was your favorite? Please leave a comment below!
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252 Comments... join the discussion!
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great quotes. my favorite is i’m sure misquoted here and i can’t remember who said it, but….
“When I get toward the end of my life, I want to look back and see that I’ve lived not only the length of it, but the width of it as well.
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Excellent read, I just passed this onto a colleague who was doing a little research on that. And he actually bought me lunch because I found it for him smile So let me rephrase that.
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Travel made me the saddest person on earth! Still it’s my only reason for living.
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These are great quotes and I have some of them on my own list and some additional ones that you can read on my blog beatravelbee.com
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very interesting! my favorite is no.30.. “better stay at home”
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and dont forget that getting there is half the fun!
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This sensual yearning for knowledge, this insatiable wanderlust, this long desire.
Anatole France
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“There is a good time coming. Be it ever so far away.”
-Doyle’s Pub, Dublin, Ireland
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These are wonderful. I can’t get enough of a quote that real.ly says something profound
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Excellent, wonderful collection. I am writing a post about my experience at the Four Seasons and wonder which to use. Thank you!
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Found another one! Made me come back to this article –
Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering.
Saint Augustine
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“All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.” – Martin Buber
And thats what makes an incredible journey
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This is stunning and true!
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There Is little difference between being lost and exploring
- Dan Eldon
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personally i think you should quote yourself on this list because its by far the best
Why I travel: to learn and grow, to challenge myself, stretch my limits and foster an appreciation of both the world at large and the chair waiting in front of the woodstove back home ~ Tim Patterson
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I see my path, but I don’t know where it leads. Not knowing where I’m going is what inspires me to travel it. – Rosalia de Castro
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It doesnt matter what you’ve found when you reached Ithaca, but the journey you did to get there…
- K.P. Kavafis
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Great list! The Quotatious Traveler is a cool eBook all about travel and adventure quotes. Might be appreciated by everyone here…
http://www.TheQuotatiousTraveler.com
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John Steinbeck said, “People don’t take trips; Trips take people.”
How true…↵ -
“Not a journey anymore. Not an outing or an interlude. Seeing the world; Not taking a trip, not traveling with a start and a finish, but living my life. Life is movement.” – Paul Theroux
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Who wrote?
“Travel is the enemy of bigotry”
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Thank you for these amazing quotes! They are giving me itchy feet!
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When one realizes that his life is worthless he either commits suicide or travels.
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Nice travel quotes. Some are really funny as well. I like Anatole France’s idea. Let’s restore harmony after years of work!
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St. Augustine’s quote (“The World is a Book”) is my favorite. This quote, spelled out in License Plate letters, can be seen here…
cheers!
-Ed↵ -
This is one of my favourite travel quotes:
“He didn’t see differences. Only variety. He travelled well.” This is from Anne-Marie Macdonald’s novel Fall on Your Knees.
Please check this quote for accuracy – not sure I have it word for word. Cheers.↵ -
Thank you so much for these quotes.Now I’m off to Ethiopia!
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A wonderful, wonderful list. Thank you for pulling this together. I so enjoyed it and will be using some of these in my travel blogs!!
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At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting identity, from which I had fled .
R.W. Emerson
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Traveling is the discovery of once self!!
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When you travel, it’s not like you take a part of each place away with you;
Rather, it’s as if you leave a part of yourself there, like a part of you forever belongs to that place – the time, the people, and the things you saw; and over time, it gets burned deeper into your soul. You eternally belong to it↵ -
As long as your free, you will be able to sail the seas.
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These quotes inspire me, as a traveler,restless and on the move it feels good to feel home in someone elses thoughts…
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“Two roads diverged in a wood and I – I took the one less traveled by.” – Robert Frost
‘Journey not the arrival matters’.
Our life itself is journey. Let’s travel.
What puzzles me when i travel is the way geography has molded different cultures, lifestyles, beliefs.
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This one is for my fellow white knuckle flyers…
“There are only two emotions in a plane: boredom and terror.” – Orson Welles
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Great list! It makes me want to pack my bags and hit the road!
“I’ve got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.” Thomas Carlyle
Happy Travels
@gtrot
http://www.facebook.com/brittany.gtrot↵ -
“Too often travel, instead of broadening the mind, merely lengthens the conversation.” – Elizabeth Drew
I particularly appreciate that quote. As a travel writer, I try to always be conscious of my aim to bringing new ideas, places, and people to my readers, as opposed to use my experiences as cocktail conversation. Travel is first and foremost for yourself, not for anybody else.
If you have a moment, please look at my own travel blog, at http://www.traveljunkiejulia.com. I have done extensive traveling, (I’ve traveled around the world four times, across over 80 countries, and through six continents!) and think I can offer some advice on travel in all different corners of the world.
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A rolling stone gathers no moss.
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This is my favorite quote, but the entire post is a very interesting and insightful read.
“We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure. There is no end to the adventures we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.”
I also enjoyed reading the several comments to this post. I will definately refer others to this site.
Thanks for sharing,
Murray.↵ -
@ Oliver Taylor,
i completely agree, and this was the first thing that came to my mind when i read the introduction too. The ‘reasons i travel’ by yourself [Tim Patterson]
… should be made number 51.↵ -
I personally like to say:
I will retell parts of my travels, but they’re in my mind for me…
It’s not a quote. nor anything phillosophical, but it reminds me, that i travel for me, not for others and not to simply re-list the places to other people.↵ -
I always liked:
He who does not travel, who does not read, who does
not listen to music, who does not find grace in
himself, she who does not find grace in herself, dies
slowly. -Pablo Neruda↵ -
I hope you have enjoyed Uruguay
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