quotations about travel
Travelling enlarges our views, gives us a knowledge of men and manners, causes us to embrace the human race, as one great family, and call every child of misfortune our brother. The man who fell among thieves would have died of his wounds had not the good Samaritan been a traveller.
JOSEPH BARTLETT
Aphorisms on Men, Manners, Principles and Things
All our journeys are rhapsodies on the theme of discovery. We travel as seekers after answers we cannot find at home, and soon find that a change of climate is easier than a change of heart. The bittersweet truth about travel is embedded in the word, which derives from the older word travail, itself rooted in the Latin tripalium, a medieval torture rack.
PHIL COUSINEAU
The Art of Pilgrimage
To embargo travel is like burning books or imprisoning journalists.
LARS-ERIC LINDBLAD
New York Times, July 13, 1994
A man who leaves home to mend himself and others is a philosopher; but he who goes from country to country, guided by the blind impulse of curiosity, is a vagabond.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
Letters from a Citizen of the World
What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? It's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.
JACK KEROUAC
The good thing about travel is that it takes you to new and different places. The bad thing about travel is that it takes you to new and different places.
DIANE
attributed, Sleepless in America
Travel, then, is a voyage into that famously subjective zone, the imagination, and what the traveler brings back is -- and has to be -- an ineffable compound of himself and the place, what's really there and what's only in him.
PICO IYER
"Why We Travel"
I don't keep a travel diary. I did keep a travel diary once and it was a big mistake. All I remember of that trip is what I bothered to write down. Everything else slipped away, as though my mind felt jilted by my reliance on pen and paper. For exactly the same reason I don't travel with a camera. My holiday becomes the snapshots and anything I forget to record is lost.
ALEX GARLAND
The Beach
Travel is like an endless university. You never stop learning.
HARVEY LLOYD
Cruise Travel, April 1985
I have been a stranger in a strange land.
BIBLE
Exodus 2:22
Every mile of travel is like the disinterment of a buried city.
ANONYMOUS
Appleton's Journal, January-June 1878
For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of our life more nearly; to come down off this feather-bed of civilization, and find the globe granite underfoot and strewn with cutting flints.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
Travels with a donkey in the Cevenne
He who is everywhere is nowhere.
SENECA THE YOUNGER
Epistolae Ad Lucilium
To be a good traveller ... a sweet landscape must sometimes be allowed to atone for an indifferent supper, and an interesting ruin charm away the remembrance of a hard bed.
HENRY T. TUCKERMAN
"The Philosophy of Travel", The United States Magazine and Democratic Review, May 1844
If I'd learnt one thing from travelling, it was that the way to get things done was to go ahead and do them. Don't talk about going to Borneo. Book a ticket, get a visa, pack a bag, and it just happens.
ALEX GARLAND
The Beach
Strong and content I travel the open road.
WALT WHITMAN
Song of the Open Road
The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
LAO TZU
attributed, A Kind of Knowing
Farewell, Monsieur Traveller: look you lisp and wear strange suits, disable all the benefits of your own country.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
As You Like It
You should visit before you pass judgement on a place.
TANITH LEE
The Castle of Dark
When I was at home, I was in a better place; but travellers must be content.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
As You Like It