quotations about travel
Wherever you go becomes a part of you somehow.
ANITA DESAI
attributed, Constant Traveller
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
Travel is theater: It invites us to extend our boundaries and to "play" new roles. Is that you sipping ouzo, singing fado, tasting eel, donning a caftan, riding a donkey, boarding a helicopter, ogling a kilt?
MARTY LESHNER
Cruise Travel, October 2004
Like all great travelers, I have seen more than I remember and remember more than I have seen.
BENJAMIN DISRAELI
attributed, Disraeli
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
Travel is the frivolous part of serious lives, and the serious part of frivolous ones.
MADAME SWETCHINE
"Airelles", The Writings of Madame Swetchine
Travel is like an endless university. You never stop learning.
HARVEY LLOYD
Cruise Travel, April 1985
I love visiting new places but am not overly fond of the travel to get to them.
KIRBY LARSON
interview, Author Turf, March 6, 2014
Travel far enough, you meet yourself.
DAVID MITCHELL
Cloud Atlas
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
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
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.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON
Tremendous Trifles
People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering.
ST. AUGUSTINE
Confessions
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
A traveller without observation is a bird without wings.
SAADI
attributed, Day's Collacon
When one is traveling, everything looks brighter and lovelier. That does not mean it IS brighter and lovelier; it just means that sweet, kindly home suffers in comparison to tarted-up foreign places with all their jewels on.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
LAO TZU
attributed, A Kind of Knowing
It is but to be able to say that they have been to such a place, or have seen such a thing, that, more than any real taste for it, induces the majority of the world to incur the trouble and fatigue of travelling.
FREDERICK MARRYAT
A Diary in America: With Remarks on Its Institutions
Travel is an attitude, a state of mind. It is not residence, it is motion.
PAUL THEROUX
introduction, The Best American Travel Writing
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