quotations about travel
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
The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
LAO TZU
attributed, A Kind of Knowing
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
We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again -- to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more.
PICO IYER
"Why We Travel"
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 intensified living--maximum thrills per minute and one of the last great sources of legal adventure. Travel is freedom. It's recess, and we need it.
RICK STEVES
Rick Steves' Europe Through the Back Door
To embargo travel is like burning books or imprisoning journalists.
LARS-ERIC LINDBLAD
New York Times, July 13, 1994
I have been a stranger in a strange land.
BIBLE
Exodus 2:22
A traveller without observation is a bird without wings.
SAADI
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
Travel is like an endless university. You never stop learning.
HARVEY LLOYD
Cruise Travel, April 1985
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
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
It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters in the end.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Left Hand of Darkness
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
Every mile of travel is like the disinterment of a buried city.
ANONYMOUS
Appleton's Journal, January-June 1878
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
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
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