quotations about travel
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"
Every mile of travel is like the disinterment of a buried city.
ANONYMOUS
Appleton's Journal, January-June 1878
If travel were so inspiring and informing a business ... then the wisest men in the world would be deck hands on tramp steamers.
SINCLAIR LEWIS
Dodsworth
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
Strong and content I travel the open road.
WALT WHITMAN
Song of the Open Road
Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.
TERRY PRATCHETT
A Hat Full of Sky
To get away from one's working environment is, in a sense, to get away from one's self; and this is often the chief advantage of travel and change.
CHARLES HORTON COOLEY
Human Nature and the Social Order
To travel is to live.
HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN
The Fairy Tale of My Life
When I was at home, I was in a better place; but travellers must be content.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
As You Like It
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
Like all great travelers, I have seen more than I remember and remember more than I have seen.
BENJAMIN DISRAELI
attributed, Disraeli
Our object in traveling should be, not to gratify curiosity, and seek mere temporary amusement, but to learn, and to venerate, to improve the understanding and the heart.
NIGEL GRESLEY
attributed, American Medical Association Bulletin, 1933
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
Know most of the rooms of thy native country before thou goest over the threshold thereof.
THOMAS FULLER
The Holy State and the Profane State
New situations inspire new thoughts. Here is the benefit of travelling, much more than in mere sight-seeing. We lose ourselves in the streets of our own city, and go abroad to find ourselves.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Adventure is allowing the unexpected to happen to you. Exploration is experiencing what you have not experienced before. How can there be any adventure, any exploration, if you let somebody else -- above all, a travel bureau -- arrange everything before-hand?
RICHARD ALDINGTON
Death of a Hero
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 like an endless university. You never stop learning.
HARVEY LLOYD
Cruise Travel, April 1985
The traveler, however virginal and enthusiastic, does not enjoy an unbroken ecstasy. He has periods of gloom, periods when he asks himself the object of all these exertions, and puts the question whether or not he is really experiencing pleasure. At such times he suspects that he is not seeing the right things, that the characteristics, the right aspects of these strange scenes are escaping him. He looks forward dully to the days of his holiday yet to pass, and wonders how he will dispose of them. He is disgusted because his money is not more, his command of the language so slight, and his capacity for enjoyment so limited.
ARNOLD BENNETT
attributed, Voyages of Discovery
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