quotations about travel
A traveller without observation is a bird without wings.
SAADI
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
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
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
To travel is to live.
HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN
The Fairy Tale of My Life
The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
LAO TZU
attributed, A Kind of Knowing
Every mile you travel, is like the one left behind.
LES HUGHES
A Young Australian Pioneer
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"
Of course, even foreign places grow familiar given enough time; even novelty grows old. Some would argue that this is what makes travel pointless. And in a sense, it's true--childhoods never last. But everyone deserves one.
WENDY DALE
Avoiding Prison and Other Noble Vacation Goals
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
To embargo travel is like burning books or imprisoning journalists.
LARS-ERIC LINDBLAD
New York Times, July 13, 1994
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
A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland
Travel is like adultery: one is always tempted to be unfaithful to one's own country.
ANATOLE BROYARD
attributed, Voyages of Discovery
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
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
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
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
When I was at home, I was in a better place; but travellers must be content.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
As You Like It
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
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