quotations about travel
He that travelleth into a country before he hath some entrance into the language, goeth to school, and not to travel.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.
KURT VONNEGUT, JR.
Cat's Cradle
Why do you wonder that globe-trotting does not help you, seeing that you always take yourself with you? The reason which set you wandering is ever at your heels.
SOCRATES
attributed, Moral Letters to Lucilius
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
When one realizes that his life is worthless he either commits suicide or travels.
EDWARD DAHLBERG
Reasons of the Heart
For many people, foreign travel can be transformational, changing how we think of our lives and our world. When we spend time in different cultures, everything is new and fascinating. We start living in the present, because the present is so intriguing. We feel revitalized. Because you let go of what is familiar and routine for you, your inner mind is inclined to take a fresh look at your life--how you feel about what's going on and what direction you want to go next.
LINDA BREEN PIERCE
Simplicity Lessons
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"
I am fevered with the sunset,
I am fretful with the bay,
For the wander-thirst is on me
And my soul is in Cathay.
RICHARD HOVEY
A Sea Gypsy
Strong and content I travel the open road.
WALT WHITMAN
Song of the Open Road
Many a man who has gone but a few miles from home, understands human nature better, detects motives and weighs character more sagaciously, than another who has travelled over the known world, and made a name by his reports of different countries.
WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING
Self-Culture: An address introductory to the Franklin lectures
I have been a stranger in a strange land.
BIBLE
Exodus 2:22
Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.
MAYA ANGELOU
"Passports to Understanding"
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"
Wherever you go becomes a part of you somehow.
ANITA DESAI
attributed, Constant Traveller
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
To embargo travel is like burning books or imprisoning journalists.
LARS-ERIC LINDBLAD
New York Times, July 13, 1994
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
Like all great travelers, I have seen more than I remember and remember more than I have seen.
BENJAMIN DISRAELI
attributed, Disraeli
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