Quotes about travel

A collection of quotes on the topic of home, world, freedom, travel.

Best quotes about travel

Billy Graham photo
Marlene Dietrich photo

“To lose your prejudices you must travel.”

Marlene Dietrich (1901–1992) German-American actress and singer
Hans Christian Andersen photo

“To travel is to live.”

Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) Danish author, fairy tale writer, and poet

The Fairy Tale of My Life
Fairy Tales (1835)
Source: The Fairy Tale of My Life: An Autobiography

Gautama Buddha photo

“It is better to travel well than to arrive.”

Gautama Buddha (-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism
Paulo Coelho photo

“Sometimes you have to travel a long way to find what is near”

Source: Aleph

Homér photo

“Tell me, O muse, of travellers far and wide”

Homér Ancient Greek epic poet, author of the Iliad and the Odyssey
Milton Berle photo

“You don't need to travel, laughter is an instant vacation”

Milton Berle (1908–2002) American comedian and actor

Variant: Laughter is an instant vacation.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón photo
Kurt Vonnegut photo

“Peculiar Travel Suggestions are Dancing Lessons From God”

Cat's Cradle (1963)

Thomas Fuller (writer) photo

“5272. Travel makes a wise Man better, but a Fool worse.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

Quotes about travel

Terry Pratchett photo
Stephen Hawking photo
Ibn Battuta photo

“Traveling—it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.”

Ibn Battuta (1304–1377) Moroccan explorer

Source: The Travels of Ibn Battutah

Jack Kerouac photo

“So shut up, live, travel, adventure, bless and don't be sorry”

Variant: Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don't be sorry.
Source: Desolation Angels

Dogen photo
Rainer Maria Rilke photo
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart photo

“I know myself, and I have such a sense of religion that I shall never do anything which I would not do before the whole world; but I am alarmed at the very thoughts of being in the society of people, during my journey, whose mode of thinking is so entirely different from mine (and from that of all good people). But of course they must do as they please. I have no heart to travel with them, nor could I enjoy one pleasant hour, nor know what to talk about; for, in short, I have no great confidence in them. Friends who have no religion cannot be long our friends.”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) Austrian Romantic composer

Letter to Leopold Mozart (Mannheim, 2 February 1778), from The letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 1769-1791, translated, from the collection of Ludwig Nohl, by Lady [Grace] Wallace (Oxford University Press, 1865, digitized 2006) vol. I, # 91 (p. 164) http://books.google.com/books?vid=0SGwLiCNxu7qZ5ch&id=KEgBAAAAQAAJ&printsec=titlepage&dq=%22The+letters+of+Wolfgang+Amadeus+Mozart,+1769-1791%22&hl=en#PRA1-PA164,M1

Chief Joseph photo
Cesare Lombroso photo
Jacque Fresco photo
Ibn Battuta photo
Roald Dahl photo
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart photo

“A man of ordinary talent will always be ordinary, whether he travels or not; but a man of superior talent will go to pieces if he remains forever in the same place.”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) Austrian Romantic composer

Letter to Leopold Mozart (11 September 1778), from Wolfgang Amadé Mozart by Georg Knepler (1991), trans. J. Bradford Robinson [Cambridge University Press, 1994, ], p. 12.
Variant: A fellow of mediocre talent will remain a mediocrity, whether he travels or not; but one of superior talent (which without impiety I cannot deny that I possess) will go to seed if he always remains in the same place.

Mary Pope Osborne photo
Aldo Leopold photo

“The elemental simplicities of wilderness travel were thrills not only because of their novelty, but because they represented complete freedom to make mistakes. … Perhaps every youth needs an occasional wilderness trip, in order to learn the meaning of this particular freedom.”

“Wisconsin: Flambeau”, p. 113.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Wisconsin: Marshland Elegy," "Wisconsin: The Sand Counties" "Wisconsin: On a Monument to the Pigeon," and "Wisconsin: Flambeau"

Tupac Shakur photo
Woody Allen photo

“The traveller must also give up resistance to God's decree and refrain from prayers for reward in the hereafter.”

Najmuddin Kubra (1145–1221) Iranian sufi poet and philosopher

Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2002), p. 117

Bashō Matsuo photo
Homér photo
Rosalía de Castro photo
Sigrid Undset photo
Steven Wright photo
Yiannis Ritsos photo
John Muir photo

“I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do. They go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far!”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

July 1890, page 313
(From Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays, Second Series (1844) "Essay VI: Nature": "the trees are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan their imprisonment, rooted in the ground.")
John of the Mountains, 1938
Context: It has been said that trees are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan their imprisonment rooted in the ground. But they never seem so to me. I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do. They go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far!

Pablo Neruda photo

“He who does not travel, who does not read,
who does not listen to music,
who does not find grace in himself,
she who does not find grace in herself,
dies slowly.
He who slowly destroys his own self-esteem,
who does not allow himself to be helped”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

dies slowly…
Muere lentamente quien no viaja, quien no lee,
quien no oye música,
quien no encuentra gracia en sí mismo.
Muere lentamente
quien destruye su amor propio,
quien no se deja ayudar...
Poem "Muere lentamente" (Dying Slowly), wrongly attributed to Pablo Neruda. See "Fake Pablo Neruda Poem Spreads on Internet" http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=325275&CategoryId=14094 by Ana Mendoza, Latin American Herald Tribune (12 January 2009).
Misattributed
Source: Selected Poems

Douglas Adams photo

“Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.”

Variant: Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.
Source: Mostly Harmless

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn photo
Swami Vivekananda photo
George Orwell photo
Peter Higgs photo
Dante Alighieri photo
Robert Louis Stevenson photo
George Orwell photo

“If I had to make a list of six books which were to be preserved when all others were destroyed, I would certainly put Gulliver's Travels among them.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver's Travels" (1946)

Justin Bieber photo

“My favorite thing is being able to travel around the world and perform for my fans. I think I’ve lost 80 percent of my hearing. I definitely have very loud fans.”

Justin Bieber (1994) Canadian singer-songwriter, record producer, and actor

Vibe "Justin Bieber on Photo Shoots, Puberty, 2Pac & Drake" http://www.vibe.com/article/justin-bieber-photo-shoots-puberty-2pac-drake, 22 July 2010

Paul Robeson photo

“I am truly happy that I am able to travel from time to time to the USSR — the country I love above all. I always have been, I am now and will always be a loyal friend of the Soviet Union.”

Paul Robeson (1898–1976) American singer and actor

"’I Love Above All, Russia,’ Robeson Says," Afro-American, (25 June 1949), p. 7

Musa I of Mali photo
Homér photo

“Nevertheless I long—I pine, all my days—
to travel home and see the dawn of my return.”

V. 219–220 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)

Sun Tzu photo

“Speed is the essence of war. Take advantage of the enemy's unpreparedness; travel by unexpected routes and strike him where he has taken no precautions.”

Sun Tzu (-543–-495 BC) ancient Chinese military general, strategist and philosopher from the Zhou Dynasty

Source: The Art of War, Chapter XI · The Nine Battlegrounds

Leonard Cohen photo

“And you want to travel with her,
And you want to travel blind,
And you know that she will trust you,
For you've touched her perfect body with your mind.”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

"Suzanne" - Isle of Wight performance (1970) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_56ep729TE - Live in London (2008) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snMOmHzgssk
Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967)
Context: Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river.
You can hear the boats go by,
You can spend the night beside her,
And you know that she's half crazy
But that's why you want to be there,
And she feeds you tea and oranges
That come all the way from China.
And just when you mean to tell her
That you have no love to give her
Then she gets you on her wavelength
And she lets the river answer
That you've always been her lover.
And you want to travel with her,
And you want to travel blind,
And you know that she will trust you,
For you've touched her perfect body with your mind.

Attar of Nishapur photo

“What you most want,
what you travel around wishing to find,
lose yourself as lovers lose themselves,
and you'll be that.”

Attar of Nishapur (1145–1230) Persian Sufi poet

"Looking For Your Own Face" as translated by Coleman Barks in The Hand of Poetry: Five Mystic Poets of Persia
Context: Don't be dead or asleep or awake.
Don't be anything.
What you most want,
what you travel around wishing to find,
lose yourself as lovers lose themselves,
and you'll be that.

Geoff Dyer photo
Martin Buber photo

“All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.”

Martin Buber (1878–1965) German Jewish Existentialist philosopher and theologian

The Legend of the Baal-Shem (1955),1995 edition, p. 36

Guy De Maupassant photo
Robert Frost photo

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Source: Poem "The Road Not Taken"
Context: Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

William Shakespeare photo
Oscar Wilde photo
Arthur Rimbaud photo
Richard Brautigan photo
Charles Bukowski photo
Sadhguru photo
William Shakespeare photo
Jhumpa Lahiri photo
Mark Twain photo

“A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Variant: A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.

John Ruskin photo
Theodore Roosevelt photo
Brian Jacques photo
Dietrich Bonhoeffer photo

“There is meaning in every journey that is unknown to the traveler.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi
Jhumpa Lahiri photo
Walt Whitman photo
Clive Barker photo
Mark Twain photo
Rabindranath Tagore photo
Elizabeth Cady Stanton photo
Nikos Kazantzakis photo

“Every perfect traveller always creates the country where he travels.”

Nikos Kazantzakis (1883–1957) Greek writer

As quoted in Reporter in Red China (1966) by Charles Taylor

Neil Young photo

“One of my favorite album covers is On the Beach. Of course that was the name of a movie and I stole it for my record, but that doesn't matter. The idea for that cover came like a bolt from the blue. Gary and I traveled around getting all the pieces to put it together. We went to a junkyard in Santa Ana to get the tail fin and fender from a 1959 Cadillac, complete with taillights, and watched them cut it off a Cadillac for us, then we went to a patio supply place to get the umbrella and table. We picke up the bad polyester yellow jacket and white pants at a sleazy men's shop, where we watched a shoplifter getting caught red-handed and busted. Gary and I were stoned on some dynamite weed and stood there dumbfounded watching the bust unfold. This girl was screaming and kicking! Finally we grabbed a local LA paper to use as a prop. It had this amazing headline: Sen. Buckley Calls For Nixon to Resign. Next we took the palm tree I had taken around the world on the Tonight's the Night tour. We then placed all of these pieces carefully in the sand at Santa Monica beach. Then we shot it. Bob Seidemann was the photographer, the same one who took the famous Blind Faith cover shot of the naked young girl holding the airplane. We used the crazy pattern from the umbrella insides for the inside of the sleeve that held the vinyl recording. That was the creative process at work. We lived for that, Gary and I, and we still do.”

Source: Waging Heavy Peace: A Hippie Dream

Elias Canetti photo

“Travelling, one accepts everything; indignation stays at home. One looks, one listens, one is roused to enthusiasm by the most dreadful things because they are new. Good travellers are heartless.”

Elias Canetti (1905–1994) Bulgarian-born Swiss and British jewish modernist novelist, playwright, memoirist, and non-fiction writer

Source: The Voices of Marrakesh: A Record of a Visit

Colette photo
Anthony Bourdain photo
Frida Kahlo photo
Fernando Pessoa photo

“Life is what we make of it. Travel is the traveler. What we see isn't what we see but what we are.”

Original: (pt) Viajar? Para viajar basta existir. [...] Para quê viajar? Em Madrid, em Berlim, na Pérsia, na China, nos Pólos ambos, onde estaria eu senão em mim mesmo, e no tipo e género das minhas sensações?

A vida é o que fazemos dela. As viagens são os viajantes. O que vemos não é o que vemos, senão o que somos.
Source: The Book of Disquiet, p. 360
Context: To travel? In order to travel it's enough to be. […] Why travel? In Madrid, in Berlin, in Persia, in China, at the Poles both, where would I be but in myself, and in the sort and kind of my sensations?

Life is what we make of it. Travels are travellers. What we see is not what we see but what we are.

Mark Twain photo
Alain de Botton photo
Benjamin Disraeli photo

“Like all great travellers I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Book VIII, Chapter 4.
Books, Coningsby (1844), Vivian Grey (1826)

Sylvia Plath photo
John Steinbeck photo
Mark Twain photo
Rick Riordan photo
Terry Pratchett photo
Dejan Stojanovic photo

“Every man needs his Siren to check his courage and strength when he hears her song in his travels through the unknown.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

Siren http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/siren-7/
From the poems written in English

Jules Verne photo

“It was all very well for an Englishman like Mr. Fogg to make the tour of the world with a carpet-bag; a lady could not be expected to travel comfortably under such conditions.”

Qu'un Anglais comme lui fît le tour du monde un sac à la main, passe encore; mais une femme ne pouvait entreprendre une pareille traversée dans ces conditions.
Source: Around the World in Eighty Days (1873), Ch. XX: In Which Fix Comes Face to Face with Phileas Fogg

Nikola Tesla photo
Muhammad photo

“Ibn 'Umar said, "The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, took me by the shoulder and said, "Be in this world as if you were a stranger or a traveller on the road."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 4, hadith number 574
Sunni Hadith

J. J. Thomson photo

“We see from Lenard's table that a cathode ray can travel through air at atmospheric pressure a distance of about half a centimetre before the brightness of the phosphorescence falls to about half its original value. Now the mean free path of the molecules of air at this pressure is about 10-5 cm., and if a molecule of air were projected it would lose half its momentum in a space comparable with the mean free path. Even if we suppose that it is not the same molecule that is carried, the effect of the obliquity of the collisions would reduce the momentum to half in a short multiple of that path. Thus, from Lenard's experiments on the absorption of the rays outside the tube, it follows on the hypothesis that the cathode rays are charged particles moving with high velocities, that the size of the carriers must be small compared with the dimensions of ordinary atoms or molecules. The assumption of a state of matter more finely subdivided than the atom of an element is a somewhat startling one; but a hypothesis that would involve somewhat similar consequences—viz. that the so-called elements are compounds of some primordial element—has been put forward from time to time by various chemists.”

J. J. Thomson (1856–1940) British physicist

Royal Institution Lecture (April 30, 1897) as quoted by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity from the Age of Descartes to the Close of the Nineteenth Century http://books.google.com/books?id=CGJDAAAAIAAJ (1910).
Quotes eat me

Charlie Brooker photo

“The upper classes really shouldn't open their mouths on television. Whatever it is they're saying, all your brain actually hears is "Tra la la, I live in a bubble, tra la la, murder a fox, tra la la, Conde Nast Traveller, tra la la, Kensington High Street, tra la la."”

Charlie Brooker (1971) journalist, broadcaster and writer from England

They should know their place and keep quiet.
On Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine in What Not to Wear
[Screen Burn, The Guardian, 8 December 2001]
Guardian columns, Screen Burn

Lin Yutang photo
Melvil Dewey photo

“The cheapness and quickness of modern methods of communication has been like a growth of wings, so that a thousand things which were thought to belong like trees in one place may travel about like birds.”

Melvil Dewey (1851–1931) American librarian and educator

"Field and Future of Traveling Libraries". Home Education Department. Bulletin. State University of New York (1901), (40).

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien photo
Tiffany Brar photo
Bertrand Russell photo

“There are three forces on the side of life which require no exceptional mental endowment, which are not very rare at present, and might be very common under better social institutions. They are love, the instinct of constructiveness, and the joy of life. All three are checked and enfeebled at present by the conditions under which men live—not only the less outwardly fortunate, but also the majority of the well-to-do. Our institutions rest upon injustice and authority: it is only by closing our hearts against sympathy and our minds against truth that we can endure the oppressions and unfairnesses by which we profit. The conventional conception of what constitutes success leads most men to live a life in which their most vital impulses are sacrificed, and the joy of life is lost in listless weariness. Our economic system compels almost all men to carry out the purposes of others rather than their own, making them feel impotent in action and only able to secure a certain modicum of passive pleasure. All these things destroy the vigor of the community, the expansive affections of individuals, and the power of viewing the world generously. All these things are unnecessary and can be ended by wisdom and courage. If they were ended, the impulsive life of men would become wholly different, and the human race might travel towards a new happiness and a new vigor.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1910s, Why Men Fight https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Why_Men_Fight (1917), pp. 18-19

José Saramago photo

“In between these four whitewashed walls, on this tiled floor, notice the broken corners, how some tiles have been worn smooth, how many feet have passed this way, and look how interesting this trail of ants is, travelling along the joins as if they were valleys, while up above, projected against the white sky of the ceiling and the sun of the lamp, tall towers are moving, they are men, as the ants well know, having, for generations, experienced the weight of their feet and the long, hot spout of water that falls from a kind of pendulous external intestine, ants all over the world have been drowned or crushed by these, but it seems they will escape this fate now, for the men are occupied with other things. […]
Let's take this ant, or, rather, let's not, because that would involve picking it up, let us merely consider it, because it is one of the larger ones and because it raises its head like a dog, it's walking along very close to the wall, together with its fellow ants it will have time to complete its long journey ten times over between the ants' nest and whatever it is that it finds so interesting, curious or perhaps merely nourishing in this secret room […]. One of the men has fallen to the ground, he's on the same level as the ants now, we don't know if he can see them, but they see him, and he will fall so often that, in the end, they will know by heart his face, the color of his hair and eyes, the shape of his ear, the dark arc of his eyebrow, the faint shadow at the corner of his mouth, and later, back in the ants' nest, they will weave long stories for the enlightenment of future generations, because it is useful for the young to know what happens out there in the world. The man fell and the others dragged him to his feet again, shouting at him, asking two different questions at the same time, how could he possibly answer them even if he wanted to, which is not the case, because the man who fell and was dragged to his feet will die without saying a word. Only moans will issue from his mouth, and in the silence of his soul only deep sighs, and even when his teeth are broken and he has to spit them out, which will prompt the other two men to hit him again for soiling state property, even then the sound will be of spitting and nothing more, that unconscious reflex of the lips, and then the dribble of saliva thickened with blood that falls to the floor, thus stimulating the taste buds of the ants, who telegraph from one to the other news of this singularly red manna fallen from such a white heaven.
The man fell again. It's the same one, said the ants, the same ear shape, the same arc of eyebrow, the same shadow at the corner of the mouth, there's no mistaking him, why is it that it is always the same man who falls, why doesn't he defend himself, fight back. […] The ants are surprised, but only fleetingly. After all, they have their own duties, their own timetables to keep, it is quite enough that they raise their heads like dogs and fix their feeble vision on the fallen man to check that he is the same one and not some new variant in the story. The larger ant walked along the remaining stretch of wall, slipped under the door, and some time will pass before it reappears to find everything changed, well, that's just a manner of speaking, there are still three men there, but the two who do not fall never stop moving, it must be some kind of game, there's no other explanation […]. [T]hey grab him by the shoulders and propel him willy-nilly in the direction of the wall, so that sometimes he hits his back, sometimes his head, or else his poor bruised face smashes into the whitewash and leaves on it a trace of blood, not a lot, just whatever spurts forth from his mouth and right eyebrow. And if they leave him there, he, not his blood, slides down the wall and he ends up kneeling on the ground, beside the little trail of ants, who are startled by the sudden fall from on high of that great mass, which doesn't, in the end, even graze them. And when he stays there for some time, one ant attaches itself to his clothing, wanting to take a closer look, the fool, it will be the first ant to die, because the next blow falls on precisely that spot, the ant doesn't feel the second blow, but the man does.”

Source: Raised from the Ground (1980), pp. 172–174