Traveling is like gambling: it is always connected with winning and losing, and generally where it is least expected we receive, more or less than what we hoped for.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist see what he has come to see.
—G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet
Once the travel bug bites there is no known antidote, and I know that I shall be happily infected until the end of my life.
—Michael Palin (b.1943) English Comedian, Actor, Writer, Explorer
It would be nice to travel if you knew where you were going and where you would live at the end or do we ever know, do we ever live where we live, we’re always in other places, lost, like sheep.
—Janet Frame (1924–2004) New Zealand Novelist, Short-Story Writer
Thanks to the interstate highway system, it is now possible to travel across the country from coast to coast without seeing anything.
—Charles Kuralt (1934–97) American Journalist, TV Personality
Your true traveler finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty—his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure.
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English Humanist, Pacifist, Essayist, Short Story Writer, Satirist
Without stirring abroad, one can know the whole world; Without looking out of the window one can see the way of heaven. The further one goes the less one knows.
—Laozi (fl.6th Century BCE) Chinese Philosopher, Sage
I am leaving the town to the invaders: increasingly numerous, mediocre, dirty, badly behaved, shameless tourists.
—Brigitte Bardot (b.1934) French Film Star
My heart is warm with the friend I make,
And better friends I’ll not be knowing;
Yet there isn’t a train I wouldn’t take,
No matter where it’s going.
—Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American Poet, Playwright, Feminist
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 (1730–74) Irish Novelist, Playwright, Poet
When I was very young and the urge to be someplace was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked. In other words, I don’t improve, in further words, once a bum always a bum. I fear the disease is incurable.
—John Steinbeck (1902–68) American Novelist, Short Story Writer, Journalist
A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.
—John Steinbeck (1902–68) American Novelist, Short Story Writer, Journalist
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before leading wherever I choose.
—Walt Whitman (1819–92) American Poet, Essayist, Journalist, American, Poet, Essayist, Journalist
Though there are some disagreeable things in Venice there is nothing so disagreeable as the visitors.
—Henry James (1843–1916) American-born British Novelist, Writer
Man is flying too fast for a world that is round. Soon he will catch up with himself in a great rear end collision.
—James Thurber
To see the world is to judge the judges.
—Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French Writer, Moralist
Nothing in the universe can travel at the speed of light, they say, forgetful of the shadow’s speed.
—Howard Nemerov (1920–91) American Poet, Novelist, Playwright
The alternative to a vacation is to stay home and tip every third person you see.
—Unknown
To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labor.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94) Scottish Novelist
They change their climate, not their soul, who rush across the sea.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) (65–8 BCE) Roman Poet
Those who visit foreign nations, but associate only with their own countrymen, change their climate, but not their customs.—They see new meridians, but the same men; and with heads as empty as their pockets, return home with travelled bodies, but untravelled minds.
—Charles Caleb Colton (c.1780–1832) English Clergyman, Aphorist
Of course great hotels have always been social ideas, flawless mirrors to the particular societies they service.
—Joan Didion (b.1934) American Essayist, Novelist, Memoirist
A writer is in danger of allowing his talent to dull who lets more than a year go past without finding himself in his rightful place of composition, the small single unluxurious “retreat” of the twentieth century, the hotel bedroom.
—Cyril Connolly (1903–74) British Literary Critic, Writer
A route differs from a road not only because it is solely intended for vehicles, but also because it is merely a line that connects one point with another. A route has no meaning in itself; its meaning derives entirely from the two points that it connects. A road is a tribute to space. Every stretch of road has meaning in itself and invites us to stop. A route is the triumphant devaluation of space, which thanks to it has been reduced to a mere obstacle to human movement and a waste of time.
—Milan Kundera (b.1929) Czech Novelist
Usually speaking, the worst bred person in company is a young traveller just returned from abroad.
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Irish Satirist
He used often to say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: its springs were at every doorstep, and every path was its tributary. “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,” he used to say. “You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.”
—J. R. R. Tolkien (1892–1973) British Scholar, Author
Of dead kingdoms I recall the soul, sitting amid their ruins.
—Nathaniel Parker Willis (1806–67) American Poet, Playwright, Essayist
We are all travelers in the wilderness of the world, and the best that we can find in our travels is an honest friend.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94) Scottish Novelist
He who is only a traveler learns things at second-hand and by the halves, and is poor authority. We are most interested when science reports what those men already know practically or instinctively, for that alone is a true humanity, or account of human experience.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
A good place to visit, but a poor place to stay.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw) (1818–85) American Humorist, Author, Lecturer
No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.
—Lin Yutang (1895–1976) Chinese Author, Philologist
Travel can be one of the most rewarding forms of introspection.
—Lawrence Durrell (1912–90) British Biographer, Poet, Playwright, Novelist
Old men and far travelers may lie with authority.
—Unknown
For the perfect idler, for the passionate observer it becomes an immense source of enjoyment to establish his dwelling in the throng, in the ebb and flow, the bustle, the fleeting and the infinite. To be away from home and yet to feel at home anywhere; to see the world, to be at the very center of the world, and yet to be unseen of the world, such are some of the minor pleasures of those independent, intense and impartial spirits, who do not lend themselves easily to linguistic definitions. The observer is a prince enjoying his incognito wherever he goes.
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–67) French Poet, Art Critic, Essayist, Translator
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Half the fun of the travel is the esthetic of lostness.
—Ray Bradbury (b.1920) American Novelist, Short Story Writer
Through the years, a man peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, tools, stars, horses and people. Shortly before his death, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the image of his own face.
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine Writer, Essayist, Poet
I will not follow where the path may lead, but I will go where there is no path, and I will leave a trail.
—Muriel Strode (1875–1964) American Author, Businesswoman
The travel writer seeks the world we have lost—the lost valleys of the imagination.
—Alexander Claud Cockburn (1941–2012) Irish American Political Journalist
I am not much an advocate for traveling, and I observe that men run away to other countries because they are not good in their own, and run back to their own because they pass for nothing in the new places. For the most part, only the light characters travel. Who are you that have no task to keep you at home?
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
I have been a stranger in a strange land.
—The Holy Bible Scripture in the Christian Faith
Using a camera appeases the anxiety which the work-driven feel about not working when they are on vacation and supposed to be having fun. They have something to do that is like a friendly imitation of work: they can take pictures.
—Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American Writer, Philosopher
I swims in the Tagus all across at once, and I rides on an ass or a mule, and swears Portuguese, and have got a diarrhea and bites from the mosquitoes. But what of that? Comfort must not be expected by folks that go a pleasuring.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
One telling Socrates that such an one was nothing improved by his travels, “I very well believe it,” said he, “for he took himself along with him.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) French Essayist
I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read on the train.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
A traveler without observation is a bird without wings.
—Sa’Di (Musharrif Od-Din Muslih Od-Din) (c.1213–91) Persian Poet
O public road, I say back I am not afraid to leave you, yet I love you, you express me better than I can express myself.
—Walt Whitman (1819–92) American Poet, Essayist, Journalist, American, Poet, Essayist, Journalist
To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.
—Freya Stark (1893–1993) British Explorer, Writer
Journeys end in lovers meeting.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright