22 English quotes

Travel quotes

Quotes about travel, adventure and seeing the world for yourself.

“Not all those who wander are lost.”
– J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (1954)
Meaning: Someone who travels or lives without a fixed plan isn't necessarily confused. They may be exploring with a purpose of their own.
wander
– walk or travel without a fixed direction
“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.”
– Often attributed to Saint Augustine
Meaning: If you never leave home, you only know a tiny part of the world. Travel lets you "read" the rest of it.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.”
– Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad (1869)
Meaning: When you meet people from other places, it becomes hard to keep unfair ideas about them. Twain jokes that many of his own countrymen badly need that lesson.
prejudice
– an unfair opinion formed without knowledge
bigotry
– strong, unfair dislike of people who are different
sorely
– very much; badly
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
– Often attributed to Marcel Proust
Meaning: Discovery is less about going to new places and more about learning to see things, even familiar things, in a new way.
voyage
– a long journey, especially by sea
“To travel is to live.”
– Hans Christian Andersen, The Fairy Tale of My Life (1855)
Meaning: For Andersen, travelling made him feel truly alive. Seeing new places is one of life's great experiences.
“For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.”
– Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes (1879)
Meaning: The writer enjoys the journey itself, not just arriving somewhere. Being on the move is the pleasure.
for travel's sake
– just for the travel itself, not for another reason
affair
– here, thing or matter
“Travel far enough, you meet yourself.”
– David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas (2004)
Meaning: Long journeys teach you about yourself. Far from home, you discover who you really are.
“One's destination is never a place, but rather a new way of looking at things.”
– Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch (1957)
Meaning: The real goal of a journey isn't the place you arrive at. It's the new understanding you gain along the way.
One's
– a formal way to say "a person's" or "your"
“We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves.”
– Pico Iyer, Why We Travel (2000)
Meaning: At first we travel to escape our normal life and forget ourselves. Later, travel helps us understand who we are.
lose ourselves
– forget about ourselves and our worries completely
“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 (1969)
Meaning: It helps to have a goal, but what you experience on the way is what really counts. Le Guin plays with two meanings of "end": a goal and the finish.
in the end
– finally, when everything is considered
“Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.”
– Often attributed to Gustave Flaubert
Meaning: Seeing how big and varied the world is reminds you that you are small, and makes you less proud.
modest
– not proud; not thinking you are very important
occupy
– fill or take up a space
“Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves.”
– Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)
Meaning: Only when we leave behind familiar places and routines do we start to understand who we are.
“Tourists don't know where they've been, travelers don't know where they're going.”
– Paul Theroux, The Happy Isles of Oceania (1992)
Meaning: Tourists rush through places without really seeing them. Travellers explore slowly and stay open to wherever the road takes them.
“Congratulations! Today is your day. You're off to Great Places! You're off and away!”
– Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You'll Go! (1990)
Meaning: A cheerful send-off for someone starting a new journey or new stage of life. Exciting things are waiting for them.
off and away
– leaving and starting a journey
“Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.”
– Benjamin Disraeli, Vivian Grey (1826)
Meaning: A joke about travellers' stories: they have forgotten much of what they saw, and their memories (and stories) have grown bigger than what really happened.
“It is not down in any map; true places never are.”
– Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)
Meaning: The places that matter most, like a home or a special memory, can't be found on a map. They exist in people's hearts.
down in
– written or recorded in
“I am a part of all that I have met.”
– Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Ulysses (1842)
Meaning: Every person and place we meet on our journey shapes us. We carry a little of each one with us.
“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.”
– Jack Kerouac, On the Road (1957)
Meaning: For the narrator, being on the road isn't a break from life. Travelling is life itself.
battered
– old and damaged from a lot of use
no matter
– it isn't important
“Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road, healthy, free, the world before me.”
– Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road (1856)
Meaning: The poet sets out walking, happy and free, with the whole world waiting in front of him.
Afoot
– on foot; walking
light-hearted
– cheerful and without worries
take to
– start using or going to
“Travel isn't always pretty. It isn't always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that's okay. The journey changes you; it should change you.”
– Anthony Bourdain, No Reservations (2007)
Meaning: Real travel can be hard and even painful, but that is part of its value. A good journey leaves you a different person.
“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, Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now (1993)
Meaning: Travel shows us that people everywhere share the same basic feelings and needs. Knowing this can help strangers understand each other and become friends.
bigotry
– strong, unfair dislike of people who are different
peoples
– nations or ethnic groups
“To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.”
– Freya Stark, Baghdad Sketches (1932)
Meaning: Waking up by yourself in an unfamiliar place feels exciting and free, because the whole day is new and full of possibilities.
awaken
– wake up (literary)
strange
– here, unfamiliar or unknown