Cool Travel Quotes

A selection of my favorite travel quotes from people through history, along with some of my favorite pictures.

Not all who wander are lost.
~ J. R. R. Tolkien ~

Only the curious have, if they live, a tale worth telling at all
~ Curiosity - Alistair Reid ~


Thank God! there is always a Land of Beyond
For us who are true to the trail;
A vision to seek, a beckoning peak,
A farness that never will fail;
A pride in our soul that mocks at a goal,
A manhood that irks at a bond,
And try how we will, unattainable still,
Behold it, our Land of Beyond!
~ The Land of Beyond (Last Verse) - Robert Service ~


A nomad I will remain for life,
in love with distant and uncharted places.
~ Isabelle Eberhardt ~


Do not follow where the path may lead.
Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~


The impulse to travel is one of the hopeful symptoms of life.
~ Agnes Repplier ~


Now more than ever do I realize that I shall never be content with a sedentary life,
and that I shall always be haunted by thoughts of a sun-drenched elsewhere.
~ Isabelle Eberhardt ~


I travel not to go anywhere, but to go.
I travel for travels sake.
The great affair is to move.
~ Robert Louis Stevenson ~


If you do nothing unexpected,
nothing unexpected happens.
~ Fay Weldon ~


I may not have gone where I intended to go,
but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.
~ Douglas Adams ~


But do not ask me where I am heading,
As I travel in this limitless world
Where every step I take is my home
~ Portion of a Poem by Eihei Dogen ~


Alone I wander a thousand miles,
and I ask my way from the white clouds.
~ Maitreya ~


Surely it is the right wish that draws us to the right place.
Nothing of importance happens accidentally in our life.
~ Lama Anagarika Govinda - The Way of the White Clouds ~


The wonders of a journey consist far more of such intangible experiences and unexpected situations than of factual things and events of material reality.
~ Lama Anagarika Govinda - The Way of the White Clouds ~


The gladdest moment in human life, methinks, is a departure into unknown lands. The blood flows with the fast circulation of childhood.
~ Sir Richard Burton - African Explorer ~


Dream big, and dare to fail.
~ Norman Vaughan ~


Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did.
So throw off the bowlines.
Sail away from the safe harbor.
Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Explore. Dream. Discover.
~ Mark Twain ~


The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.
~ St. Augustine of Hippo ~


The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.
~ Jack London ~


Make your choice, adventurous stranger.
Strike the bell and bide the danger.
Or wonder 'til it drives you mad,
What would have followed, if you had.
~ The Magicians Nephew - C.S. Lewis ~


Two roads diverged in a wood, and I
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
~ The Road Not Taken - Robert Frost ~


May all your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view......where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you.
~ Edward Abbey ~

No one ever travels so high as he who knows not where he is going.
~ Cromwell ~


Security is mostly a superstition.
It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it.
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.
~ Helen Keller ~


Whatever you can do,
or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius,
power and magic in it.
~ Goethe ~


Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs,
even though checkered by failure,
than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer too much,
because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.
~ Theodore Roosevelt ~


The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd.
The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been.
~ Alan Ashley-Pitt ~


There's a race of men that don't fit in,
A race that can't stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain's crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
And they don't know how to rest.
~ The Men That Don't Fit In (First Verse) - Robert Service ~


Suddenly you are five years old again. You can't read anything. You only have the most rudimentary sense of how things work; you can't even reliably cross a street without endangering your life. Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses.
~ Neither Here Nor There - Bill Bryson ~


Everything...we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is golden for him who has the vision to realize it as such.
~ Henry Miller ~


The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see.
~ G. K. Chesterton ~


Tourists don't know where they've been. Travelers don't know where they're going.
~ Paul Theroux ~


And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
~ Little Gidding - T. S. Eliot ~


It is fatal to know too much at the outset. Boredom comes as quickly to the traveler who knows his route as to the novelist who is over certain of his plot.
~ To the Ends of the Earth - Paul Theroux ~


A good traveler has no fixed plan, and is not intent on arriving.
~ The Way of Life - Lao-Tzu ~


When you travel you experience, in a very practical way, the act of rebirth. You confront completely new situations, the day passes more slowly, and on most journeys you don't even understand the language the people speak....You begin to be more accessible to others, because they may be able to help you in difficult situations.
~ The Pilgrimage - Paulo Coelho ~


Bear in mind that the special advantage of vagabonding is the experience of not really knowing what happens next, which you can obtain at bargain rates in all cases....The challenges you face offer no alternative but to cope with them. And in doing that, your life is being fully lived.
~ Vagabonding in Europe and North Africa - Ed Buryn ~


The pleasure in traveling consists of the obstacles, the fatigue, and even the danger. What charm can anyone find in an excursion when he is always sure of reaching his destination, of having horses ready waiting for him, a soft bed, an excellent supper, and all the eases and comfort he can enjoy in his own home! One of the great misfortunes of modern life is the want of any sudden surprise, and the absence of all adventure. Everything is so well arranged.
~ Wanderings in Spain - Theophile Gautier ~