100 Epic Travel Quotes

I have collected here 100 of my favorite travel quotes! They are organized into ten categories below (wanderlust, adventure, travel companions, etc).

Let me be the first to say that I spent way too much time on this project. I made a little quote art for each one, and I also did my best to research the person who said the quote and to verify that they actually said it. It's a pet peeve of mine when quotes are made up (there are two really popular ones out right now, supposedly said by the Dalai Lama and Mark Twain, but neither are accurate) or mis-attributed (the Andre Gide one I've included is often attributed to Christopher Columbus).

I tried to include a bit of variety here. There are quotes by men and women throughout history. A large proportion of them are writers, because, hey, writers are good with words, but there are also quite a few explorers, diplomats, scientists, philosophers, adventurers, etc. I've also included some proverbs about travel from a variety of countries.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy reading them, and that they inspire you or get you thinking about some new aspects of travel!

quotes on getting up & going

These first ten quotes are all about getting up and getting out there--ones to inspire you to seize the day and start traveling, as well as some reflections on why we travel.

1. "The trip around the world means big moments of living."
- Jack London, American novelist and journalist (1876-1916)

This is one of my favorite quotes, and it comes from The Cruise of the Snark, which Jack London wrote about sailing across the South Pacific with his wife and a small crew in 1907. The foreword of the story makes for a pretty great ode to carpe diem.

2. "Of the gladdest moments of human life, methinks, is the departure upon a distant journey into unknown lands."
– Sir Richard Francis Burton, British explorer, writer and translator (1821-1890)

3. "Never did the world make a queen of a girl who hides in houses and dreams without traveling."
​- Roman Payne, American novelist and poet (1977-)

I've never read any books by Roman Payne, but I really should because there are some really fantastic wanderlust-y quotes from all of his books on Goodreads and floating around Pinterest!

4. "The most beautiful thing in the world is, of course, the world itself."
- Wallace Stevens, American poet (1879-1955)

5. "Traveling is a return to the essentials."
​- Tibetan proverb

6. "The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it."
​- Rudyard Kipling, English novelist, journalist and poet (1865-1936)

7. "To get to know a country, you must have direct contact with the earth. It's futile to gaze at the world through a car window."
​- Albert Einstein, German theoretical physicist (1879-1955)

8. "One who does not travel does not know the value of men."
- Moroccan proverb

9. "The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience."
- Eleanor Roosevelt, American politician, diplomat and First Lady (1884-1962)

10. "He who is outside his door already has the hardest part of his journey behind him."
​- Dutch proverb 

QUOtes on adventure

Ten quotes to inspire you to have adventures...

11.  "If adventures will not befall a young lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad."
​- Jane Austen, English novelist (1775-1817)

12. "Adventure is worthwhile in itself."
​- Amelia Earhart, American aviation pioneer and author (1897-1937)

Click here for 29 more quotes from amazing female explorers and adventurers!

13. "The bold adventurer succeeds the best."
​- Ovid, Roman poet (43-1BC)

14. "Never fear quarrels, but seek hazardous adventures."
- Alexandre Dumas, French writer (1802-1870)

15. “I didn't say no because between safety and adventure I choose adventure.” 
- Craig Ferguson, Scottish-American comedian, actor and writer (1962-)

16. "Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing."
​- Helen Keller, American author, political activist and lecturer (1880-1968)

17. "Always there has been an adventure just around the corner--and the world is still full of corners."
​- Roy Chapman Andrews, American explorer, adventurer and naturalist (1884-1960)

If you don't know who Roy Chapman Andrews is, you should look him up. He was one of the men who inspired Indiana Jones, and quite the archaeologist/paleontologist adventure! I read a biography of him when I was younger, and he's part of the reason that Mongolia is so high on my to-visit list!

18. “We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure. There is no end to the adventures we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.”
– Jawaharial Nehru, first Prime Minister of India (1889-1964)

19. "Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat."
​- Theodore Roosevelt, American POTUS, author and explorer (1858-1919)

20. “The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.” 
- Christopher McCandless, American adventurer (1968-1992)

Quotes on travel companions

Some great advice on choosing travel companions (or going it alone!), as well as reflections on the effect that the people we meet and travel with have on our voyages.

21. "Never travel with anyone you do not love."
​- Ernest Hemingway, American novelist and journalist (1899-1961)

22. “The great difference between voyages rests not with the ships, but with the people you meet on them.”
​- Amelia E. Barr, British novelist (1831-1919)

23. "If you have men who will only come if there is good road, I don't want them. I want men who will come if there is no road at all."
​- David Livingstone, Scottish medical missionary and explorer (1813-1873)

24. “A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles.”
​– Tim Cahill, American travel writer (1944-)

25. ​“Travel only with thy equals or thy betters; if there are none, travel alone.”
​– The Buddha (sixth or fourth century, BC)

26. "He who has traveled alone can tell what he likes."
​- Rwandan proverb

27. “I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.”
​– Mark Twain, American author and humorist (1835-1910)

28. ​“One of the great things about travel is that you find out how many good, kind people there are.” - Edith Wharton, American novelist and designer (1862-1937)

29. "The more I traveled the more I realized that fear makes strangers of people who should be friends."
​- Shirley MacLaine, American actress, singer and author (1934-)

30. "Tell me with whom you travel and I'll tell you who you are."
- German proverb

quotes on exploring off the beaten path

Quotes to inspire you to get out there and explore: unknown lands, uncharted waters, off the beaten path...

31. "It is not down in any map--true places never are."
- Herman Melville, American novelist and poet (1819-1891)

32. "Do not go where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."
​- Ralph Waldo Emerson, American writer and poet (1803-1882)

33. "All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware."
- Martin Buber, Austrian philosopher (1878-1965)

34. "The farther you go, however, the harder it is to return. The world has many edges, and it’s easy to fall off." 
- Anderson Cooper, American journalist and news anchor (1967-)

35. "If the path be beautiful, let us not ask where it leads."
​- Anatole France, French poet, journalist and novelist (1844-1924)

36. "Half the fun of the travel is the aesthetic of lostness."  
​- Ray Bradbury, American author (1920-2012)

37. "Our happiest moments as tourists always seem to come when we stumble upon one thing while in pursuit of something else."
​- Lawrence Block, American writer (1938-)

38. "Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take, no matter where it's going."
​- Edna St. Vincent Millay, American poet and playwright (1892-1950)

39. "There is a peculiar pleasure in riding out into the unknown. A pleasure which no second journey on the same trail ever affords."
​– Edith Durham, British writer and artist (1863-1944)

40. "Give me an atlas over a guidebook any day. There is no more poetic book in the world.” 
- Judith Schalansky, German author and publisher (1980-)

quotes on wanderlust

wanderlust
noun  wan·der·lust  \ˈwän-dər-ˌləst\
definition: a strong desire to travel

41. "Nostalgia in reverse, the longing for yet another strange land, grew especially strong in spring."
- Vladimir Nabokov, Russian novelist (1899-1977)

42. "I’ve been homesick for countries I’ve never been, and longed to be where I couldn’t be."
- John Cheever, American novelist (1912-1982)

43. "Only one who wanders finds new paths."
- Norwegian proverb

I may or may not have already used this one in a post about quotes on hiking, nature & fall...

44. "I'm not sure what I'll do, but--well, I want to go places and see people. I want my mind to grow. I want to live where things happen on a big scale."
​- F. Scott Fitzgerald, American novelist (1896-1940)

45. "We are torn between a nostalgia for the familiar and an urge for the foreign and strange. As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known."
​- Carson McCullers, American novelist, playwright, and poet (1917-1967)

46. "Every one of a hundred thousand cities around the world had its own special sunset and it was worth going there, just once, if only to see the sun go down."
- Ryū Murakami, Japanese novelist and filmmaker (1952-)

47. "But as for me I am tormented by an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas and land on barbarous coasts."
- Herman Melville, American novelist and poet (1819-1891)

This is one of my all-time favorite travel quotes, and comes to us from the first chapter of Moby-Dick! 

48. "For always roaming with a hungry heart, 
Much have I seen and known."
​- Lord Alfred Tennyson, British poet (1809-1892)

49. “Only the road and the dawn, the sun, the wind, and the rain,
And the watch fire under stars, and sleep, and the road again.” 
- John Masefield, English poet and writer (1878-1967)

50. “The world is big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark.”
​- John Muir, Scottish-American naturalist and author (1838-1914)

quotes on learning through travel

Ten quotes about how travel changes you--by increasing your understanding, opening up new perspectives, and granting you knowledge or even wisdom.

51. "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes." 
- Marcel Proust, French novelist (1871-1922)

52. "He that travels far knows much."
​- Romanian proverb

53. "Certainly, travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living."
– Miriam Beard, English author (1901-1983)

54. "To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries."
​- Aldous Huxley, English novelist and philosopher (1894-1963)

55. “Don’t tell me how educated you are, tell me how much you have traveled.” 
– The Prophet Mohammed (7th century AD)

56. "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, American author, poet and civil rights activist (1928-2014)

57. "Wisdom can be found traveling."
​- Sri Lankan proverb

58. "One's destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things."
​- Henry Miller, American writer (1891-1980)

59. “Experience, travel – these are as education in themselves.”
​– Euripides, Greek playwright and poet (480-406 BC)

60. "For I assure you, without travel, at least for people from the arts and sciences, one is a miserable creature!"
​– Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Austrian composer (1756-1791)

Quotes on nomads, vagabonds & gypsy blood

Some of us may get the travel bug now and then, or some of us may just have the urge to wander in our blood...

61. "A nomad I will remain for life, in love with distant and uncharted places."
​- Isabelle Eberhart, Swiss explorer and writer (1877-1904)

62. ​“There's a race of men that don't fit in, 
A race that can't sit still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and 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.” 
- Robert W. Service, British-Canadian poet and writer (1874-1958)

63. I was not born for one corner. The whole world is my native land.
​- Seneca, Roman philosopher and dramatist (4 BC - 65 AD)

64. “Here the true life of wandering begins, the life I love, wandering without any special direction, taking it easy in sunlight, the life of a vagabond wholly free. I am much inclined to live from my rucksack, and let my trousers fray as they like.” 
- Hermann Hesse, Swiss poet, novelist and painter (1877-1962)

65. “I now know, by an almost fatalistic conformity with the facts, that my destiny is to travel...” 
- Ernesto Che Guevara, Argentine revolutionary, physician, author, and guerrilla leader (1928-1967)

66. "Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wilder seas
Where storms will show Your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars."
- Sir Francis Drake, English sea captain, privateer and navigator (1540-1596)

67. "At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature."
​- Henry David Thoreau, American author, poet, naturalist and philosopher (1817-1862)

68. "We are all wanderers on this earth. Our hearts are full of wonder, and our souls are deep with dreams."
- Gypsy proverb

69. "I have now been to that unknown region, and I shall return to it again, perhaps out of instinct, like a moth drawn to a flame."
​- Alexine Tinné, Dutch explorer (1835-1869)

70. "The journey itself is home."
​– Matsuo Bashō​, Japanese poet (1644-1694)

quotes for when the going gets tough

Sometimes, travel is hard. Here's a collection of advice and reflections for when the going gets tough out there on the road!

71. “An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.” 
- G.K. Chesterton, English writer and lay theologian (1874-1936)

72. "To belong nowhere is both a blessing and a curse, like any kind of freedom."
- Leah Stewart, American author (1973-)

​73. "The sea is dangerous and its storms terrible, but these obstacles have never been sufficient reason to remain ashore."
​- Ferdinand Magellan, Portuguese explorer (1480-1521)

74. “Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.”
​– Paul Theroux, American travel writer and novelist (1941-)

75. ​"Difficulties are just things to overcome, after all."
- Ernest Shackleton, British polar explorer (1874-1922)

76. “I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.” 
- Louisa May Alcott, American novelist and poet (1832-1888)

77. “Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance.”
​- Cesare Pavese, Italian poet and writer (1908-1950)

78. “Do just once what others say you can't do, and you will never pay attention to their limitations again.”
- Captain James Cook, British explorer, cartographer, and Navy captain (1728-1779)

79. “An adventure may be worn as a muddy spot or it may be worn as a proud insignia. It is the woman wearing it who makes it the one thing or the other.”
​– Norma Shearer, Canadian-American actress (1902-1983)

80. "A ship is safe in harbor, but that is not what ships were built for."
​- John A. Shedd, American merchant (1850-1926)

Quotes on coming home

81. "I am not the same, having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world."
​- Mary Anne Radmacher, American writer and artist

82. "A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it."
​- George Moore, Irish novelist and poet (1852-1933)

83. ​“I did not tell half of what I saw, for I knew I would not be believed."
- Marco Polo, Italian merchant traveler and writer

84. “You will never be completely at home again, because part of your heart always will be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place.”
- Miriam Adeney, American author and anthropologist

85. "We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."
- T. S. Eliot, British poet and writer (1888-1965)

86. "It is always sad to leave a place to which one knows one will never return."
​- Gustave Flaubert, French novelist (1821-1880)

87. “Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”
- Sir Terry Pratchett, English author (1948-2015)

88. "Your travel life has the aspect of a dream ... you are like the Vikings who have gone into a world of adventure, and home is not home until you return."
​- Agatha Christie, English novelist and playwright (1890-1976)

89. “No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.”
​- Lin Yutang, Chinese writer, translator and inventor (1895-1976)

90. "Midst pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
be it ever so humble, there's no place like home."
​- John Howard Payne, American actor, poet and author (1791-1852)

The classic travel quotes

91. "Not all those who wander are lost."
​- J.R.R. Tolkien, English writer, poet and professor (1892-1973)

92. "I haven't been everywhere, but it's on the list."
​- Susan Sontag, American writer and filmmaker (1933-2004)

93. "I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move."
​– Robert Louis Stevenson, Scottish novelist and poet (1850-1894)

94. "Traveling--it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller."
​- Ibn Battuta, Berber traveler and scholar (1304-1369 AD)

95. "One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight, for a very long time, of the shore."
​- André Gide, French author and Nobel Prize winner (1869-1951)

96. "A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving."
​- Lao Tzu, Chinese philosopher and writer (5th century BC)

97. "The world is a book and those who do not travel only read a page."
- St. Augustine, Roman theologian and philosopher (354-430 AD)

98. "We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls." 
- Anais Nin, Cuban-French writer (1903-1977)

99. "To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world. You are surrounded by adventure."
​- Dame Freya Stark, British explorer and travel writer (1893-1993)

100. "To roam the roads of lands remote: To travel is to live."  
​- Hans Christian Andersen, Danish author (1805-1875)

Which quote was your favorite from the list? Do you have any especially loved ones that I missed? Share them in the comments below!

​xoxo, xenophile