Travel Quotes

For me, exploration was a personal venture. I did not go to the Arabian desert to collect plants nor to make a map; such things were incidental. At heart I knew that to write or even to talk of my travels was to tarnish the achievement. I went there to find peace in the hardship of desert travel and the company of desert peoples. I set myself a goal on these journeys, and, although the goal itself was unimportant, its attainment had to be worth every effort and sacrifice... No, it is not the goal but the way there that matters, and the harder the way the more worth while the journey.

~ Wilfred Thesiger

...That's the difference between backpackers and holiday makers. The former can't help but invite hassle whilst the latter pay to escape it.

~ Harry Whitewolf

I wanted to be a King who would found a New World, not in some misty country far across the seas, but right here, right now, at home.

~ Cressida Cowell

There are map people whose joy is to lavish more attention on the sheets of colored paper than on the colored land rolling by. I have listened to accounts by such travelers in which every road number was remembered, every mileage recalled, and every little countryside discovered. Another kind of traveler requires to know in terms of maps exactly where he is pin-pointed at every moment, as though there were some kind of safety in black and red lines, in dotted indications and squirming blue of lakes and the shadings that indicate mountains. It is not so with me. I was born lost and take no pleasure in being found, nor much identification from shapes which symbolize continents and states.

~ John Steinbeck

The subconscious mind is shielding or showing numerous potential paths, based on what it determines would represent a consistent reality for you.

~ Kevin Michel

When you focus on the journey, you will be blessed with guardian angels to direct your path.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

I wanted, I told her, to lie under the stars and smell different breezes. I wanted to drink different waters, feel different heats. Stand with my comrades atop the ruin of old ideas. Plant my boot and steel my eye and not run. I said all this to my dead mother, spoke it down through the dirt: there was a conflagration to come; I wanted to lend it my spark.

~ Laird Hunt

As it often did when I thought about chicken wings and entropy, my mind turned to Emerson. Life is a journey, not a destination. Now that was one stone-cold motherfucker who was not afraid to deliver the truth: After the torments of the journey, you have been well-prepared for the agonies of the destination.

~ Colson Whitehead

When you follow the right steps you will never get lost.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Humboldt's early biographer, F.A. Schwarzenberg, subtitled his life of Humboldt What May Be Accomplished in a Lifetime. He summarised the areas of his subject's extraordinary curiosity as follows: '1) The knowledge of the Earth and its inhabitants. 2) The discovery of the higher laws of nature, which govern the universe, men, animals, plants, minerals. 3) The discovery of new forms of life. 4) The discovery of territories hitherto but imperfectly known, and their various productions. 5)The acquaintance with new species of the human race--- their manners, their language and the historical traces of their culture.' What may be accomplished in a lifetime---and seldom or never is.

~ Alain De Botton

Every night we stopped in a cabin where wood had been stacked, matches left, and canned goods laid out for the chance traveler. All the unknown host received in return was a scribbled note giving our thanks, any news we could think of, and our names. This whole system of northern hospitality was a gigantic chain, for while we were eating this man’s beans, he was undoubtedly farther up the trail, eating somebody else’s.

~ Benedict Freedman

Faxian and Xuanzang might have been the first Chinese to travel to India, but sometimes it felt like I was the first.

~ Hong Mei

We reviewed the ways we had to bring customers: Method A, flying aerobatics at the edge of town. Method B, the parachute jump. Then we began experimenting with Method C. There is a principle that says if you lay out a lonely solitaire game in the center of the wilderness, someone will soon come along to look over your shoulder and tell you how to play your cards. This was the principle of Method C. We unrolled our sleeping bags and stretched out under the wing, completely uncaring.

~ Richard Bach

Moose are the squirrels of Alaska.

~ Tim Moon

In an age of guidebooks, websites, and radio waves, discovery has nearly become a lost feeling. If anything, it is now a matter of expectations to surpass—rarely a matter of unexpected wonderment. It is unusual to find a situation that appears without word, or a place that was not known to be on the road.

~ David Levithan

I travel because it makes me realize how much I haven't seen, how much I'm not going to see, and how much I still need to see.

~ Carew Papritz

At times, it almost felt like I was destined to take the trip, like all the people I met had somehow been waiting for me

~ Nicholas Sparks

Driving down deserted early morning roads. Round and round. Round downtown. Through naked streets. Lips pursed on two litre bottles of beer, but pursuing the lips of freedom's night. Swapping cars. Winding up at karaoke bars or Bolsi- the best place in town. For the food. For the folk. For the service. For the crema de papaya. And for that late night dawn's whiskey coffee.

~ Harry Whitewolf

The problem with the 11:11 Phenomenon is getting anybody interested in it that hasn't experienced it themselves. Other phenomena, such as U.F.Os or crop circles, are able to be seen. We can debate them. But seeing and being guided by 11:11 is hard to convey to those uninitiated in its ways.

~ Harry Whitewolf

We may travel the world over to find a good spot,But if we are blind to search within, we find it not.

~ Ana Claudia Antunes

When you travel, buy a historical book about the place, read to increase your knowledge on the beautiful places of the world.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

The places we visited were always richer and always more intricate than one could imagine. I loved to find out about the world, the good and the bad, in this way. For me, observing things with my own eyes was the only way. My wanderlust was also a wonderlust.

~ Luke F.d. Marsden

If a picture is worth a thousand words, why did God invent captions?

~ David Mellonie

There is a difference between arrival and entrance. Arrival is physical and happens all at once. The train pulls in, the plan touches down, you get out of the taxi with all your luggage. You can arrive a place and never really enter it; you get there, look around, take a few pictures, make a few notes, send postcards home. When you travel like this, you think you know where you are, but, in fact, you have never left home. Entering takes longer. You cross over, slowly, in bits and pieces. […] It is like awakening slowly, over a period of weeks. And then one morning, you open your eyes and you are finally here, really and truly here. You are just beginning to know where you are.

~ Jamie Zeppa

Meeting new people is just remembering faces of God we've forgotten.

~ Harry Whitewolf

I love how the landscape gives the impression of vast space and intimacy at the same time: the thin brown line of a path wandering up an immense green mountainside, a plush hanging valley tucked between two steep hillsides, a village of three houses surrounded by dark forest, paddy fields flowing around an outcrop of rock, a white temple gleaming on a shadowy ridge. The human habitations nestle into the landscape; nothing is cut or cleared beyond what is requires. Nothing is bigger than necessary. Every sign of human settlement repeat the mantra of contentment: “This is just enough.

~ Jamie Zeppa

Walk your own path and be yourself

~ Joanne Nussbaum

Beware the crazy traveller! Mind expansion can be contagious...

~ Nicole Leigh West

The study of maps and the perusal of travel books aroused in me a secret fascination that was at times almost irresistible.

~ Alain De Botton

The colour of fear is never dark or black; it has the colour of thunderbolt; usually white, but can appear in different hues depending on how the fear travels through to get inside your heart

~ Munia Khan

When you're traveling you need to take care of yourself to get by, you have to keep an eye on yourself and your place in the world. It means concentrating on yourself, thinking about yourself and looking after yourself. So when you travel all you really encounter is yourself, as if that were the whole point of it. When you're at home you simply are, you don't have to struggle with anything or achieve anything. You don't have to worry about the railways connections, and timetables, you don't need to experience any thrills or disappointments. You can put yourself to one side - and that's when you see the most.

~ Olga Tokarczuk

Time has become a melding of minutes and months and the feeling of seasons. […] Leon says it is the Bhutan Time Warp and I know what he means. Time does not hurl itself forward at breakneck speed here. Change happens very slowly. A grandmother and her granddaughter wear the same kind of clothes, they do the same work, they know the same songs. The granddaughter does not find her grandmother an embarrassing, boring relic.

~ Jamie Zeppa

Whatever yerz’re lookin’ for, I hope yerz find it. Yerz moight’ve never lost it!

~ Luke F.d. Marsden

English has so many words that do not exist in Sharchhop, but they are mostly nouns, mostly things: machine, airplane, wristwatch. Sharchhop, on the other hand, reveals a culture of material economy but abundant, intricate familial ties and social relations. People cannot afford to make a distinction between need and desire, but they have separate words for older brother, younger sister, father’s brother’s sons, mother’s sister’s daughters. And there are 2 sets of words: a common set for everyday use and an honorific one to show respect. There are three words for gift: a gift given to a person higher in rank, a gift to someone lower, and a gift between equals.

~ Jamie Zeppa

The drive to Black Rock City from San Francisco leads through the Nevada flatlands, past the jittering neon sadness of Reno.

~ Daniel Pinchbeck

What I love is how seamless everything is. You walk throw a forest and come out in a village; and there’s no difference, no division. You aren’t in nature one minute and in civilization the next. The houses are made out of mud and stone and wood, drawn from the land around. Nothing stands out, nothing jars.

~ Jamie Zeppa

I travel to be replenished with beauty, for travel makes the beauty of this world seem like a Christmas that never ends. I travel for the jolting, angelic act of seeking strangeness and newness and profoundness . . .

~ Carew Papritz

Let the sea breeze blow your hair, let the sunset bring tranquility to your heart, let the distant places you travel allow you to explore yourself.

~ Somya Kedia

To travel is to be alive, but to get somewhere is to be dead.

~ Alan W. Watts

Familiarity, globalisation, cheap travel, mere weariness had diluted our sense of foreign-ness.

~ David Nicholls