quotations about travel
A wise traveller never despises his own country.
CARLO GOLDONI
attributed, Day's Collacon
I assure you that without travel we (at least men of the arts and sciences) are miserable creatures. A man of mediocre talent will remain mediocre whether he travels or not; but one of superior talent (which I cannot deny that I am, without doing wrong) will go to seed if he remains continually in one place.
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
letter to Leopold Mozart, September 11, 1778
Long-term travel doesn't require a massive bundle of cash; it requires only that we walk through the world in a more deliberate way.
ROLF POTTS
Vagabonding
On journeys it has happened many times before that something I especially desire withholds itself. Travel is like knowledge: much remains unknown and imperfectly seen, a situation not always remedied by checking museum hours, which are, in any case, changeable. And, too, the direct gaze, for all its virtues, can obscure: some things can simply not be seen head-on in the sun's glare.
EMILY HIESTAND
The Very Rich Hours
Travel is like love, involving all its possible phases--its approaches, its games, its crystallisations, or its claps of thunder, even to the point of temporal disorientation or spatial displacement, from a change of place to the embrace of a new and totally different destination, as if in the bodily form of a woman met by chance, through whose union a masterpiece is accomplished.
JEAN CASSOU
attributed, The Tourist as a Metaphor of the Social World
Travel can be fun, as long as you have the right attitude and plan the trip with realistic expectations.
LEWIS WALKER
"Travel dreams 2017", Dunwoody Crier, May 16, 2017
Never travel by sea when you can go by land.
CATO
attributed, Day's Collacon
Travelling is an excellent means of living in idleness; we acquire by it a kind of knowledge which is not always beneficial, and estrange ourselves from our daily avocations to partake liberally of the vices and pleasures of other people.
T. SMITH
attributed, Day's Collacon
Traveling is a pleasant and easy way of ridding oneself of superfluous gold.
WILLIAM BALDWIN
Ordinary Results
Every traveler has a tale to tell.
DAVID C. SMITH & RICHARD L. TIERNEY
The Ring of Ikribu
No matter how far we travel, the memories will follow in the baggage car.
AUGUST STRINDBERG
Miss Julie
Better sit still where born, I say,
Wed one sweet woman and love her well,
Love and be loved in the old East way,
Drink sweet waters, and dream in a spell,
Than to wander in search of the Blessed Isles,
And to sail the thousands of watery miles
In search of love, and find you at last
On the edge of the world, and a curs'd outcast.
JOAQUIN MILLER
Pace Implora
A man on foot, on horseback or on a bicycle will see more, feel more, enjoy more in one mile than the motorized tourists can in a hundred miles.
EDWARD ABBEY
Desert Solitaire
Travel is ... a means of conquering space and time.
JILLY TRAGANOU
Travel, Space, Architecture
The soul of the journey is liberty, to think, feel, do just as one pleases.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Table Talk
Travel is like a drug that permeates the mind with an indefinite but unusual tinge, stimulating and releasing, imparting a greater significance than they possess to the things that interest and amuse it.
OSBERT SITWELL
Discursions on Travel, Art, and Life
Foreign travel is like a tarantula bite--once beginning to dance, one must dance on. The exertion may be more painful than pleasurable, still we keep it up. The lookers-on--the quiet, phlegmatic, or selfish stayers at home--think us very foolish; perhaps we ourselves have our doubts whether we are not rather foolish too. Nevertheless we go dancing on, and dance until we die.
DINAH CRAIK
We Four in Normandy
Travel is like death in that it requires separation and, indeed, mourning. And travel by sea, unlike the far more rapid air travel, gives time for mourning, separation, and loss as one sees space slowly open between ship and shore and watches the coastline recede and eventually disappear.
PHILIP H. PFATTEICHER
Liturgical Spirituality
He didn't really like travel, of course. He liked the idea of travel, and the memory of travel, but not travel itself.
JULIAN BARNES
Flaubert's Parrot
The traveled mind is the catholic mind educated from exclusiveness and egotism.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk