quotations about travel
Those who visit foreign nations, but who associate only with their own countrymen, change their climate, but not their customs; they ... return home with travelled bodies, but untravelled minds.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Travel is the soul of civilization.
ZORA NEALE HURSTON
attributed, The Art of Pilgrimage
Though they carry nothing forth with them, yet in all their journey they lack nothing. For wheresoever they come, they be at home.
SIR THOMAS MORE
"Of Their Journeying or Travelling Abroad", Utopia
To travel is to possess the world.
E. BURTON HOLMES
American Review of Reviews, December 1907
Travel is one of the greatest facilitators of creation, if only because it forces us to observe other ways of creating things.
BLAKE SNOW
"Off The Grid: Why Do We Travel?", Paste Magazine, May 16, 2017
I have just been all round the world and have formed a very poor opinion of it.
SIR THOMAS BEECHAM
attributed, The Quotable Traveler
To me, travel is a great way of bringing in fresh ideas. Since nature is my muse, I get bigger and better ideas when I see more of the world.
RANGA VOONA
"PhotoSparks", YourStory, May 6, 2017
When one is traveling, everything looks brighter and lovelier. That does not mean it IS brighter and lovelier; it just means that sweet, kindly home suffers in comparison to tarted-up foreign places with all their jewels on.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
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
Any youth who doesn't travel is like a blind person.
SEKOU CAMARA
"The Dan"
Travel is like knowledge. The more you see the more you know you haven't seen.
MARK HERTSGAARD
Earth Odyssey
I depart,
Whither I know not; but the hour's gone by
When Albion's lessening shores could grieve or glad mine eye.
LORD BYRON
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
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
Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education, in the elder, a part of experience.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Travel", The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral
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
Foreign travel is like a pleasant temporary death, relieving you of responsibilities and familiar duties.
ROBINSON JEFFERS
Collected Poetry
Travel not too fast, if you would learn.
PETER RAMUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
Travel is an attitude, a state of mind. It is not residence, it is motion.
PAUL THEROUX
introduction, The Best American Travel Writing
Never travel by sea when you can go by land.
CATO
attributed, Day's Collacon
The real voyage of discovery ... consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
MARCEL PROUST
The Maxims of Marcel Proust