100 Travel Quotes To Feed the Wanderlust Inside You
Warning: You'll definitely get in the mood to plan your next vacation.
As the great Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, life is a journey—not a destination. And what better way to journey through life than by traveling to see what wonders of the world lie outside of your inner circle?
Whether your destination is a long plane ride to a far-flung tropical island, an all-inclusive resort, or a car ride to a closer-to-home national monument, there’s something thrilling about traveling. You pack up your suitcase, put a hold on your mail delivery, and make a checklist of all that you want to do or see once you get there. (And yes, doing nothing more than reading a book by the pool with a fruity drink in your hand totally ranks on the to-do list!)
To get you in the mood for your next vacation, we have put together some of the best quotes about traveling. These travel thoughts and phrases are sure to feed the wanderlust inside of you, hype you up as you mark off one adventure from your bucket list, or inspire you as you prepare for an epic solo experience.
Just remember that traveling post-pandemic is a bit different than how we would take a trip just two or three years ago. If you are headed to a foreign city, be sure to check the coronavirus regulations for that particular country, because the last thing you want is to have all of your planning be for nothing.
So read these travel quotes, gather up some snacks for the road, get ready to play some games during the car ride, and head on out to your next destination!
100 Travel Quotes
1. “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” — Andre Gide
2. “I wandered everywhere, through cities and countries wide. And everywhere I went, the world was on my side.” — Roman Payne, Rooftop Soliloquy
3. “I am not the same, having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world.” — Mary Anne Radmacher
4. “Actually, the best gift you could have given her was a lifetime of adventures.” — Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
5. “All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
6. “The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.” — Augustine
7. “Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination and the journey. They are home.” ― Anna Quindlen, How Reading Changed My Life
8. “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” — Lao Tzu
9. “Wherever you go becomes a part of you somehow.” — Anita Desai
10. “I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.” — Susan Sontag
11. “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, Tom Sawyer Abroad
12. “Fill your life with experiences, not things. Have stories to tell, not stuff to show.” — Unknown
13. “Live your life by a compass, not a clock.” — Erica Jong
14. “It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.” — Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
15. “I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.” ― Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes
16. “Traveling allows you to become so many different versions of yourself.” — Unknown
17. “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” ― Marcel Proust
18. “No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.” — Lin Yutang
19. “You must go on adventures to find out where you belong.” — Sue Fitzmaurice
20. “Travel brings power and love back into your life.” ― Rumi Jalalud-Din
21. “Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe.” — Anatole France
22. “Travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer.” — Unknown
23. “We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls.” ― Anaïs Ni
24. “We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next to find ourselves.” — Pico Iyer
25. “Surely, of all the wonders of the world, the horizon is the greatest.” — Freya Stark
Related: The Best Places to Travel to Alone
26. “Travel doesn’t become adventure until you leave yourself behind.” — Marty Rubin
27. “Now more than ever do I realize that I will never be content with a sedentary life, that I will always be haunted by thoughts of a sun-drenched elsewhere.” ― Isabelle Eberhardt, The Nomad
28. “Live life with no excuses, travel with no regret.” — Oscar Wilde
29. “The journey is my home.” — Muriel Rukeyser
30. “Travel far enough, you meet yourself.” — David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
31. “The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see.” ― K. Chesterton
32. “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, The Legacy Letters
33. “Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
34. “The gladdest moment in human life, methinks, is a departure into unknown lands.” — Sir Richard Burton
35. “Every dreamer knows that it is entirely possible to be homesick for a place you've never been to, perhaps more homesick than for familiar ground.” — Judith Thurman
36. “One of the great things about travel is that you find out how many good, kind people there are.” — Edith Wharton
37. “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by.” — Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken”
38. “I read; I travel; I become.” ― Derek Walcott
39. “Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind.” — Seneca
40. “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
41. “To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.” — Aldous Huxley
42. “I wondered why it was that places are so much lovelier when one is alone.” — Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca
43. “Don’t tell me how educated you are, tell me how much you have traveled.” — The Prophet Mohammed
44. “We take photos as a return ticket to a moment otherwise gone.” — Katie Thurmes
45. “Travel is never a matter of money but of courage.” — Paulo Coelho, Aleph
46. “Take only memories, leave only footprints.” — Chief Seattle
47. “I think you travel to search, and you come back home to find yourself there.” ― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
48. “I think one travels more usefully when they travel alone because they reflect more.” — Thomas Jefferson
49. “We travel for romance, we travel for architecture, and we travel to be lost.” — Ray Bradbury
50. “Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.” ― Gustave Flaubert
Related: The Best Gifts for the Travel Lover
51. “If you have to wait for someone to travel with you, you may end up waiting a lifetime!” — Unknown
52. “Adventure is worthwhile.” – Aesop
53. “Don’t be scared to walk alone. Don’t be scared to like it.” — John Mayer, “Age of Worry”
54. “To travel is to live.” ― Hans Christian Andersen
55. “Once a year, go somewhere you have never been before.” — Dalai Lama
56. “To travel is worth any cost or sacrifice.” ― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
57. “We live in a 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
58. “He who would travel happily must travel light.” — Antoine de St. Exupery
59. “Solo travel not only pushes you out of your comfort zone, it also pushes you out of the zone of others’ expectations.” — Suzy Strutner
60. “Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.” — Anthony Bourdain
61. “When the traveler goes alone, he gets acquainted by himself.” — Liberty Hyde Bailey
62. “Travel can be one of the most rewarding forms of introspection.” — Unknown
63. “We wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment.” — Hilaire Belloc
64. “Once the travel bug bites there is no known antidote, and I know that I shall be happily infected until the end of my life.” — Michael Palin
65. “I’m never happier than when I’m alone in a foreign city; it is as if I had become invisible.” — Storm Jameson
66. “People don’t take trips—trips take people.” — John Steinbeck, Travels With Charlie
67. “Let us step into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure.” ― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
68. “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.” — Terry Pratchett
69. “The man who goes alone can start today, but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.” — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
70. “One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” — Henry Miller
71. “Never go on trips with anyone you do not love.” — Ernest Hemingway
72. “If you never go, you will never know!” — Unknown
73. “Traveling—it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.” — Ibn Battuta
74. “Traveling alone doesn’t always mean you’re alone. Most often, you meet marvelous people along the way and make connections that last a lifetime.” — Jacqueline Boone
75. “The most beautiful thing in the world is, of course, the world itself.” — Wallace Stevens
Related: Tips For Traveling Abroad
76. “It is not fit that every man should travel; it makes a wise man better, and a fool worse.” — William Hazlitt
77. “It is better to see something once than to hear about it a thousand times.” — Asian Proverb
78. “It is not down on any map; true places never are” — Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale
79. “We travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us.” — Unknown
80. “Nothing lasts forever, except the day before you start your vacation.” — Gayland Anderson
81. “May your adventures bring you closer together, even as they take you far away from home.” — Trenton Lee Stewart, The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey
82. “Tourists visit. Travelers explore.” — Unknown
83. “All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.” — Martin Buber
84. “A traveler without observation is a bird without wings.” — Moslih Eddin Saadi
85. “I see my path, but I don’t know where it leads. Not knowing where I’m going is what inspires me to travel it.” — Rosalia de Castro
86. “The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.” — Samuel Johnson
87. “Climb mountains not so the world can see you, but so you can see the world.” — David McCullough Jr.
88. “I would rather own a little and see the world than own the world and see a little of it.” — Alexander Sattler
89. “Travel expands the mind and fills the gap.” — Sheda Savage
90. “If we travel simply to indulge ourselves, we are missing some of the greatest lessons life has to offer.” — Unknown
91. “Traveling tends to magnify all human emotions.” — Peter Hoeg
92. “‘I’m bored’ is a useless thing to say. You live in a great, big, vast world that you’ve seen non-percent of.” — Louis C.K.
93. “Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.” — Pat Conroy
94. “So shut up, live, travel, adventure, bless and don't be sorry”― Jack Kerouac, Desolation Angels
95. “Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.” — Paul Theroux
96. “Don't let your luggage define your travels, each life unravels differently.” — Shane Koyczan
97. “The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to.”― Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel
98. “I heard an airplane passing overhead. I wished I was on it.” — Charles Bukowski
99. “The best traveler is one without a camera.”― Kamand Kojouri
100. “The impulse to travel is one of the hopeful symptoms of life.” — Agnes Repplier
Next, check out these 150 awesome Instagram captions for your travel photos!
