Nov. 23, 2024, 5:45 p.m.
In the hustle and bustle of everyday life, inspiration can come from the most unexpected places—sometimes even from just a few words strung together. Travel has long been a wellspring of inspiration, offering new perspectives, unforgettable experiences, and a chance to escape the ordinary. To celebrate the spirit of wanderlust, we've gathered a selection of 30 inspiring travel quotes that capture the essence of exploration and adventure. Whether you're dreaming of distant lands or planning your next journey, these quotes are sure to ignite your passion for travel and remind you of the transformative power of discovering the world. So, fasten your seatbelt and get ready to embark on a literary journey that might just spark your next great adventure.
1. “To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.” - Huxley Aldous
2. “The Wanderlust has got me... by the belly-aching fire” - Robert W. Service
3. “When she awoke, the world was on fire.” - Scott Westerfeld
4. “We travel not for trafficking alone;By hotter winds our hearts are fanned:For lust of knowing what should not be knownWe take the Golden Road to Samarkand.” - James Elroy Flecker
5. “I probably did too much thinking in India. I blame it on the roads, for they were superb...” - Robert Edison Fulton Jr.
6. “You are still young, free.. Do yourself a favor. Before it's too late, without thinking too much about it first, pack a pillow and a blanket and see as much of the world as you can. You will not regret it. One day it will be too late.” - Jhumpa Lahiri
7. “نزهتى المفضلة أن أذهب إلى قلب إنسان اّخر أتظلل فى صداقته و أرتوى بكلماته,و سفريتى المحببة أن أبحث عن روح مؤنسة لا عن بلد جديد.” - مصطفى محمود
8. “É um vazio todo peculiar que surge quando, numa cidade estranha, a pessoa disca números de telefone em vão. Quando ninguém atende, é uma decepção de alcance transcendente, como se esses números aleatórios fossem uma questão de vida ou morte.” - Winfried Georg Sebald
9. “Credeam ca vrea sa calatoreasca, dar imi spune adevaruri pe care le stiu deja, ca nu e nevoie sa plece de pe insula ca sa vada lumea, ca are destule mari si orase in minte. Daca e asa, daca toti le avem, atunci poate ca lumea aceasta, luna si stelele sunt si ele plasmuiri ale mintii, insa ale unei minti cu o deschidere mai larga decat a noastra. Chiar daca cineva ma gandeste, sunt liber sa fac ce vreau. Nu poate fi precum sahul universul acesta care parca s-a gandit la toate, ci mai degraba ca un teatru cu decoruri miscatoare, unde putem trece si prin pereti, daca vrem, dar nu o facem. Caci ramanem fideli propriului sentiment al dramaticului.” (pag 148)” - Jeanette Winterson
10. “His action of joining them, which would have been rude in a restaurant that was not moving at three hundred kilometers an hour, was perfectly acceptable on a train, which mimicked the entirely random joinings of life but revealed their true nature by making them last only hours or days, rather than years and decades. People on a train form an alliance, as if the world that surrounded the parallel rails were hostile and and they refugees from it. The dining car, humming and rocking gently in the night, annihilated past and future and made all associations outside of itself seem vaguely unreal. So they welcomed him at their table, for he was one of them, a traveler, not one of those wraiths through whose night-lit cities they passed.” - Alexander Jablokov
11. “I am with you. I'm not going anywhere.""Is there anything special you want to see? Paris? Budapest? The Leaning Tower of Pisa?"Only if it falls on Sebastian's head, she thought. "Can we travel to Idris? I mean, I guess, can the apartment travel there?""It can't get past the wards." His hand traced a path down her cheek. "You know,I really missed you.""You mean you haven't been going on romantic dates with Sebastian while you've been away from me?""I tried", Jace said, "but no matter how liquored up you get him , he just won't put out.” - Cassandra Clare
12. “With me, travelling is frankly a vice. The temptation to indulge in it is one which I find almost as hard to resist as the temptation to read promiscuously, omnivorously and without purpose. From time to time, it is true, I make a desperate resolution to mend my ways. I sketch out programmes of useful, serious reading; I try to turn my rambling voyages into systematic tours through the history of art and civilization. But without much success. After a little I relapse into my old bad ways. Deplorable weakness! I try to comfort myself with the hope that even my vices may be of some profit to me.” - Aldous Huxley
13. “I'm coming...but only because I have nothing better to do. - Riph Raph” - J. Scott Savage
14. “There are countries of the world, and regions of one's own mind, where it is unwise to travel.” - Chris Cleave
15. “Mileage craziness is a serious condition that exists in many forms. It can hit unsuspecting travelers while driving cars, motorcycles, riding in planes, crossing the country on bicycles or on foot. The symptoms may lead to obsessively placing more importance on how many miles are traveled than on the real reason for the traveling...On foot, in a van, on a fleet motorcycle or on a bicycle, a person must be very careful not to become overly concerned with arriving.” - Peter Jenkins
16. “what he sought was always something lying ahead, and even if it was a matter of the past it was a past that changed gradually as he advanced on his journey, because the traveller's past changes according to the route he has followed: not the immediate past, that is, to which each day that goes by adds a day, but the more remote past. Arriving at each new city, the traveller finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.” - Italo Calvino
17. “Journeys to relive your past?' was the Khan's question at this point, a question which could also have been formulated: 'Journeys to recover your future?'And Marco's answer was: 'Elsewhere is a negative mirror. The traveller recognizes the little that is his, discovering the much he has not had and willnever have.” - Italo Calvino
18. “Oli vielä paikkoja ja asioita jotka halusin nähdä ja kokea, eikä minulla ollut mitään syytä antaa periksi ja jättää niitä elämättä, kun kerran kondistakin vielä riitti. Olin vain istunut alas liian pitkäksi aikaa, harhautunut miettimään epäoleellisuuksia ja kadottanut siten punaisen langan. Niin yksinkertaista se joskus on.” - Marco Kosonen
19. “Ce témoignage relate les pérégrinations d’un jeune Afghan à travers beaucoup de pays et plusieurs continents. A une époque où prendre l’avion était en soi une charmante aventure. Et où le commun des mortels en Occident avait quelque peine à localiser l’obsolète royaume afghan sur une mappemonde. Il couvre une période allant de 1930 à 1965 environ, révélant au passage la face cachée des monarchies théocratiques et leur cohorte d’arbitraires et d’injustices.” - Fateh Emam
20. “Every morning I called Aeroflot to ask about my suitcase. "Oh, it's you," sighed the clerk. "Yes, I have your request right here. Address: Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoy's house. When we find the suitcase we will send it to you. In the meantime, are you familiar with our Russian phrase *resignation of the soul*?” - Elif Batuman
21. “To travel is to shop.” - Susan Sontag
22. “Every story is a ride to some place and time other than here and now. Buried in an armchair, reclined on a couch, prostrate on your bed, or glued to your desk, you can go places and travel through time.” - A.A. Patawaran
23. “The most amazing travellers were to humble to write about it” - Guido Colombo
24. “It's a long ride home with nothing but me for company. I bore myself sometimes. Not often. Just now and again.” - A.J. Hartley and David Hewson
25. “To travel beyond our world is to change this present one forever.” - Steven J. Carroll
26. “I told her about the best and the worst. The slow and sleepy places where weekdays rolled past like weekends and Mondays didn’t matter. Battered shacks perched on cliffs overlooking the endless, rumpled sea. Afternoons spent waiting on the docks, swinging my legs off a pier until boats rolled in with crates full of oysters and crayfish still gasping. Pulling fishhooks out of my feet because I never wore shoes, playing with other kids whose names I never knew. Those were the unforgettable summers. There were outback towns where you couldn’t see the roads for red dust, grids of streets with wandering dogs and children who ran wild and swam naked in creeks. I remembered climbing ancient trees that had a heartbeat if you pressed your ear to them. Boomboom-boomboom. Dreamy nights sleeping by the campfire and waking up covered in fine ash, as if I’d slept through a nuclear holocaust. We were wanderers, always with our faces to the sun.” - Vikki Wakefield
27. “It is very odd to be standing in a locked room in the Penitentiary, speaking with a strange man about France and Italy and Germany. A travelling man. He must be a wanderer, like Jeremiah the peddler. But Jeremiah travelled to earn his bread, and these other sorts of men are rich enough already. They go on voyages because they are curious. They amble around the world and stare at things, they sail across the oceans as if there's nothing to it at all, and if it goes ill with them in one place they simply pick up and move along to another.” - Margaret Atwood
28. “I was a woman and did not yet think of myself as a writer. I was a mapmaker.” - Shay Youngblood
29. “I thought that if I owned nothing, had nothing, was nothing, I would have nothing left to lose, and I wouldn't be scared anymore. Because my whole life I’ve been so damn scared. Scared to live because I was scared to die. But at the same I was so scared of living, so I wanted to die. Or maybe so scared of dying that I refused to live. You don't have to be afraid to fall, when you're already on the ground. You don't have to be scared to lose someone, when there's no one around to lose.” - Charlotte Eriksson
30. “I’m never sad when a friend goes far away, because whichever city or country that friend goes to, they turn the place friendly. They turn a suspicious-looking name on the map into a place where a welcome can be found. Maybe the friend will talk about you sometimes, to other friends that live around him, and then that’s almost as good as being there yourself. You’re in several places at once! In fact, my daughter, I would even go so far as to say that the further away your friends, and the more spread out they are the better your chances of going safely through the world…” - Helen Oyeyemi