Travel

Travel is the movement of people between relatively distant geographical locations, and can involve travel by foot, bicycle, automobile, train, boat, airplane, or other means, with or without luggage, and can be one way or round trip.

Traveling - it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.
- Ibn Battuta, The Travels of Ibn Battutah

The traveler was active; he went strenuously in search of people, of adventure, of experience. The tourist is passive; he expects interesting things to happen to him. He goes "sightseeing."
- Daniel J. Boorstin. The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, 3.2, 1961.

Travel changes you. As you move through this life and this world you change things slightly, you leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life - and travel - leaves marks on you. Most of the time, those marks - on your body or on your heart - are beautiful. Often, though, they hurt.
- Anthony Bourdain, The Nasty Bits (2006).

If you’re twenty-two, physically fit, hungry to learn and be better, I urge you to travel – as far and as widely as possible. Sleep on floors if you have to. Find out how other people live and eat and cook. Learn from them – wherever you go.
- Anthony Bourdain, Medium Raw (2010).

Travellers like poets are mostly an angry race.
- Richard Francis Burton, "Narrative of a Trip to Harar" (11 June 1855)

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, Canto III (1816), Stanza 1.

The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land.
- G. K. Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles (1909), Ch. 31 The Riddle of the Ivy.

They say travel broadens the mind; but you must have the mind.
- G. K. Chesterton, The Poet and the Lunatics (1929), Ch. 3 The Shadow of the Shark.

The traveller sees what he sees, the tripper sees what he has come to see.
- G. K. Chesterton, Autobiography (1936), Ch. 15 The Incomplete Traveller.
- Now often quoted with 'tourist' instead of 'tripper'.

After 1870, sending a family member across the ocean to work became a possibility open to all save the very poorest of European households. ...The production and trade globalization of the late 1800s was fueled by one hundred million people leaving their continent of origin to live and work elsewhere. Never before or since have we seen such a rapid proportional redistribution of humanity around the globe.
- J. Bradford DeLong, Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century (2022)

Travelling can hardly be without a continual current of disappointment, if the main object is not the enlargement of one’s general life, so as to make even weariness and annoyances enter into the sum of benefit.
- George Eliot, March 1860 on her first Trip to Italy ^[1]

In travelling
I shape myself betimes to idleness
And take fools' pleasure.
- George Eliot, The Spanish Gypsy (1868), Book I.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays: First Series (1841), Ch. 12 Art

I have been a stranger in a strange land.
- Exodus, II. 22.

It is not enough to simply visit a country, for that does not mean successful travelling, nor imply that one has seen the land. The aim of the traveller should be to be at the right time at the right place. Spring is apt to be cold and dreary in Japan. There are many days of mist and rain, yet the wanderer who can control his steps makes a big mistake in losing the joys of the cherry season.
- Gertrude Adams Fisher, A Woman Alone in the Heart of Japan. 1906. p. 26.

Go far—too far you cannot, still the farther
The more experience finds you: And go sparing;—
One meal a week will serve you, and one suit,
Through all your travels; for you'll find it certain,
The poorer and the baser you appear,
The more you look through still.
- John Fletcher, The Woman's Prize, or The Tamer Tamed (c. 1611; published 1647), Act IV, scene 5, line 199.

Know most of the rooms of thy native country before thou goest over the threshold thereof.
- Thomas Fuller, The Holy State and the Profane State (1642), Of Travelling. Maxim IV.

Five hours' New York jet lag and Cayce Pollard wakes in Camden Town to the dire and ever-circling wolves of disrupted circadian rhythm…She knows, now, absolutely, hearing the white noise that is London, that Damien's theory of jet lag is correct: that her mortal soul is leagues behind her, being reeled in on some ghostly umbilical down the vanished wake of the plane that brought her here, hundreds of thousands of feet above the Atlantic. Souls can't move that quickly, and are left behind, and must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage.
- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition, 2003.

Un viaggiatore prudente non disprezza mai il suo paese.
- A wise traveler never despises his own country.
- Carlo Goldoni, Pamela (c. 1750), I. 16.

The soul of the journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do just as one pleases.
- William Hazlitt, "On Going a Journey," Table Talk, 1822.

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.
- Samuel Johnson, Letter to Hester Thrale, 21 September 1773.

Let him go abroad to a distant country; let him go to some place where he is not known. Don't let him go to the devil where he is known.
- Samuel Johnson, reported in James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson (1773).

As the Spanish proverb says, "He who would bring home the wealth of the Indies must carry the wealth of the Indies with him." So it is in travelling: a man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring home knowledge.
- Samuel Johnson, reported in James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson (1778).

That's the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.
- Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake

The true delight of travel, the one that is going to print itself unaccountably and indelibly on you, seems to prefer to come as a thief in the night, and not at the hours you specially fix for its entertainment.
- C. E, Montague, The Right Place (1924), quoted in Murphy, Edward F. Webster's treasury of Relevant Quotations , Greenwich House, New York, 1983 (pg. 560).

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, bk. 2.

A man of ordinary talent will always be ordinary, whether he travels or not: but a man of superior talent (which I cannot deny myself to be without being impious) will go to pieces if he remains forever in the same place...
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1778) as quoted in Contradictory Quotations, Longman Group Ltd., 1983, p. 198.

This ambiance of candlelight reminds of nights that traveled its way, in entangled embrace of yours and mine.
- Suman Pokhrel, A Reminiscent Candlelight

I was feeling like mad
by the melody of birds
singing out of tune
in the settlements
where travels lose
their own destinations
- Suman Pokhrel, Among freed Bonded-Labourers

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

Say, (O Muhammad), "Travel through the land and observe how He began creation. Then God will produce the final creation. Indeed Allah, over all things, is competent."
- Quran 29:20

Why do you wonder that globe-trotting does not help you, seeing that you always take yourself with you? The reason which set you wandering is ever at your heels.
- Socrates. In Seneca the Younger. "On Travel as a Cure for Discontent," Moral Letters to Lucilius.

When I was at home, I was in a better place; but travellers must be content.
- William Shakespeare, As You Like It (c.1599-1600), Act II, scene 4, line 17.

And in his brain,
Which is as dry as the remainder biscuit
After a voyage, he hath strange places cramm'd
With observation, the which he vents
In mangled forms.
- William Shakespeare, As You Like It (c.1599-1600), Act II, scene 7, line 38.

The sundry contemplation of my travels, in which my often rumination wraps me in a most humorous sadness.
- William Shakespeare, As You Like It (c.1599-1600), Act IV, scene 1, line 17.

Farewell, Monsieur Traveller: look you lisp and wear strange suits, disable all the benefits of your own country.
- William Shakespeare, As You Like It (c.1599-1600), Act IV, scene 1, line 33.

Travell'd gallants,
That fill the court with quarrels, talk, and tailors.
- William Shakespeare, Henry VIII (c. 1613), Act I, scene 3, line 19.

I spake of most disastr'us chances,
* * * *
Of being taken by the insolent foe
And sold to slavery; of my redemption thence
And portance in my travellers' history;
Wherein of antres vast, and deserts idle,
Rough quarries, rocks and hills whose heads touch heaven,
It was my hint to speak—such was the process;—
And of the cannibals that each other eat.
- William Shakespeare, Othello (c. 1603), Act I, scene 3, line 134.

In your journey, be prepared to encounter an array of obstacles – some steep, some flat – for that's the nature of the path.
- Sanu Sharma, Pharak

After reaching an easy path, the walking stick should not be discarded.
- Sanu Sharma, Pharak

Travel has always served to inspire me, as it has many writers, as it apparently did my alter ego; yet the farther we proceeded down the Mekong, the more I came to realize that there was a blighted sameness to the world and its various cultures. Strip away their trappings and you found that every tribe was moved by the same passions, and this was true not only in the present but also, I suspected, in ages past. Erase from your mind the images of the kings and exotic courtesans and maniacal monks that people the legends of Southeast Asia, and look to a patch of ground away from the temples and palaces of Angkor Wat—there you will find the average planetary citizen, a child eating the Khmer equivalent of a Happy Meal and longing for the invention of television.
- Lucius Shepard, Dog-Eared Paperback of My Life (2009), in Nick Gevers and Jay Lake (eds.), Other Earths (p. 227)

All journeys end in disappointment if for no other reason than that they end.
- Lucius Shepard, Dog-Eared Paperback of My Life (2009), in Nick Gevers and Jay Lake (eds.), Other Earths (p. 295)

To travel hopefully is better than to arrive.
- Robert Louis Stevenson. "El Dorado," Virginibus Puerisque (1881).

I always love to begin a journey on Sundays, because I shall have the prayers of the church to preserve all that travel by land or by water.
- Jonathan Swift, Polite Conversation (c. 1738), Dialogue II.

A rolling stone gathers no moss.
- Publius Syrus. Moral Sayings.

Not all those who wander are lost.
- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Some people feel more alive when they travel and visit unfamiliar places or foreign countries because at those times sense perception – experiencing – takes up more of heir consciousness than thinking. They become more present. Others remain completely possessed by the voice in the head even then. Their perceptions and experiences are distorted by instant judgments. They haven't really gone anywhere. Only their body is traveling, while they remain where they have always been: in their head. p. 144
- Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.
- Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad Ch. LXII (Conclusion).

A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
- Mark Twain

Good company in a journey makes the way to seem the shorter.
- Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler (1653-1655), Part I, Chapter I.

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.
- Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

The person attempting to travel two roads at once will get nowhere.
- Xun Zi quoted in: Errick A. Ford (2010) Iron Sharpens Iron: Wisdom of the Ages, p. 48.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 809-11.

The traveled mind is the catholic mind educated from exclusiveness and egotism.
- Amos Bronson Alcott, Table-Talk, Traveling.

Traveling is no fool's errand to him who carries his eyes and itinerary along with him.
- Amos Bronson Alcott, Table-Talk, Traveling.

Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience. He that travelleth into a country before he hath some entrance into the language, goeth to school, and not to travel.
- Francis Bacon, Of Travel.

He travels safest in the dark night who travels lightest.
- Fernando Cortez; reported in Prescott, Conquest of Mexico, Book V, Chapter III.

One who journeying
Along a way he knows not, having crossed
A place of drear extent, before him sees
A river rushing swiftly toward the deep,
And all its tossing current white with foam,
And stops and turns, and measures back his way.
- Homer, The Iliad, Book V, line 749. Bryant's translation.

Cœlum, non animum mutant, qui trans mare currunt.
Strenua nos exercet inertia, navibus atque
Quadrigis petimus bene vivere; quod petis hic est.
- They change their sky, not their mind, who cross the sea. A busy idleness possesses us: we seek a happy life, with ships and carriages: the object of our search is present with us.
- Horace, Epistles, I. 11. 27.

I am fevered with the sunset,
I am fretful with the bay,
For the wander-thirst is on me
And my soul is in Cathay.
- Richard Hovey, A Sea Gypsy.

The wonders of each region view,
From frozen Lapland to Peru.
- Soame Jenkyns, Epistle to Lord Lovelace. Suggested Johnson's lines.

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and, instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.
- Samuel Johnson, Piozzi's Johnsoniana. 154.

Let observation with extensive view,
Survey mankind from China to Peru;
Remark each anxious toil, each eager strife,
And watch the busy scenes of crowded life.
- Samuel Johnson, Vanity of Human Wishes.

Follow the Romany Patteran
Sheer to the Austral light,
Where the bosom of God is the wild west wind,
Sweeping the sea floors white.
- Rudyard Kipling, The Gypsy Trail.

Down to Gehenna or up to the throne,
He travels the fastest who travels alone.
- Rudyard Kipling, The Winners.

The marquise has a disagreeable day for her journey.
- Louis XV, while looking at Mme. de Pompadour's funeral.

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.

We sack, we ransack to the utmost sands
Of native kingdoms, and of foreign lands:
We travel sea and soil; we pry, and prowl,
We progress, and we prog from pole to pole.
- Francis Quarles, Divine Emblems, Book II, II.

Qui veut voyager loin ménage sa monture.
- He who will travel far spares his steed.
- Jean Racine, Plaideurs, I. 1.

Does the road wind up-hill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.
Will the day's journey take the whole long day?
From morn to night, my friend.
- Christina G. Rossetti, Up-Hill.

Zählt der Pilger Meilen,
Wenn er zum fernen Gnadenbilde wallt?
- Does the pilgrim count the miles
  When he travels to some distant shrine?
- Friedrich Schiller, Wallenstein's Tod, IV. 11.

Nusquam est, qui ubique est.
- He who is everywhere is nowhere.
- Seneca the Younger, Epistolæ Ad Lucilium, II.

I think it was Jekyll who used to say that the further he went west, the more convinced he felt that the wise men came from the east.
- Sydney Smith, Lady Holland's Memoir, Volume I.

'Tis nothing when a fancied scene's in view
To skip from Covent Garden to Peru.
- Richard Steele, prologue to Ambrose Phillip's Distressed Mother.

I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba and cry, "'Tis all barren!"
- Laurence Sterne, Sentimental Journey, In the Street, Calais.

When we have discovered a continent, or crossed a chain of mountains, it is only to find another ocean or another plain upon the further side…. O toiling hands of mortals! O wearied feet, travelling ye know not whither! Soon, soon, it seems to you, you must come forth on some conspicuous hilltop, and but a little way further, against the setting sun, descry the spires of El Dorado. Little do ye know your own blessedness; for to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.
- Robert Louis Stevenson, El Dorado.

'Tis a mad world (my masters) and in sadnes
I travail'd madly in these dayes of madnes.
- John Taylor, Wandering to see the Wonders of the West (1649). The syntax of "a mad world (my masters)" may be an allusion to and/or acknowledgement of Nicolas Breton's 1603 tract "A Mad World, my Masters".

Let observation with extended observation observe extensively.
- Alfred Tennyson, paraphrasing Johnson. See Locker-Lampson's Recollections of a tour with Tennyson, in Memoirs of Tennyson by his son, II. 73. See also Criticism by Byron in his Diary, Jan. 9, 1821. "Let observation with observant view, / Observe mankind from China to Peru." Goldsmith's paraphrase. Caroline Spurgeon—Works of Dr. Johnson. (1898). De Quincey quotes it from some writer, according to Dr. Birkbeck Hill—Boswell. I. 194. Coleridge quotes it, Lecture VI, on Shakespeare and Milton.

For always roaming with a hungry heart,
Much have I seen and known.
- Alfred Tennyson, Ulysses.

All human race from China to Peru,
Pleasure, howe'er disguis'd by art, pursue.
- Thomas Warton, The Universal Love of Pleasure.

The dust is old upon my "sandal-shoon,"
And still I am a pilgrim; I have roved
From wild America to Bosphor's waters,
And worshipp'd at innumerable shrines
Of beauty; and the painter's art, to me,
And sculpture, speak as with a living tongue,
And of dead kingdoms, I recall the soul,
Sitting amid their ruins.
- Nathaniel Parker Willis, Florence Gray, line 46.