quotations about travel
Never travel by sea when you can go by land.
CATO
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
The real voyage of discovery ... consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
MARCEL PROUST
The Maxims of Marcel Proust
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
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
A rolling stone gathers no moss.
PUBLIUS SYRUS
Moral Sayings
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
Half the fun of the travel is the esthetic of lostness.
RAY BRADBURY
attributed, Emily the Strange: Piece of Mind
The reading of tourist prospectuses is one of the joys of the world -- it is like operetta in prose -- all so flowery and heavenlike.
MARSDEN HARTLEY
Somehow a Past
Traveling is a pleasant and easy way of ridding oneself of superfluous gold.
WILLIAM BALDWIN
Ordinary Results
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
Foreign travel is like a pleasant temporary death, relieving you of responsibilities and familiar duties.
ROBINSON JEFFERS
Collected Poetry
In travelling by land, there is a continuity of scene, and a connected succession of persons and incidents, that carry on the story of life, and lessen the effect of absence and separation.
WASHINGTON IRVING
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon
I think it not fit that every man should travel; it makes a wise man better, and a fool worse.
OWEN FELTHAM
attributed, Day's Collacon
Travel is like a giant blank canvas, and the painting on the canvas is only limited by one's imagination.
ROSS MORLEY
attributed, Vagabonding
Modern travel is like fast food: short, sharp incursions that do not weave a spell. In our age, tourism has made the planet into a uniform spectacle, and it has made us perpetual strangers wandering through an imitation of an imitation of a place we once wanted to go.
LAWRENCE OSBORNE
The Naked Tourist
Travel is an every day occurrence; it's your commute to work, the weekend trip, the weddings, and the work trip that turns into a personal trip.
INDRE ROCKEFELLER
"The New Luggage Upgrade for Stylish Travel: Paravel", Forbes, May 15, 2017
Try and travel with the eyes of the spirit wide open, and not too much factual information. To tune in, without reverence, idly -- but with real inward attention. It is to be had for the feeling, that mysterious sense of rapport, of identity with the ground. You can extract the essence of a place once you know how. If you just get as still as a needle you'll be there.
LAWRENCE DURRELL
Lawrence Durrell Travel Reader