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Why Travel at All?
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Things to Remember on the Road
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Keeping It Real
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Things to Remember Back Home
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Some Final Thoughts
Over the long haul humans have been a nomadic species, so it is no surprise that the literature of the world abounds with thought, commentary and wisdom about travel. As they seek out experience and fodder for the imagination, many writers are often wanderers as well, and their ramblings often deeply inform their writing.
As a result, many of history's most insightful thinkers have written extensively and deeply on travel -- but that is not to say that the bards always agree. Witness the following contrasting wisdom from Mark Twain and Thomas Fuller; the former attests that travel is a cure for intellectual maladies of many kinds, while the latter believes travel will make the same maladies worse.
Twain: "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts."
Fuller: "Travel makes a wise man better, and a fool worse." (Fuller also said, similarly yet much more prosaically, "If an ass goes traveling, he'll not come home a horse.")
Many of us have likely seen evidence of both notions during our own travels, so if some of these thinkers contradict one another and even themselves, very well, then they contradict themselves, to paraphrase Walt Whitman.
There are resources in print and on the Internet that include hundreds or even thousands of travel quotes, but I have tried here to include mainly quotes that I have collected over time to remind me of the value and uniqueness of travel -- not how-tos, not hectoring admonitions or scoldings, not wordy editorials, but thoughts that advance John Masefield's idea about travel that "if it adds not to the stock of human knowledge, or if it gives not to others the imaginative possession of some part of the world, it is a pernicious habit." So I will try to include only those quotations "that are large, that contain multitudes" (Whitman again).
First, one note on attribution: I have tried my best to get everything right, but many quotes have an unreliable lineage that can be hard to untangle. A good example is "Wherever you go, there you are," which was the title of a book on mindfulness 20 years ago, appeared in the movie "Buckaroo Banzai" 30 years ago and has variously and widely been attributed to both the Buddha and Confucius. Brilliant turn of phrase, whoever said it first.
To get started, we might as well go back to some of the first recorded words written about travel, which get right to the heart of the matter.
"Adventure is worthwhile." -- attributed to both Aristotle and Aesop
"The impulse to travel is one of the hopeful symptoms of life." -- Agnes Repplier
"For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move." -- Robert Louis Stevenson
"At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough." -- Toni Morrison
"To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be … in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted." -- Bill Bryson
And perhaps most succinctly and indubitably: "Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind." -- Seneca
Of course, for many of us, it is simpler than all that: "I haven't been everywhere but it's on my list." -- Susan Sontag
Related:16 Signs You're Addicted to Travel
While traveling, it can be easy to get caught up in logistics, hassles, lack of creature comforts, distractions back home and more; the following notions can help restore focus to the whole endeavor, which is often not simply to see a place, but to let it seep in.
"One's destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things." -- Henry Miller
Or, if you prefer Proust: "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes."
"All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware." -- Martin Buber
"We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us." -- John Steinbeck
"When we get out of the glass bottle of our ego … things will happen to us so that we don't know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in." -- D.H. Lawrence
Sometimes while traveling, the temptation to expect something beautiful to appear or something extraordinary to happen is unavoidable. The following ideas can help you find beauty and experience in places you might not be looking.
"Instead of insight, maybe all a man gets is strength to wander for a while." -- William Least Heat-Moon
"To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world." -- Freya Stark
"It is not down in any map; true places never are." -- Herman Melville
"Every hundred feet the world changes." -- Roberto Bolano
I find the next few to be a bit scolding in tone, but nonetheless to serve as helpful reminders -- both to keep my senses alert to what is actually around me and to keep whinging to a minimum:
"The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see." -- G.K. Chesterton
"You're not traveling if you already know everything." -- Erica Bauermeister
"When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable." -- Clifton Fadiman
"There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign." -- Robert Louis Stevenson
And if you start wondering if you are on the right track: "The most effective way to do it, is to do it." -- Amelia Earhart
Related:Survey Says: Travel Makes Us Happier
The following encourage me to try to have my travels add something to the stock of human knowledge, whether it is to appreciate the people and places of my home a bit more, or simply to appreciate the tremendous gifts that travel can offer.
"People travel to faraway places to watch, in fascination, the kind of people they ignore at home." -- Dagobert D. Runes
"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
"The real work of an expedition begins when you return." -- Louise Arner Boyd
"Like all great travelers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen." -- Benjamin Disraeli
A few years back, I came across an odd quote that inspired a spark of recognition immediately, so it is a bit of a personal favorite. While it is about foreign countries, I find it equally as useful upon returning home; anyone who grew up near the ocean, or near marshes, or near mountain breezes, or even in a bustling city, may appreciate this appeal to one of our more neglected senses that nonetheless has powerful ties to place and memory.
"The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it." -- Rudyard Kipling
Finally, it may be fitting to close with a French proverb to make us appreciate simply being able to travel at all: "Who goes and returns makes a good journey."
What's your favorite travel quote? Share it in the comments below!