RAMBLINGS: 108 TRAVEL QUOTATIONS

Here is a growing collection of travel-related quotations. Please Contact Us and use this space to share your favourite quotations.

Barry and Margaret Williamson

July 2008

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the one you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." (Mark Twain)

"The greatest travelers have not gone beyond the limits of their own world; they have trodden the paths of their own souls." (Carlo Levi). This quotation was given to us by philhellene John Foster.

"All travel becomes dull in exact proportion to its rapidity." (John Ruskin)

"I doubt whether I ever read any description of scenery which gave me an idea of the place described." (Anthony Trollope, Australia and New Zealand)

"There is probably no pleasure equal to the pleasure of climbing a dangerous Alp; but it is a pleasure which is confined strictly to people who can find pleasure in it." (Mark Twain, A tramp Abroad)

"The traveller who has gone to Italy to study the tactile values of Giotto, or the corruption of the Papacy, may return remembering nothing but the blue sky and the men and women under it." (EM Forster, A Room with a View)

"When you leave the old road for the new, you know what you are losing but not what you will find." (Italian Proverb)

"Fair Greece! Sad relic of departed worth!" (Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage)

"Does the road wind up-hill all the way? Yes, to the very end." (Christina Rosetti, Up-Hill)

"To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world. You are surrounded by adventure. You have no idea what is in store." (Freya Stark)

"All I seek, the heaven above and the road below me." (Robert Louis Stevenson)

"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, Travels with a Donkey, 1879)

"To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour." (Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850-1894: El Dorado)

"I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence: two roads diverged in a wood and I - I took the road less travelled by, and that has made all the difference." (Robert Frost, 1874-1963 The Road Not Taken)

"Miles to go before I sleep; and miles to go before I sleep." (Robert Frost)

"A cold coming we had of it, just the worst time of the year for a journey, and such a long journey" (TS Eliot, Journey of the Magi)

"We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started – and know the place for the first time." (TS Eliot, The Four Quartets)

"No changing of place at 100 mph will make us one whit stronger, happier or wiser. There was always more in the world than men could see, walked they ever so slowly; they see no better for going fast." (John Ruskin)

"Time is a river, the resistless flow of all created things. No sooner does one object come into view than it is swept away and another one appears, only to be swept past in turn." (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations)

"I travel the roads of this world until the time comes when I shall be at rest . . . sinking down upon the earth which for so many years has provided my daily food and, though grievously ill-treated, still allows me to walk upon her." (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations)

"Our nature lies in movement; complete calm is death." (Pascal, Pensées)

"He who does not travel does not know the value of men." (Moorish Proverb)

"To live in one land, is captivitie, to runne all countries, a wild roguery." (Donne, Elegie)

"The born traveller – the man (sic) who is without prejudices, who sets out wanting to learn rather than to criticise, which is stimulated by oddity … has always been comparatively rare." (Hugh and Pauline Massingham 'The Englishman (sic) Abroad' 1962)

"Useless to ask a wandering man advice on the construction of a house. The work will never come to completion." (Chinese Book of Odes)

"You cannot travel on the path before you have become the Path itself." (Gautama Buddha)

"The Wayless Way, where the Sons of God lose themselves and, at the same time, find themselves." (Meister Eckhart)

"We Lapps have the same nature as the reindeer: in the springtime we long for the mountains; in winter we are drawn to the woods." (Turi's Book of Lappland)

"Life is a bridge. Cross over it, but build no house on it." (Indian Proverb)

"A good horse is a member of the family." (Quashgai saying)

"The traveller with empty pockets will sing in the thief's face." (Juvenal, 60-130 AD)

"Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,/ And many goodly states and kingdoms seen." (John Keats, 1795-1821: On first looking into Chapman's Homer)

"Experience, travel - these are as education in themselves" (Euripedes)

"He who would travel happily must travel light." (Antoine de Saint-Exupery, 1900 - 1944)

"A good traveller has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving." (Lao Tzu)

"Again it might have been the American tendency in travel. One goes, not so much to see but to tell afterward." (John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley)

"Adventure on, and if ye suffer swear, That the next venturer shall have less to bear; Your way will be retrodden, make it fair!" (John Masefield)

"In long-range planning for a trip, I think there is a private conviction that it won't happen." (John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley)

Tom Wolfe was right. You can't go home again because home has ceased to exist except in the mothballs of memory." (John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley)

"All that is gold does not glitter; not all those who wander are lost." (John Ronald Reuel Tolkien)

"In this world, shipmates, Sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers." (Herman Melville, Moby Dick)

"Strange, is it not? That of the myriads who/ before us pass'd the door of darkness through,/ not one returns to tell us of the Road,/ which to discover we must travel too." (Edward Fitzgerald, 1809-1883)

"I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba, and cry, 'tis all barren'." (Laurence Sterne, 1713-1768)

"As an Englishman does not travel to see English men, I retired to my room." (Laurence Sterne, 1713-1768)

"In my time, the follies of the town crept slowly among us, but now they travel faster than a stagecoach." (Oliver Goldsmith, 1730-1774)

"Ay, now am I in Arden; the more fool I: when I was at home, I was in a better place; but travellers must be content." (William Shakespeare, 1564-1616 As You Like It)

"The west yet glimmers with some streaks of day:/ Now spurs the lated traveller apace/ To gain the timely inn." (William Shakespeare, 1564-1616: Macbeth)

"Stand not upon the order of your going, but go at once." (William Shakespeare, Macbeth)

"Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day,/ And make me travel forth without my cloak/ To let base clouds o'ertake me in my way,/ Hiding my bravery in their rotten smoke?" (William Shakespeare, 1564-1616: Sonnets)

"O thievish Night,/ Why shouldst thou, but for some felonious end,/ In thy dark lantern thus close up the stars/ That nature hung in heaven, and filled their lamps/ with everlasting oil, to give due light/ To the misled and lonely traveller?" (John Milton, 1608-1674)

"And now I see the eye serene,/ The very pulse of the machine;/ A being breathing thoughtful breath,/ A traveller betwixt life and death." (William Wordsworth, 1798)

"Soon as she was gone from me, a traveller came by, silently, invisibly: he took her with a sigh." (William Blake, 1757-1827)

"Ah, Sun-flower! Weary of time,/ Who countest the steps of the Sun;/ Seeking after that sweet golden clime,/ Where the traveller's journey is done." (William Blake, 1757-1827)

"Captain is a good travelling name, and so I take it." (George Farquhar, 1678-1707)

"A man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority, from his having not seen what it is expected a man should see. The grand object of travelling is to see the shores of the Mediterranean." (Samuel Johnson, 1709-1784)

"Travelling is the ruin of all happiness! There's no looking at a building here after seeing Italy." (Fanny Burney, 1752-1840)

"From whatever place I write you will expect that part of my 'Travels' will consist of excursions in my own mind." (Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772-1834)

"Travelling is almost like talking with those of other centuries." (Lord Desart, 1845-1898)

"And when old words die out on the tongue, new melodies break forth from the heart; and where the old tracks are lost, new country is revealed with its wonders." (Rabindranath Tagore, Gitankali)

"I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it." (Pablo Picasso)

"Never go on trips with anyone you do not love." (Ernest Hemingway)

"The world is a book and those who do not travel read only a page." (St. Augustine)

"Linger not on the way, stray not from your aim. Always strive, always move on, always advance." (St Augustine)

"To travel is to take a journey into yourself." (Dena Kaye)

"One of the pleasantest things in the world is going on a journey; but I like to go by myself." (William Hazlitt)

"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, 1738)

"If you don't know where you are going, it doesn't matter which road you take." (Lewis Carroll)

"Oh how I long to travel back, and tread again that ancient track. That I might once more reach that plain, where first I left my glorious train. From whence the enlightened spirit sees, that shady city of palm trees." (Henry Vaughan, 1622-95)

"A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it." (George Moore, 1852-1933)

"Brother, I am too old to go again to my travels." (Charles II, 1630-85)

"Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience." (Francis Bacon, 1561-1626)

"'Is there anybody there?' said the traveller, knocking on the moonlit door." (Walter de la Mare, 1873-1956)

"The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic … At last some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St Paul's." (Horace Walpole, 1717-97)

"Man, who wert once a despot and a slave;/ A dupe and a deceiver; a decay;/ A traveller from the cradle to the grave/ Through the dim light of this immortal day." (Percy B Shelley, 1792-1822)

"I met a traveller from an antique land who said: two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert." (Percy B Shelley, 1792-1822)

"A traveller, by the faithful hound, half-buried in the snow was found." (Henry Longfellow, 1807-82)

"Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel from coast to coast without seeing anything." (Charles Kuralt)

"You lose sight of things...and when you travel, everything balances out." (Daranna Gidel)

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live with, mad to talk, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and then in the middle you see the blue centrelight pop and everybody goes 'AWWW!'" (Jack Kerouc, On the Road)

"Stumbling along the boundary between the tolerated and the forbidden, I stand amazed by the world. Even like this it's beautiful, with these half-words, in this half-light, with a lock on the door." (Amy Karolyi)

"We are at rest five miles behind the front." (E M Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front)

"It is good to be out on the open road, and going one knows not where. Going through meadow and village, one knows not whither nor why." (John Masefield, Tewksebury Road)

"For lust of knowing what should not be known, we take the Golden Road to Samarkand." (James Elroy Flecker)

"A reasonable man accepts the world as it is. One therefore depends on the unreasonable man to change the world." (George Bernard Shaw)

"Life is either a daring adventure or it is nothing." (Helen Keller)

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness." (Mark Twain)

"To live well is the best revenge." (Spanish proverb)

"Now you are up, now you are over. Make the coming down worth the getting up." (Rambling Jack Elliott)

"Dare to aim high, and risk missing, or aim low and be sure of hitting. Dare to fail." (Unknown)

"Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying: and this same flower that smiles to-day, to-morrow will be dying." (Robert Herrick 1591 – 1674, To the Virgins, to make much of Time.)

"It is more blessed to give than to receive." (Acts of the Apostles, 20:35)

"Ask nothing more of me, sweet; all I can give you I give". (Swinburne, The Oblation)

"The best laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft a-gley." (Robert Burns)

"And yonder all before us lie deserts of vast eternity." (Andrew Marvell)

"Half to forget the wandering and the pain, half to remember the days that have gone by, and dream and dream that I am home again!" (James Elroy Flecker, The Dying Patriot)

"What is more blessed than to put cares away, when the mind lays by its burden, and tired with our far travel we have come to our own home and rest on the couch we have longed for?" (Catullus)

"It's dogged as does it. It ain't thinking about it." (Anthony Trollope)

"I love roads; the goddesses that dwell far along them invisible are my favourite gods." (Edward Thomas)

"Roads go on while we forget and are forgotten like a comet that shoots and is gone. They are lonely while we sleep, lonelier for the lack of a traveller who is now a dream only." (Edward Thomas)

"Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne, he travels the fastest who travels alone." (Rudyard Kipling)

"I travel light; as light, that is, as a man can travel who will still carry his body around because of its sentimental value." (Christopher Fry)

"Not bound to swear allegiance to any master, wherever the wind takes me I travel as a visitor." (Horace, 65-8 BC)

"Those who rush across the sea change their skies, not their souls." (Horace)

"Nothing is so virtuous as a bicycle. You can't imagine a bicyclist committing a crime, can you?" (Dorothy L Sayers)

"Listen, there's a hell of a good universe next door; let's go." (E E Cummings)

"When you set out on the voyage to Ithaca, pray that your journey may be long, full of adventures, full of knowledge." (Constantine Kavafy, Greece)

"You will not meet the Laestrygonians, the Cyclops or fierce Poseideon unless you carry them in your soul, unless your soul sets them in your path." (Constantine Kavafy, Greece)

The fox and the 'sour' grapes

Look before you leap

The mountain in labour

Familiarity breeds contempt

The country mouse and the town mouse

Pride goes before a fall

The tortoise and the hare - slow and steady wins the race

One man's meat is another man's poison

Actions speak louder than words

To cry wolf

Necessity is the mother of invention

To blow hot and cold

Physician heal thyself

Birds of a feather flock together

Fair weather friends

History is written by the victors

In unity there is strength

Honesty is the best policy

Don't be a dog in the manger

The goose that lays the golden eggs

Don't count your chickens before they are hatched

The woman and the fat hen - relying on statistics doesn't always work

It's one thing to call for death and another to see him coming

With friends like wolves, you don't need enemies

The lion's share

Facts speak plainer than words

It's not always smart to be a big fish in a little pond

The grass isn't always greener on the other side of the hill

Grasp the nettle

Every man to his trade

United we stand, divided we fall

One good turn deserves another

A wolf in sheep's clothing