quotations about travel
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
He travels safest in the dark night who travels lightest.
FERNANDO CORTEZ
attributed, Conquest of Mexico
Foreign travel is like a tarantula bite--once beginning to dance, one must dance on. The exertion may be more painful than pleasurable, still we keep it up. The lookers-on--the quiet, phlegmatic, or selfish stayers at home--think us very foolish; perhaps we ourselves have our doubts whether we are not rather foolish too. Nevertheless we go dancing on, and dance until we die.
DINAH CRAIK
We Four in Normandy
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
A wise traveller never despises his own country.
CARLO GOLDONI
attributed, Day's Collacon
A wise man travels to discover himself.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Fireside Travels
When a traveller returneth home, let him not leave the countries, where he hath travelled, altogether behind him; but maintain a correspondence by letters, with those of his acquaintance, which are of most worth. And let his travel appear rather in his discourse, than his apparel or gesture; and in his discourse, let him be rather advised in his answers, than forward to tell stories; and let it appear that he doth not change his country manners, for those of foreign parts; but only prick in some flowers, of that he hath learned abroad, into the customs of his own country.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Travel", The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral
Voyaging great distances -- through forests, from island to island, across plains and into the mountains -- is all about finding ourselves.
TIM LEBBON
Fallen
Travel is the soul of civilization.
ZORA NEALE HURSTON
attributed, The Art of Pilgrimage
Travel is the last fantasy the 2Oth Century left us, the delusion that going somewhere helps you reinvent yourself.
J. G. BALLARD
Millennium People
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
There are several other sources of enjoyment in a long voyage, which are of a more reasonable nature. The map of the world ceases to be a blank; it becomes a picture full of the most varied and animated figures.
CHARLES DARWIN
The Voyage of the Beagle
Never travel by sea when you can go by land.
CATO
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
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
A man who has travelled and seen the world, brings all countries to his fireside.
GEORGE REDFORD
attributed, Day's Collacon
Travel is like love, involving all its possible phases--its approaches, its games, its crystallisations, or its claps of thunder, even to the point of temporal disorientation or spatial displacement, from a change of place to the embrace of a new and totally different destination, as if in the bodily form of a woman met by chance, through whose union a masterpiece is accomplished.
JEAN CASSOU
attributed, The Tourist as a Metaphor of the Social World
The traveler is active; he goes strenuously in search of people, of adventure, or experience. The tourist is passive; he expects interesting things to happen to him.
DANIEL J. BOORSTIN
attributed, Voyages of Discover
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
Every traveler has a tale to tell.
DAVID C. SMITH & RICHARD L. TIERNEY
The Ring of Ikribu