Nothing is better than a good travel adventure but even the best of us need a little motivation to help us feel inspired sometimes. Nothing inspires me quite like a good travel quote; it’s what really speaks to my soul. A simple quote has the ability to highlight the (not so) subtle truths about traveling, and the adventure we call life. Here are 76 of the best travel quotes (not your typical list!) that are guaranteed to fuel your wanderlust. Plus, wanderlust-worthy books to read!
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Travel Quotes to Inspire Wanderlust
Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.
– Anthony Bourdain
I’d rather live a life filled with challenges than a life filled with routine.
– Unknown
Travel makes you realize that no matter how much you know, there’s always more to learn.
– Nyssa P. Chopra
Stuff your eyes with wonder. Live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.”
– Ray Bradbury
A wise traveler never despises his own country.
– Carlo Goldoni
The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
– Thomas Alva Edison
We travel, some of us forever, to seek other places, other lives, other souls.
– Anais Nin
Traveling tends to magnify all human emotions.
– Peter Hoeg
The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.
– Henry David Thoreau
Conventional wisdom tells us we take our baggage with us. I’m not so sure. Travel, at its best, transforms us in ways that aren’t always apparent until we’re back home. Sometimes we do leave our baggage behind, or even better, it’s misrouted to Cleveland and is never heard from again.
– Eric Weiner
With age, comes wisdom. With travel, comes understanding.
– Sandra Lake
Don’t be scared to walk alone. Don’t be scared to like it.
– John Mayer
Famous Travel Quotes
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than the ones that you did.
– Unknown
Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind.
– Seneca
To awaken alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.
– Freya Stark
All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.
– Samuel Johnson
Then one day, when you least expect it, the great adventure finds you.
– Ewan Mcgregor
And if travel is like love, it is, in the end, mostly because it’s a heightened state of awareness, in which we are mindful, receptive, undimmed by familiarity and ready to be transformed. That is why the best trips, like the best love affairs, never really end.
– Pico Iyer
Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.
– Andre Gide
A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles.
– Tim Cahill
No place is ever as bad as they tell you it’s going to be.
– Chuck Thompson
Travel is more than the seeing of sights. It is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.
– Miriam Beard
To move, to breathe, to fly, to float, to gain all while you give, to roam the roads of lands remote.. to travel is to live.
– Hans Christian Andersen
Travel often; Getting lost will help you find yourself.
– Holstee Manifesto
Famous Ideas
Better to see something once than to hear about it a thousand times.
– Asian Proverb
The gladdest moment in human life, methinks, is a departure into unknown lands.
– Sir Richard Burton
Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.
– Unknown
Traveling is like flirting with life. It’s like saying, ‘I would love to stay and love you, but I have to go. This is my station’.
– Lisa St. Aubin de Teran
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.
– Steve Jobs
When a man is a traveler, the world is his house and the sky is his roof, where he hangs his hat is his home, and all the people are his family.
– Drew Bundini Brown
I always wonder why birds stay in the same place when they can fly anywhere on the earth. Then I ask myself the same question.
– Huran Yahya
I may be going nowhere, but what a ride.
– Shaun Hick
Through travel, I first became aware of the outside world; it was through travel that I found my own introspective way into becoming a part of it.
– Eudora Welty
Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.
– Pat Conroy
Nothing adventured, nothing attained.
– Peter McWilliams
Tourists went on holidays while travelers did something else. They traveled.
– Alex Garland
Unique Ideas
Life is a fatal adventure. It can only have one end. So why not make it as far-ranging and free as possible.
– Thornton Wilder
I am not the same having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world.
– Mary Anne Radmacher
The more I traveled the more I realized that fear makes strangers of people who should be friends.
– Shirley MacLaine
Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.
– Mark Twain
Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don’t be sorry.
– Jack Kerouac
I travel a lot. I hate having my life disrupted by routine.
– Caskie Stinnett
Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.
– Gustav Flaubert
Oh, the places you’ll go.
– Dr. Seuss
I don’t want to not live because of my fear of what could happen.
– Laird Hamilton
Too often I hear men boast of the miles covered that day, rarely of what they had seen.
– Louis L’Amour
There is no WiFi in the forest but I promise you’ll find a better connection.
– Unknown
If happiness is the goal – and it should be, then adventures should be top priority.
– Richard Branson
Travel Quotes
You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.
– Mae West
To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.
– Bill Bryson
Wherever you go becomes a part of you somehow.
– Anita Desai
Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.
– Aristophanes
Your true traveler finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty – his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure.
– Aldous Huxley
If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try.
– Seth Godin
A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policies, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.
– John Steinbeck
Travel is never a matter of money, but of courage.
– Paulo Coelho
If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion, and avoid the people.. you might better stay at home.
– James Michener
Check Out These Wanderlust Inspiring Books!
An excellent travel quote can easily give you some quick inspiration but if you really want to transport yourself to another world, what better way than to read a travel-themed book. These are some of my favorite travel books that I could easily read over and over again. You’re bound to find a few great travel quotes in these as well!
Wild by Cheryl Strayed
Wild is about a woman’s journey of self-discovery on a solo 1,000+ mile hike on the Pacific Crest Trail. This one is bound to make you want to break out your hiking boots and hit the trails!
The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George
You can never really go wrong with a book featuring a riverside bookshop in Paris, right? More than anything this book will inspire you to give up living a mundane life and reach for something better. That’s what we all really want, right?
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
On the Road is a classic novel based on the travels of Jack Kerouac himself, along with his friends, across the USA in the 1950s. The whole book is filled with a sense of adventure and a carefree attitude.
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
You can enjoy Eat, Pray, Love by reading the book or watching the Julia Roberts movie adaptation (I always prefer the book). Eat, Pray, Love will take you all the way from Italy to India to Bali. The book has inspired countless men and women to go out and find their true selves. Maybe it will do the same for you!
What are some of your favorite travel quotes? Share in a comment below!
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Like these travel quotes? Don’t forget to check out these other posts:
- Road Trip Essentials and Tips
- Traveling As a Couple
- How to Avoid Looking Like an American Tourist
- The Ultimate Guide to Solo Hiking
One of my favorites is “We’re lost but making good time.”
Author
Ahh that’s a good one! I like it 😁