Travel Quotes

Travel Proverbs and Quotes

• A

"It is difficult for an Indian to understand how a human being can feel good traveling alone." (Régis Airault)

"Happy the tourist who saw everything before the tourists arrived." (Bernard Arcand)

"To me, writing about a journey means painting a portrait of the countries you travel through, and the narrator has no right to make them unrecognizable." (Léonie d'Aunet)

"What is a traveler in general? A man who goes to the ends of the earth to find a scrap of conversation." (Barbey d'Aurevilly)

"Ever since holidays became a social obligation in the West, irresponsible and guilt-ridden parents have crammed their families into cancerous charter flights to spoil dream destinations. Countries on the brink of collapse in reality, encouraging mass tourism no matter the disaster it causes." (Saphia Azzeddine)

• B

"Travel is the education of youth and the experience of old age." (Francis Bacon)

"The most beautiful places are only what we make of them. What man with a touch of poetry hasn’t, in his memories, a patch of rock that takes up more space than the most celebrated sights of countries sought at great expense!" (Honoré de Balzac)

"But true travelers are those who leave, light-hearted, like balloons. They never stray from their fate. And, without knowing why, they always say: Let’s go!" (Beaudelaire)

"Of all books, the one I prefer is my passport—an octavo volume that opens borders." (Alain Borer)

"Travel, like love, is an attempt to turn a dream into reality." (Alain de Botton)

"There is no distress for the one who has finished their journey, who has let go of all worries, freed themselves from all sides, and cast off all possessions." (Buddha)

"Why must we relentlessly cling to the image of the authentic traveler, recently embodied by Nicolas Bouvier, and lash out at the tourist, who, as anthropologists show, is always that other who is not me?" (Eric Boutouyrie)

"When you travel without knowing English, you feel like you’re deaf, mute, and an idiot from birth." (Philippe Bouvard)

"Travels that once shaped youth now build reputations. Tell me where you drag your flip-flops, and I’ll tell you who you are." (Philippe Bouvard)

"A journey doesn’t need motives. It soon proves it’s enough in itself. Some think they’re taking a trip, but in fact, the trip makes or breaks them." (Nicolas Bouvier)

"On the road, the best thing is to get lost. When you wander, plans give way to surprises, and only then does the journey truly begin." (Nicolas Bouvier)

"The hardest thing for a man who lives in Vilvoorde and wants to move to Hong Kong isn’t going to Hong Kong—it’s leaving Vilvoorde." (Jacques Brel)

"Some have hearts so vast they’re always traveling." (Jacques Brel)

"How do you explain the absurd behavior of all these people rushing to see wonders only to turn their backs once they arrive?" (Bill Bryson)

"I believe you learn more about a country by reading, especially its novels, than by visiting it." (Anthony Burgess)

• C

"Travel doesn’t help much in understanding, but it reactivates, for a moment, the use of the eyes: reading the world." (Italo Calvino)

"All globe-trotters know it: it’s in the streets that they brush up against a country’s identity—whether aesthetic, political, mystical, or economic." (Manu Chao)

"Man’s true home is not a house but the road, and life itself is a journey to be made on foot." (Bruce Chatwin)

"A traveler is a kind of historian; their duty is to faithfully recount what they’ve seen or heard; they must invent nothing, but neither must they omit anything." (Chateaubriand)

"Man doesn’t need to travel to grow; he carries infinity within him." (Chateaubriand)

"Whoever is used to traveling knows there always comes a moment when you must leave." (Paolo Coelho)

"When you travel, you have a very practical experience of rebirth. You face completely new situations, the day passes more slowly, and most of the time, you don’t understand the language people speak. Just like a child fresh from the womb. In these conditions, you start paying much more attention to your surroundings because your survival depends on it. You become more approachable to people because they can help you in difficult situations. And you receive even the smallest favor from the gods with great joy, as if it were an episode to remember for the rest of your life." (Paolo Coelho)

"Travel is only necessary for short imaginations." (Colette)

"You never go as far as when you don’t know where you’re going." (Christopher Columbus)

"To leave is to die a little" (E. Haraucourt) "To leave is to blow a tire!" (Coluche)

"The greatest traveler is the one who has managed to go around themselves once." (Confucius)

"There are journeys that seem made to illustrate life itself, which can serve as symbols of existence. You struggle, you toil, you sweat blood and tears, you nearly kill yourself—sometimes you even do—to try to accomplish something, and you don’t succeed." (Joseph Conrad)

"Once you’ve traveled, there’s no end to the journey. It replays itself endlessly in the quietest of rooms, for the mind can never let go." (Pat Conroy)

"Imagination is worth many journeys, and it costs less." (G.W. Curtis)

• D

"What matters is to be only passing through." (E. Dabit)

"One of the things I appreciate most when traveling abroad is thinking that I’ll be returning to France." (P. Daninos)

"He who travels without meeting others doesn’t travel. He merely moves." (Alexandra David Neel)

"To truly love a country, you must eat it, drink it, and hear it sing." (Michel Déon)

"When you spend too much time traveling, you end up a stranger in your own country." (R. Descartes)

"So true is it that travel is believed to form judgment and perfect man, that it’s claimed to be like those plants that bear good fruit only after being transplanted." (F. Deseine)

"Travel teaches tolerance." (B. Disraeli)

"For me, travel isn’t about arriving—it’s about leaving. It’s the unexpected of the next stop, the never-fulfilled desire to constantly know something else, it’s tomorrow, eternally tomorrow." (Roland Dorgelès)

"The secret to traveling pleasantly is to politely listen to others’ lies and believe them as much as possible. Under that condition, they’ll let you produce your own little effect, and thus, the benefit is mutual." (Dostoevsky)

"Tourists hate looking. The camera looks for them. When they’ve gone *click-clack*, they’re at ease—they’ve justified their trip. The piles of photos they keep are diplomas certifying they’ve moved." (Jean Dutour)

• F

"A country, to me, is a face, a smile, a welcome, a first name—far more than cities, mountains, forests, or rivers." (Pierre Fillit)

"To leave is to leave your cocoon, spread your wings, and take flight. It’s realizing you’re not alone on the planet, that you don’t know everything as you thought. You become humbler, more tolerant, a little smarter." (Pierre Fillit)

• G

"One of the great misfortunes of modern life is the lack of the unexpected, the absence of adventure." (Théophile Gautier)

"He who has never left his country is full of prejudices." (Carlo Goldoni)

"You can travel not to escape yourself—something impossible—but to find yourself." (J. Grenier)

"Leaving is no longer a luxury reserved for others. It’s just an extraordinary experience." (Preface to the first *Guide du Routard* – 1973)

"If you don’t question yourself, if you don’t take a real risk—one where you might win or lose, with the chance of falling flat on your face—then it’s not worth it." (Louis Guilloux)

"In short, I realize that travel mostly serves to annoy others once you’ve returned!" (Sacha Guitry)

• H

"No tourist isn’t haunted by the desire to 'get off the beaten path.' They want to do something no one else has done. The need to be unique, in one way or another, grows as standardization increases." (Aldous Huxley)

• J

"Tourism is more often linked to a selfish desire for pleasure than to the contemplation of nature’s wonders." (Pope John Paul II)

"To travel is to discover the other. And the first stranger to discover is yourself." (Frédéric Jézégou)

• K

"A journey proves less about the desire for the country you’re going to than the boredom of the one you’re leaving." (A. Karr)

"We don’t travel to travel but to have traveled." (A. Karr)

"Of course, trips around the world aren’t as pleasant as they seem. It’s only when you’ve fled all that horror and heat that you forget the discomforts and remember the strange scenes you saw." (Jack Kerouac)

"Great journeys have this wonderful quality: their enchantment begins even before departure. You open atlases, dream over maps. You repeat the magnificent names of unknown cities..." (Joseph Kessel)

"All things considered, there are two kinds of men in the world: those who stay at home, and the others." (Rudyard Kipling)

"And there’s nothing more beautiful than the moment before travel, when tomorrow’s horizon comes to visit and whisper its promises." (Milan Kundera)

• L

"It would be a fine thing to travel if one didn’t have to get up so early." (La Fontaine)

"Walking would be nothing in itself, even over nearly a thousand kilometers, if you didn’t have to carry a certain number of essential things." (J. Lacarrière)

"There is no man more complete than the one who has traveled much, who has changed the shape of his thoughts and his life twenty times." (Lamartine)

"A journey of a thousand miles always begins with a single step." (Lao Tzu)

"Some journeys don’t ask to be told or burn up on the spot." (François Laut)

"We don’t take a journey. The journey makes and unmakes us; it invents us." (David Le Breton)

"The world has spoiled my soul, my imagination is restless, my heart is insatiable. Everything is too small for me: I easily adapt to sadness as well as pleasure, and my life grows emptier by the day. I have only one recourse left: to travel." (Mikhail Lermontov)

"Life is a long field to cultivate. Travel is sowing the diversity of the Earth into it. Travel is adorning it with the colors of the world." (L. Lesven)

"Most journeys leave behind memories of days of discouragement, when enthusiasm wavers under the weight of small physical discomforts." (Norman Lewis)

• M

"Adventure doesn’t exist. It’s in the mind of the one who pursues it, and as soon as they can touch it, it vanishes, only to be reborn much farther away." (Pierre Mac Orlan)

"From experience, I know that roaming the world only serves to kill time. You return as unsatisfied as when you left. You must do something more." (Ella Maillart)

"Exploring the world in every possible way isn’t just about discovering others—it’s first and foremost about exploring yourself, the thrill of seeing yourself act and react. It’s the sign that modern man has realized the wastefulness of living passively in an already short life." (Xavier Maniguet)

"Travel is a kind of door through which you leave reality to enter an unexplored reality that feels like a dream." (Guy de Maupassant)

"Tourism sabotages the environment and culture of entire continents, not to mention the aspirations of so many fools who sincerely believe they gain some understanding of the world by sitting six days in a row in an air-conditioned bus speeding through China." (Stephen McCauley)

"In theory, travel might broaden the mind, but most people do it to prove, in the end, that they’re just as happy on their couch." (Stephen McCauley)

"You don’t travel if you don’t dream the journey you’re making. I’m not talking about the dream that lulls you to sleep, but the one that wakes you up in a sweat, disheveled, crooked, unutterable, so beautiful you stop aging." (Daniel Mermet)

"You can spot a tourist at first glance. They’re dressed in such a way that if they were in their own country, they’d turn around in the street to look at themselves." (Philippe Meyer)

"Tourism is the method of bringing people who’d be better off at home to places that’d be better off without them." (Philippe Meyer)

"But what is Adventure? An accident I’ve always tried to avoid." (Henry de Monfreid)

"Never fear life, never fear adventure, trust chance, luck, destiny. Leave, go conquer other spaces, other hopes. The rest will be given to you in addition." (Henry de Monfreid)

"You know where you want to go, but you don’t know when, how, or by what path you’ll get there. No use worrying about it in advance; you’ll see..." (Théodore Monod)

"You must travel to rub and sharpen your mind against others’." (Montaigne)

"I usually answer those who ask me why I travel that I know well what I’m fleeing, but not what I’m seeking." (Montaigne)

"We travel around the world in search of something and return home to find it." (G. Moore)

"A good traveler shouldn’t perform, assert, explain, but keep quiet, listen, and understand." (Paul Morand)

"Traveling is being unfaithful. Be so without remorse; forget your friends with strangers." (Paul Morand)

"Traveling is asking distance all at once for what time could only give us little by little." (Paul Morand)

• N

"Most journeys are interesting only in the anticipation or the memory; reality is usually limited to losing your luggage." (R. Nadelson)

• O

"Walking alone, backpack on your back, is surrendering entirely to danger and to men. There’s no possibility of escape like on a bike or shelter like in a car." (Bernard Ollivier)

• P

"What matters doesn’t arrive at the end of the road, but well before, during the journey itself." (M. Pavic)

"Travels are like love! Some brighten your life, others darken it. It all depends on the heart that lives them, and people have the hearts they can." (L. Pelletier)

"The most beautiful journey is the one you haven’t taken yet." (Loick Peyron)

"To travel is to live, to learn about the world. When I’ve learned, I can die in peace." (Charlotte Pioch)

"Travelers usually only observe through the glasses they brought from their own country and entirely neglect the care of having the lenses recut in the countries they visit." (Jean Potocki)

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes." (Marcel Proust)

"Travel adds to life." (Berber proverb)

"The true traveler doesn’t know where they’re going." (Chinese proverb)

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

"The best thing you can bring back from a journey is yourself, safe and sound." (Persian proverb)

"Travel is a return to the essential." (Tibetan proverb)

"On the first journey, you discover; on the second, you enrich yourself." (Tuareg proverb)

"Travel is your father; when you’ve found yourself, you’ll return, and the earth will be your mother." (Zanskar proverb)

• R

"One of man’s constant dispositions is to wish to be somewhere other than where he is." (Jacques Réda)

"The impulse to travel is one of the most encouraging symptoms of life." (Agnes Repplier)

"Travel, like love, is an attempt to turn a dream into reality." (Gaëtan Rouffin)

"The dreamed journey is an image. The lived journey is emotion." (Christophe Rufin)

"Air travel doesn’t grant the redemption of a long journey. The plane dumps its barely conscious prey onto the cold pavement of elsewhere." (Christophe Rufin)

• S

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

"There are great journeys you can only take well in slippers." (J. Sarment)

"It’s not in some retreat that we’ll discover ourselves: it’s on the road, in cities, in the midst of the crowd, a thing among things, a man among men." (Jean-Paul Sartre)

"Adventure, sure. But abroad—is that really wise?" (Philippe Ségur)

"What’s the use of traveling if you take yourself with you? You must change your soul, not the climate." (Seneca)

"Sometimes I feel like I wander the world just to gather material for future nostalgia." (Vikram Seth)

"The traveler is what matters most in travel." (André Suarès)

"The whole secret is to approach travel from a completely different angle. If you see it as a way to get from one point to another, you’re done for. You’ll end up gnawing your nails. You must see the road as a way of being. It’s an activity in itself, a social ritual revolving around conversation and food, occasionally interrupted by actual locomotion. In essence, every stop is a little celebration." (William Sutcliffe)

• T

"We travel to change, not places, but ideas." (H. Taine)

"As soon as a place earns a reputation as paradise, it heads straight for hell." (Paul Theroux)

"Every journey is a journey of return. The farther you go, the more naked you feel. In the end, when nothing can spark your enthusiasm anymore, you’ve reached the end of yourself." (Paul Theroux)

"A traveler’s account says more about its author than the country it describes." (Paul Theroux)

"It’s better not to visit a country when you’re in a bad mood; you’ll blame the country for your mood and draw false conclusions." (Paul Theroux)

• U

"The tourist appears as the main agent of anti-tourist contempt. The more the tourist sees themselves mirrored in the other, the more they hate them." (Jean-Didier Urbain)

• V

"The real journey is going there. Once you’ve arrived, the journey is over. Today, people start with the end." (Hugo Verlomme)

• W

"There are as many journeys as there are leaves on the traveler’s tree." (Kenneth White)

"You think you’re escaping your problems by going on a trip, and they’ll follow you." (S.I. Witkiewicz)

"The only journey that interests me is death. Because you don’t bring back slides." (Wolinski)

• Z

"Ah! The French don’t travel well—it’s like camembert!" (Claude Zidi)

"Nothing develops the mind like travel." (Émile Zola)

• ?

"Sure, a dream of a doughnut is a dream, not a doughnut. But a dream of travel is already a journey."

"As soon as a child can walk, they know how to travel..."

"Better to have memories than regrets, so travel!"

"Traveling lets us see that while peoples have borders, human stupidity has none."