The best travel quotes should make you stop and think. Then, they should make you buy a ticket and go somewhere! In this post, I will discuss my favourite travel quotes and talk about how they have inspired me.
Let’s start with this one!
In this article
The First Travel-Related Quotes I Remember
When I was sixteen, I moved with my family to Paris. My Dad’s job took us there. We spent the next two years living in this beautiful city. It is where I learned to appreciate art, especially the Impressionist painters. Paris also taught me a lot about food and wine. To this day, it remains one of my favourite cities.
When we first arrived in Paris, I read this famous quote by Ernest Hemmingway who lived in the city in the 1920s. I remember feeling a little upset that he referred only to the city’s effect on ‘young men’, but, nevertheless, the underlying sentiment resonated with me. Indeed, the idea Hemmingway expressed here has proved inexorably true in my life.
“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”
Our sojourn in Paris was my first taste of living in a different country and experiencing its culture. It ignited in me a lifelong wanderlust that I still haven’t lost.
Other travel quotes I remember from this time are these:
The Travel Quote I Always Carry With Me
Anthony Bourdain, the American celebrity chef, writer, and maker of travel documentaries, who died tragically young in 2018, is the author of many of my favourite quotes about travel.
The one I have reproduced below is the one I inscribe at the beginning of every travel journal I keep. It rings so true for me. It feels particularly relevant when we are overlanding in off-the-beaten-track destinations, especially in Africa.
“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.”
Don George
Don George, travel writer extraordinaire and former Global Travel Editor of Lonely Planet, is also responsible for travel quotes that have inspired me the most.
This is what he wrote after his first life-changing travel experience in the 1970s when he’d just left college:
“These travels have expanded and enriched my world view more than I can comprehend. The more I travel, the more I see, the bigger the world becomes. And the more cultures and peoples I encounter, the more I am awed and fascinated by the incredibly intricate and beautiful tapestry of humanity that covers this small globe.”
How profound, especially when written by one so young. Don says that he didn’t know then that he would become a travel writer, but with such insight and appreciation for the world, how could his career path have taken him anywhere else?
This is a quote from the introduction he wrote to an anthology of his own travel writing, ‘The Way of Wanderlust’ in 2015. I’m reproducing it here verbatim as I don’t think I’ve ever read a definition of what travel is that resonates so deeply with me.
“As I have learned over and over, travel teaches us about the vast and varied differences that enrich the global mosaic, in landscape, creation, custom, and belief, and about the importance of each and every piece in that mosaic. Travel teaches us to embrace our vulnerability and to have faith that whatever energy we put into the world will come back to us a hundredfold. Travel teaches us to approach unfamiliar cultures and peoples with curiosity and respect and to realise that the great majority of people around the world, whatever their differences in background and belief, care for their fellow human beings. And ultimately, travel teaches us about love. It teaches us that the very best we can do with our lives is to embrace the peoples, places, and cultures we meet with all our mind, heart, and soul, to live as fully as possible in every moment, every day. And it teaches us that this embrace is simultaneously a way of becoming whole and letting go.”
Something else from Mr George:
How true!!
Quotes Explaining Why We Travel
Many of my favourite travel quotes sum up the reasons why travel means everything to us. Here are some examples:
You might also like these road trip quotes from The Road Trip Expert.
Do It Now – Don’t Wait for Retirement!
Not a travel quote as such, this is the tagline for Happy Days Travel Blog and the philosophy that Mark and I live by. Other writers have reflected this sentiment:
Slow Travel
Mark and I are not ones for jetting into a destination, rushing around the sights, ticking them off a list, and moving on. We prefer to travel slowly, spending time getting to know a place, its people and its culture. This quote sums this up perfectly:
Cheap Travel
Not only do we travel slowly, but we also travel cheaply. We don’t have lots of savings behind us or huge pensions ahead of us. We choose not to buy lots of things. We’d rather buy experiences! We have to budget every step of the way, but it doesn’t stop us exploring this wonderful world of ours as reflected in these quotes:
Africa
We love to travel in Africa! This quote sums up how we feel about it:
Gathering Stories
One of the things that we love best about travelling is the stories we hear along the way. We love sharing our experiences with fellow travellers and hearing about theirs. These quotes reflect this:
Travel Photography
Both Mark and I love to take loads of photos when we travel. Perhaps this is the reason why …
It’s All About the Journey
We often travel with Dragoman. They are one of our favourite travel companies. Their motto is, “it’s the journey, not just the destination”. We agree! So does the author of this travel quote:
Classic Travel Quotes
There are countless quotes about travel. Here are some of the classics.
Other Travel Quotes
Here are three more quotes that resonate deeply with me.
I hope that you have enjoyed this compilation of my favourite travel quotes. If I’ve missed a quote that you particularly like, please tell me in the comments below!
I’ll leave you with this:
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