Travel Quotes

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A cold coming they had of it, at this time of the year; just, the worst time of the year, to take a journey, and specially a long journey, in. The ways deep, the weather sharp, the days short, the sun farthest off in solstitio brumali, the very dead of Winter.

Lancelot Andrewes (1555 - 1626)
English prelate.
Of the Nativity, "Sermon Twelve"



A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.

T. S. Eliot (1888 - 1965)
U.S.-born British poet and playwright.
Collected Poems 1909-35, "Journey of the Magi"



A great traveller is a kind of introspective who, as she covers the ground outwardly, so she advances inwardly.

Lawrence Durrell (1912 - 1990)
British novelist and poet.Referring to travel writer Freya Stark.



A journey is like a marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you can control it.

John Steinbeck (1902 - 1968)
U.S. novelist.
Travels with Charley: In Search of America



A likely thing. If it was ever intended that I should go across salt water, do you suppose Providence would have cast my lot in an island?

Charles Dickens (1812 - 1870)
British novelist.Said by Miss Pross.
A Tale of Two Cities



A man should know something of his own country, too, before he goes abroad.

Laurence Sterne (1713 - 1768)
Irish-born British writer and clergyman.
Tristram Shandy



A man travels the world in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.

George Moore (1852 - 1933)
Irish writer.
The Brook Kerith



A man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority, from his not having 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)
British lexicographer and writer, April 11, 1776.



A travel book...is the simplest sort of narrative, an explanation which is its own excuse for the gathering up and the going.

Paul Theroux (1941 - )
U.S. writer.
The Old Patagonian Express: By Train Through the Americas



A traveller who stops to inquire the deserts of every individual claimant of a shilling on his road, had best stay quiet at home.

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811 - 1863)
British novelist.
The Irish Sketch Book



A trip to the moon on gossamer wings.

Cole Porter (1893 - 1964)
U.S. songwriter and composer.
Jubilee, "Just One of Those Things"



After a distinctly uncomfortable introduction to the practice of travel, if I could possibly help it, I would never travel disagreeably again.

Jan Morris (1926 - )
British travel writer.
Worst Journeys, "My Worst Journey" (Keath Fraser (ed.)


Always pick a house with baby-clothes hanging out in the yard. Deal only with the over-fifty crowd.

Joseph Brodsky (1940 - 1996)
Russian-born U.S. poet and writer.
Worst Journeys, "Advice to a Traveller"
Keath Fraser (ed.)


As an English man does not travel to see English men, I retired to my room.

Laurence Sterne (1713 - 1768)
Irish-born British writer and clergyman.
A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, "In the Desobligeant"



As you came from the holy land
Of Walsinghame,
Met you not with my true Love
By the way as you came?

Walter Raleigh (1554 - 1618)
British explorer, courtier, and writer.
"As You Came from the Holy Land"



At worst one is in motion; and at best,
Reaching no absolute in which to rest,
One is always nearer by not keeping still.

Thom Gunn (1929 - )
British poet.
The Sense of Movement, "On the Move"



Bad journeys, it seems, lead straight to the confession box. And as readers we take as much pleasure in listening to the blunders as writers do in confessing them.

Keath Fraser (1944 - )
Canadian writer.
Worst Journeys (
Keath Fraser (ed.)

)



Beauty, in Nicaragua, often contained the beast.

Salman Rushdie (1947 - )
Indian-born British novelist.
Granta Book of Travel, "Eating the Eggs of Love" (
Bill Buford (ed.)


Behold, now, another providence of God. A ship comes into the harbor.

William Bradford (1590 - 1657)
English-born American religious leader and colonist.
History of Plimouth Plantation, 1620-1647



But the principal failing occurred in the sailing,
And the Bellman, perplexed and distressed,
Said he had hoped, at least, when the wind blew due East,
That the ship would not travel due West!

Lewis Carroll (1832 - 1898)
British writer and mathematician.
The Hunting of the Snark, "Fit the Second: The Bellman's Speech"



Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne,
He travels the fastest who travels alone.

Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936)
Indian-born British writer and poet.
"The Story of the Gadsbys"



Emperors and kings, dukes and marquises, counts, knights, and townsfolk, and all people who wish to know the various races of men and the peculiarities of the various regions of the world, take this book and have it read to you.

Marco Polo (1254 - 1324)
Venetian merchant and traveler.Referring to his own book.
The Travels of Marco Polo



Ever let the fancy roam,
Pleasure never is at home.

John Keats (1795 - 1821)
British poet.
"Fancy"



Exploring is delightful to look forward to and back upon, but it is not comfortable at the time, unless it be of such an easy nature as not to deserve the name.

Samuel Butler (1835 - 1902)
British writer, painter, and musician.
Erewhon



Extensive traveling includes a feeling of encapsulation, and travel, so broadening at first, contracts the mind.

Paul Theroux (1941 - )
U.S. writer.
The Great Railway Bazaar



FIRST MURDERERThe west yet glimmers with some streaks of day:
Now spurs the lated traveller apace
To gain the timely inn.

William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)
English poet and playwright.
Macbeth Act 3, Scene 3



For forty years I have made a professional speciality of the happy journey. When things have gone wrong, I have resolutely forgotten them.

Jan Morris (1926 - )
British travel writer.
Worst Journeys, "My Worst Journey" (
Keath Fraser (ed.)



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 (1850 - 1894)
Scottish novelist, essayist, and poet.
Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes, "Cheylard and Luc"



He travelled in order to come home.

William Trevor (1928 - )
Irish novelist, short-story writer, and playwright.
Matilda's England



Human beings are more alike than unalike, and what is true anywhere is true everywhere, yet I encourage travel to as many destinations as possible for the sake of education as well as pleasure.

Maya Angelou (1928 - )
U.S. writer.
Wouldn't Take Nothing for my Journey Now, "Passports to Understanding"



Hurry! We burn
For Rome so near us, for the phoenix moment
When we have thrown off this traveller's trance,
And mother-naked and ageless-ancient
Wake in her warm nest of renaissance.

Cecil Day-Lewis (1904 - 1972)
Irish-born British writer.
"Flight to Italy"



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 (1667 - 1745)
Anglo-Irish writer and clergyman.
Polite Conversation



I am always ready to visit a new place.

Graham Greene (1904 - 1991)
British novelist.
Travels With My Aunt



I have recently been all round the world and have formed a very poor opinion of it.

Thomas Beecham (1879 - 1961)
British conductor and impresario.
The News Review, Speech at the Savoy



I love the road. It may be a little tough on my wife and kid, never seeing their father and husband until Birdland comes around, but it has been and will remain a great thrill and challenge to me.

Count Basie (1904 - 1984)
U.S. jazz musician and bandleader.Referring to touring.



I offer that as a universal test of travel; boredom, called by any other name, is why you yearn for the first available transport out.

Martha Gellhorn (1908 - 1998)
U.S. journalist and author.
Worst Journeys, "What Bores Whom?" (
Keath Fraser (ed.)

)



I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba and cry, "T'is all barren!"

Laurence Sterne (1713 - 1768)
Irish-born British writer and clergyman.
A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, "In the Street, Calais"



I think that to get under the surface and really appreciate the beauty of any country, one has to go there poor.

Grace Moore
U.S. writer.
You're Only Human Once



I thought it was quite simple walking from one point to another, but people kept asking me, "Why?"

Ffyona Campbell (1967 - )
British adventurer.
Observer Review (London), Interview



I wouldn't mind seeing China if I could come back the same day. I hate being abroad.

Philip Larkin (1922 - 1985)
British poet.
Observer (London), Interview



If somebody yells "Hey stranger!" don't answer. Play deaf and dumb.

Joseph Brodsky (1940 - 1996)
Russian-born U.S. poet and writer.
Worst Journeys, "Advice to a Traveller" (
Keath Fraser (ed.)

)



In America, there are two classes of travel—first class, and with children.

Robert Benchley (1889 - 1945)
U.S. humorist, writer, editor, and critic.
Pluck and Luck



In Rome you long for the country; in the country—oh inconstant!—you praise the distant city to the stars.

Horace (65 - 8 BC)
Roman poet.
Satires



In the middle ages people were tourists because of their religion, whereas now they are tourists because tourism is their religion.

Robert Runcie (1921 - 2000)
British archbishop.
The Observer (London), "Sayings of the Week"



Isabella Bird comes closest to admitting a passion for travel for travel's sake—her husband declared "I have only one formidable rival in Isabella's affections and that is the high tableland of Central Asia".

Joanna Trollope (1943 - )
British writer.Isabella Bird (1831-1904), sent abroad for her health, became an inveterate traveler.
Britannia's Daughters



It is my practice in travelling to make my arrangements very carefully, to attend personally to every detail, and to give other people as little trouble as possible.

Isabella Bishop (1831 - 1904)
British traveler and author.
Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan, Letter



It is not everyone that can get to Corinth.

Horace (65 - 8 BC)
Roman poet.Corinth was a wealthy city port in ancient Greece, later rebuilt by the Romans.
Epistles



It is not the goal but the way there that matters, and the harder the way the more worthwhile the journey.

Wilfred Thesiger (1910 - )
British explorer.
Arabian Sands



It was the classic last resort. I wanted to run away to sea.

Jonathan Raban (1942 - )
British author.
Granta Book of Travel, "Sea-Room" (
Bill Buford (ed.)

)



It would be stretching the point to claim the Odyssey and the Book of Exodus as early travel books; but they help to underline the fact that as long as narrative literature has existed, it has taken the form of a journey, real or imagined, or...partly reported and partly invented.

Jonathan Raban (1942 - )
British author.



Journey all over the universe in a map, without the expense and fatigue of traveling, without suffering the inconveniences of heat, cold, hunger, and thirst.

Miguel de Cervantes (1547 - 1616)
Spanish novelist and dramatist.
Don Quixote



Journeys rarely begin where we think they do. Mine, perhaps, started in that classroom, where the green-tinted mystery hypnotized me during maths lessons.

Colin Thubron (1939 - )
British travel writer and novelist.Referring to a map of the world on the classroom wall.
Among the Russians



King of the Road

Roger Miller (1936 - 1992)
U.S. singer and songwriter.Song title, referring to a hobo.



Like ships, that sailed for sunny isles,
But never came to shore.

Thomas K. Hervey (1799 - 1859)
British poet and editor.
The Devil's Progress



May not and ought not the children of these fathers rightly say: "Our fathers were Englishmen which came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in this wilderness."

William Bradford (1590 - 1657)
English-born American religious leader and colonist.Referring to the Pilgrims, after their arrival at Cape Cod.
History of Plimouth Plantation, 1620-1647



Men who travel should leave their prejudices at home.

Frederick Douglass (1817? - 1895)
U.S. abolitionist, writer, and orator.
Douglass' Monthly



My experience of ships is that on them one makes an interesting discovery about the world. One finds one can do without it completely.

Malcolm Bradbury (1932 - 2000)
British academic, novelist, and critic.
Stepping Westward



No other form of transport in the rest of my life has ever come up to the bliss of my pram.

Osbert Lancaster (1908 - 1986)
English cartoonist and writer.
The Observer (London), "Sayings of the Week"



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)
English writer.
Comus



Objects which are usually the motives of our travels by land and by sea are often overlooked and neglected if they lie under our eye...We put off from time to time going and seeing what we know we have an opportunity of seeing when we please.

Pliny the Younger (62 - 113)
Roman politician and writer.



Of all noxious animals, too, the most noxious is a tourist. And of all tourists the most vulgar, ill-bred, offensive and loathsome is the British tourist.

Francis Kilvert (1840 - 1879)
British diarist and cleric.
Diary (
W. Plomer (ed.)

)



Oh, Christ! it is a goodly sight to see
What Heaven hath done for this delicious land.

Lord Byron (1788 - 1824)
British poet.Referring to Portugal.
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage



Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process a new factor enters and takes over...it has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself, no two are alike.

John Steinbeck (1902 - 1968)
U.S. novelist.
Travels with Charley: In Search of America



One may know the world without going out of doors.
One may see the Way of Heaven without looking through the windows.
The further one goes, the less one knows.

Laozi (570? BC - 490? BC)
Chinese philosopher.The Daode Jing is an early Chinese Taoist text. While attributed to Laozi, it probably dates from the 3rd century BC.
Daode Jing



Only a toothbrush is really indispensable: starting from the top this will neaten the hair, remove scurf from the collar, clean the teeth, then the fingernails—and then, if needs are dire, ream out between the toes and the welts of the shoes.

George Courtauld (1938 - )
British civil servant and author.The lesson of traveling light, learned as a Queen's Messenger.
The Travels of a Fat Bulldog



Out of every wandering in which people and places come and go in long successions, there is always one place remembered above the rest.

Willa Cather (1873 - 1947)
U.S. novelist, poet, and journalist.
Virago Book of Women Travellers, "Le Lavandou" (
Mary Morris (ed.)

)



Principles of travel, like any other rules, can only be proved by exception.

Jan Morris (1926 - )
British travel writer.
Worst Journeys, "My Worst Journey" (
Keath Fraser (ed.)

)



"Say will you give me a lift?" he asks the redhaired man at the wheel. How fur ye going? I dunno...Pretty far.

John Dos Passos (1896 - 1970)
U.S. novelist.Closing words.
Manhattan Transfer



Second to the right, and straight on till morning.

J. M. Barrie (1860 - 1937)
British playwright and novelist.Peter's directions, navigating by the stars, for how to get to Neverland.
Peter Pan



Ship me somewheres east of Suez, where the best is like the worst,
Where there aren't no Ten Commandments, an' a man can raise a thirst:
For the temple-bells are callin', an' it's there that I would be—
By the old Moulmein Pagoda, looking lazy at the sea.

Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936)
Indian-born British writer and poet.
Barrack-Room Ballads and Other Verses, "Mandalay"



Sweet to ride forth at evening from the wells
When shadows pass gigantic on the sand,
And softly through the silence beat the bells
Along the Golden Road to Samarkand.

James Elroy Flecker (1884 - 1915)
British poet.
The Golden Journey to Samarkand



That is my home of love: if I have rang'd,
Like him that travels, I return again.

William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)
English poet and playwright.
Sonnet 109



The British travel book, though, grew out of a particular set of historical circumstances. It was an inevitable by-product of that lust for empire which was the driving force behind the English Renaissance.

Jonathan Raban (1942 - )
British author.



The longest part of the journey is said to be the passing of the gate.

Marcus Terentius Varro (116 - 27 BC)
Roman scholar.
On Agriculture



The only aspect of our travels that is guaranteed to hold an audience is disaster.

Martha Gellhorn (1908 - 1998)
U.S. journalist and author.
Travels with Myself and Another



The sea voyage is more than an adventure; it is a rite of passage, as decisive as a wedding. It marks the end of the old self and the birth of the new.

Jonathan Raban (1942 - )
British author.
Granta Book of Travel, "Sea-Room" (
Bill Buford (ed.)

)



The time to enjoy a European tour is about three weeks after you unpack.

George Ade (1866 - 1944)
U.S. playwright, journalist, author, and humorist.
Forty Modern Fables



The traveler need have no scruple in limiting his donations to the smallest possible sums, as liberality frequently becomes a source of annoyance and embarrassment.

Karl Baedeker (1801 - 1859)
German publisher.
Northern Italy, "Gratuities"



The Victorians had not been anxious to go away for the weekend. The Edwardians on the contrary, were nomadic.

T. H. White (1906 - 1964)
British novelist, essayist, and historian.
Farewell Victoria



The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Robert Frost (1874 - 1963)
U.S. poet.
New Hampshire, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"



The world is a book, and those who do not travel, read only a page.

Attributed to Saint Augustine of Hippo (354 - 430)
Numidian Christian theologian and Doctor of the Church.



The worst part of the climb, one slip, and a breathing, thinking, human being would lie 3000 feet below, a shapeless, bloody heap!

Isabella Bishop (1831 - 1904)
British traveler and author.
A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains



There are no formal constituents to define the travel book...The writer is abroad—away from home, in that state of enhanced alertness that comes from being uprooted from one's natural habitat.

Jonathan Raban (1942 - )
British author.



There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse; as I have found in traveling in a stage-coach, that it is often a comfort to shift one's position and be bruised in a new place.

Washington Irving (1783 - 1859)
U.S. writer.
Tales of a Traveler, "To the Reader"



There is a special ambivalence to journeys in which one's own discomfort seems mitigated by an awareness of the much greater misery of the people around one.

George Woodcock (1912 - 1995)
Canadian educator and writer.
Worst Journeys, "My Worst Journeys" (
Keith Fraser (ed.)

)



These roads have no corners, only curves; thus we went around in circles for another half-hour.

Dervla Murphy (1931 - )
Irish travel writer.
Muddling Through in Madagascar



This doesn't look like Kansas, Toto.

L. Frank Baum (1856 - 1919)
U.S. writer.Dorothy's remark to her dog Toto on first arriving in the land of Oz, later made famous by the hugely successful musical film The Wizard of Oz (1939), starring Judy Garland.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz



Time was when you could go on an outing to a town barely thirty miles distant from your own and it was like visiting another country.

Beryl Bainbridge (1934 - )
British author and journalist.
Forever England North and South



To my taste there is nothing so fascinating as spending a night out in an African forest or plantation; but I beg you to note I do not advise anyone to follow the practice.

Mary Kingsley (1862 - 1900)
British explorer.
Travels in West Africa



To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 - 1894)
Scottish novelist, essayist, and poet.
Virginibus Puerisque, "El Dorado"



To travel
is to return
to strangers.

Dennis Scott (1939 - 1991)
Jamaican editor, actor, and poet.



Travel is a vanishing act, a solitary trip down a pinched line of geography to oblivion.

Paul Theroux (1941 - )
U.S. writer.
The Old Patagonian Express: By Train Through the Americas



Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.

Paul Theroux (1941 - )
U.S. writer.
The Observer (London), "Sayings of the Week"



Travel is the most private of pleasures. There is no greater bore than the travel bore. We do not in the least want to hear what he has seen in Hong-Kong.

Vita Sackville-West (1892 - 1962)
British poet and novelist.
Passenger to Tehran



Travel still suggests "travail" to those who know that by leaving home they risk wire-walking without a net.

Keath Fraser (1944 - )
Canadian writer.
Worst Journeys (
Keath Fraser (ed.)

)



Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience. He that travelleth into a country before he hath some entrance into the language, goeth to school, and not to travel.

Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)
English philosopher, statesman, and lawyer.
Essays, "Of Travel"



Traveling is almost like talking with men of other centuries.

René Descartes (1596 - 1650)
French philosopher and mathematician.
Discourse on Method



Travelling is the ruin of all happiness! There's no looking at a building here after seeing Italy.

Fanny Burney (1752 - 1840)
British novelist and diarist.
Cecilia



Waiting for a bus is about as thrilling as fishing, with the similar tantalisation that something, sometime, somehow, will turn up.

George Courtauld (1938 - )
British civil servant and author.
The Travels of a Fat Bulldog



We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.

John Steinbeck (1902 - 1968)
U.S. novelist.
Travels with Charley: In Search of America



We must travel in the direction of our fear.

John Berryman (1914 - 1972)
U.S. poet.
Poems, "A Point of Age"



When you halt in the desert make an arrow from pebbles, so, if suddenly woken up, you'll grasp which way to go.

Joseph Brodsky (1940 - 1996)
Russian-born U.S. poet and writer.
Worst Journeys, "Advice to a Traveller" (
Keath Fraser (ed.)

)



While I was sleeping in a buffalo stable in Turkey two buffaloes quarrelled and there was a terrible fight, in which the huge animals interlocked their horns and broke them short off, bellowing fearfully.

Isabella Bishop (1831 - 1904)
British traveler and author.
Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan, Letter



Whither, O splendid ship, thy white sails crowding,
Leaning across the bosom of the urgent West,
That fearest nor sea rising, nor sky clouding,
Whither away, fair rover, and what thy quest?

Robert Bridges (1844 - 1930)
British poet.
Shorter Poems, "A Passer By"



Whoever claimed that travel is merely home in motion was traveling in an armchair.

Keath Fraser (1944 - )
Canadian writer.
Worst Journeys (
Keath Fraser (ed.)

)



Worth seeing? yes; but not worth going to see.

Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784)
British lexicographer and writer, October 12, 1779.Referring to the Giant's Causeway, County Antrim, Northern Ireland.



"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.

Lewis Carroll (1832 - 1898)
British writer and mathematician.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland



Yes—around Concord.

Attributed to Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
U.S. writer.Said on being asked whether he had traveled much, and referring to Concord, Massachusetts, where he lived.



You can travel fifty thousand miles in America without once tasting a piece of good bread.

Henry Miller (1891 - 1980)
U.S. novelist.
Remember to Remember, "The Staff of Life"



Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience. He that travelleth into a country before he hath some entrance into the language, goeth to school, and not to travel.

Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)
English philosopher, statesman, and lawyer.
Essays, "Of Travel"



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 (1850 - 1894)
Scottish novelist, essayist, and poet.
Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes, "Cheylard and Luc"



The poetry of motion! The real way to travel! The only way to travel! Here today—in next week tomorrow! Villages skipped, towns and cities jumped—always somebody else's horizon!

Kenneth Grahame (1859 - 1932)
British banker and children's writer.Said by Mr. Toad about the motor car.
The Wind in the Willows



Isabella Bird comes closest to admitting a passion for travel for travel's sake—her husband declared "I have only one formidable rival in Isabella's affections and that is the high tableland of Central Asia".

Joanna Trollope (1943 - )
British writer.Isabella Bird (1831-1904), sent abroad for her health, became an inveterate traveler.
Britannia's Daughters



After a distinctly uncomfortable introduction to the practice of travel, if I could possibly help it, I would never travel disagreeably again.

Jan Morris (1926 - )
British travel writer.
Worst Journeys, "My Worst Journey" (
Keath Fraser (ed.)

)



Extensive traveling includes a feeling of encapsulation, and travel, so broadening at first, contracts the mind.

Paul Theroux (1941 - )
U.S. writer.
The Great Railway Bazaar



I was travelling post from Tiflis.The only luggage I had on my cart was one small portmanteau half-filled with travel notes on Georgia. Luckily for you most of them have been lost.

Mikhail Lermontov (1814 - 1841)
Russian poet and novelist.Opening words.
A Hero of Our Time (
Paul Foote (tr.)

)



He travels fastest who travels alone.

Anonymous
Proverb.



Travel is the most private of pleasures. There is no greater bore than the travel bore. We do not in the least want to hear what he has seen in Hong-Kong.

Vita Sackville-West (1892 - 1962)
British poet and novelist.
Passenger to Tehran



Whoever claimed that travel is merely home in motion was traveling in an armchair.

Keath Fraser (1944 - )
Canadian writer.
Worst Journeys (
Keath Fraser (ed.)

)



Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne,
He travels the fastest who travels alone.

Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936)
Indian-born British writer and poet.
"The Story of the Gadsbys"



The fact that—these books—two novels, a book of travel, a biography, a work of contemporary history—never got beyond the first ten thousand words was testimony to the resilience of his character.

Evelyn Waugh (1903 - 1966)
British novelist.
Put Out More Flags



Now in Ireland, now in England, now in Normandy, he must fly rather than travel by horse or ship.

Louis VII (1120? - 1180)
French monarch.Referring to Henry II.



If you ever plan to motor west,
Travel my way, take the highway, that's the best,
Get your kicks on Route 66.

Bobby Troup (1919 - 1999)
U.S. songwriter.
"Route 66"



Will anyone, a hundred years from now, consent to live in the houses the Victorians built, travel by their roads or railways, value the furnishings they made to live among or esteem, except for curious or historical reasons, their prevalent art and the clipped and limited literature that satisfied their souls?

H. G. Wells (1866 - 1946)
British writer.
The New Machiavelli



The British navy always travels first class.

Lord Fisher (1841 - 1920)
Sinhalese-born British admiral, 1954.



Man as we know him is a poor creature; but he is halfway between an ape and a god and he is travelling in the right direction.

William Ralph Inge (1860 - 1954)
British churchman.
Outspoken Essays, "Confessio Fidei"



We keep the students within view of their parents; we save them many toils and long foreign journeys; we protect them from robbers. They used to be pillaged while traveling abroad; now, they may study at small cost and short wayfaring, thanks to our liberality.

Frederick II (1194 - 1250)
Italian-born emperor, 1224.
Foundation charter of Naples University



Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.

Paul Theroux (1941 - )
U.S. writer.
The Observer (London), "Sayings of the Week"



They travel best in gangs, hanging around like clumps of bananas, thick skinned and yellow.

Neil Kinnock (1942 - )
British politician.Referring to Conservative critics.
The Observer (London), "Sayings of the Week"



Eighty per cent of the people of Britain want more money spent on public transport—in order that other people will travel on the buses so that there is more room for them to drive their cars.

John Selwyn Gummer (1939 - )
British politician.
The Independent (London)



I travelled among unknown men
In lands beyond the sea;
Nor, England! did I know till then
What love I bore to thee.

William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850)
British poet.Referring to his travels in Germany (1798-1799), during which the "Lucy poems" (of which this is one) were written.
Poems in Two Volumes, "I Travelled Among Unknown Men"



I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.

Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)
Irish poet, playwright, and wit.
The Importance of Being Earnest



To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 - 1894)
Scottish novelist, essayist, and poet.
Virginibus Puerisque, "El Dorado"



I believe that you can do anything. I believe you can fly and I believe in astral travel because, if I thought I was just going to walk around this place for the next fifty years, I don't think I could exist.

Richard Ashcroft
British singer and songwriter.
New Musical Express (London), Interview (
Roger Morton

)



That strange blend of the commercial traveller, the missionary, and the barbarian conqueror, which was the American abroad.

Olaf Stapledon (1886 - 1950)
British philosopher and science-fiction writer.
Last and First Men



I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822)
English poet.Referring to the legs of a broken statue of the Pharaoh Rameses II (1301-1234 BC; Greek name, Ozymandias).
"Ozymandias"



A calming influence on the nervous system, they say, can be obtained from travel on the Volga.

Robert Lindner (1915 - 1956)
U.S. psychoanalyst.Quoting a remark by a Russian psychiatrist.
The Fifty-Minute Hour



Travel broadens the mind.

Anonymous
Proverb.



I offer that as a universal test of travel; boredom, called by any other name, is why you yearn for the first available transport out.

Martha Gellhorn (1908 - 1998)
U.S. journalist and author.
Worst Journeys, "What Bores Whom?" (
Keath Fraser (ed.)

)



Bad news travels fast.

Anonymous
Proverb.



There is a ghost
That eats handkerchiefs;
It keeps you company
On all your travels.

Christian Morgenstern (1871 - 1914)
German poet.
"Gespenst"



A man travels the world in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.

George Moore (1852 - 1933)
Irish writer.
The Brook Kerith



In all my travels I never met with any one Scotchman but what was a man of sense. I believe everybody of that country that has any, leaves it as fast as they can.

Francis Lockier (1667 - 1740)
British writer and priest.



Travel light and you can sing in the robber's face.

Juvenal (65? - 128?)
Roman poet.
Satires



A man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority, from his not having 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)
British lexicographer and writer, April 11, 1776.



There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse; as I have found in traveling in a stage-coach, that it is often a comfort to shift one's position and be bruised in a new place.

Washington Irving (1783 - 1859)
U.S. writer.
Tales of a Traveler, "To the Reader"



Not bound to swear allegiance to any master, wherever the wind takes me I travel as a visitor.

Horace (65 - 8 BC)
Roman poet.Nullius in verba is the motto of the Royal Society.
Epistles



This is the weather the cuckoo likes,
And so do I;
When showers betumble the chestnut spikes,
And nestlings fly:
And the little brown nightingale bills his best,
And they sit outside at "The Travellers' Rest".

Thomas Hardy (1840 - 1928)
British novelist and poet.
Late Lyrics and Earlier, "Weathers"



In my time, the follies of the town crept slowly among us, but now they travel faster than a stagecoach.

Oliver Goldsmith (1730 - 1774)
Irish-born British novelist, playwright, and poet.
She Stoops to Conquer



Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost (1874 - 1963)
U.S. poet.
Mountain Interval, "The Road Not Taken"



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.

Omar Khayyám (1050? - 1122)
Persian mathematician, astronomer, and author.English translation by Edward FitzGerald
The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám



If a traveller were informed that such a man was leader of the House of Commons, he may well begin to comprehend how the Egyptians worshipped an insect.

Attributed to Benjamin Disraeli (1804 - 1881)
British prime minister and writer, 1852.Referring to Lord John Russell.



Traveling is almost like talking with men of other centuries.

René Descartes (1596 - 1650)
French philosopher and mathematician.
Discourse on Method



Brother, I am too old to go again to my travels.

Charles II (1630 - 1685)
English monarch.Referring to his exile (1651-1660).
Remark to his brother, James



A client is fain to hire a lawyer to keep from the injury of other lawyers—as Christians that travel in Turkey are forced to hire Janissaries, to protect them from the insolencies of other Turks.

Samuel Butler (1612 - 1680)
English satirist.



If you can imagine a Scotch commercial traveller in a Scotch commercial hotel leaning on the bar and calling the barmaid "Dearie" then you will know the keynote of Burns' verse.

A. E. Housman (1859 - 1936)
British poet and classicist.Referring to Robert Burns.



He did not care in which direction the car was travelling, so long as he remained in the driver's seat.

Max Aitkin Beaverbrook, Lord (1879 - 1964)
Canadian-born British newspaper owner and politician.Referring to David Lloyd George.
New Statesman (London)



Oxford is on the whole more attractive than Cambridge to the ordinary visitor; and the traveler is therefore recommended to visit Cambridge first, or to omit it altogether if he cannot visit both.

Karl Baedeker (1801 - 1859)
German publisher.
Baedeker's Great Britain, "From London to Oxford"



I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba and cry, "T'is all barren!"

Laurence Sterne (1713 - 1768)
Irish-born British writer and clergyman.
A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, "In the Street, Calais"



As an English man does not travel to see English men, I retired to my room.

Laurence Sterne (1713 - 1768)
Irish-born British writer and clergyman.
A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, "In the Desobligeant"



Objects which are usually the motives of our travels by land and by sea are often overlooked and neglected if they lie under our eye...We put off from time to time going and seeing what we know we have an opportunity of seeing when we please.

Pliny the Younger (62 - 113)
Roman politician and writer.



Much have I travell'd in the realms of
gold…That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne,
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific—and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild
surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

John Keats (1795 - 1821)
British poet.George Chapman, the translator of Homer's Iliad, was a contemporary of Shakespeare's. In fact, Balboa, not Cortez, was the first European to see the Pacific from Darien in Panama.
"On First Looking into Chapman's Homer"



Our deeds still travel with us from afar,
And what we have been makes us what we are.

George Eliot (1819 - 1880)
British novelist.
Middlemarch



Travelling is the ruin of all happiness! There's no looking at a building here after seeing Italy.

Fanny Burney (1752 - 1840)
British novelist and diarist.
Cecilia



Tho' thou art worship'd by the Names Divine
Of Jesus & Jehovah, thou art still
The Son of Morn in weary Night's decline,
The lost Traveller's Dream under the Hill.

William Blake (1757 - 1827)
British poet, painter, engraver, and mystic.
The Gates of Paradise



A travel book...is the simplest sort of narrative, an explanation which is its own excuse for the gathering up and the going.

Paul Theroux (1941 - )
U.S. writer.
The Old Patagonian Express: By Train Through the Americas



I was always aware, I think, of the water in the soil, the way it travels from particle to particle, molecules adhering, clustering, evaporating, heating, cooling, freezing, rising upward to the surface and fogging the cool air or sinking downward, dissolving this nutrient and that, quick in everything it does, endlessly working and flowing, a river sometimes, a lake sometimes.

Jane Smiley (1949 - )
U.S. novelist and short-story writer.Jane Smiley won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize in fiction for A Thousand Acres.
A Thousand Acres



While the astronauts, heroes forever, spent mere hours on the moon, I have remained in this new world for nearly thirty years. I know that my achievement is quite ordinary. I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination.

Jhumpa Lahiri (1967 - )
U.S. writer.Jumpa Lahiri won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize in fiction for Interpreter of Maladies.
Interpreter of Maladies, “The Third and Final Continent”



If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.

Attributed to John D. Rockefeller (1839 - 1937)
U.S. industrialist and philanthropist.



Over them wander the buffalo herds, and the elk and the roebuck;
Over them wander the wolves, and herds of riderless horses;
Fires that blast and blight, and winds that are weary with travel.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 - 1882)
U.S. poet.Referring to the North American prairies.
Evangeline



Oh Time, oh Still and Now,
pregnant with things impending.
You travel the cold path with me,
arousing restlessness and hope.

Antonio Machado (1875 - 1939)
Spanish poet and playwright.
Selected Poems, "Last Lamentations of Abel Martin" (
Alan S. Trueblood (tr.)

)



The town of Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, lies on the shore against Adams Hill...the highway aims for the lake...bringing the traveler in on Main Street toward the town's one traffic light, which is almost always green.

Garrison Keillor (1942 - )
U.S. writer and broadcaster.
Lake Wobegon Days, "Home"



"This is a city of water," said Mr. Garner. "Everything travels by water and what the rivers can't carry the canals take. A queen of a city...If you have to live in a city—this is it."

Toni Morrison (1931 - )
U.S. novelist.Referring to Cincinnati, Ohio.
Beloved



I met a traveler from Arkansas
Who boasted of his state as beautiful
for diamonds and apples.

Robert Frost (1874 - 1963)
U.S. poet.
New Hampshire, "New Hampshire"



At two-tenths the speed of light, dust and atoms might not do significant damage...but the faster you go, the worse it is...So 60,000 kilometers per second may be the practical speed limit for space travel.

Isaac Asimov (1920 - 1992)
Russian-born U.S. writer.
The Relativity of Wrong



An infantryman's heart...like his feet, at first aches and swells, but finally grows horny enough for him to travel the weirdest paths without feeling a thing.

Philip Roth (1933 - )
U.S. novelist.
Goodbye, Columbus, "Defender of the Faith"



A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped.

Norman Mailer (1923 - )
U.S. novelist and journalist.
The Presidential Papers



The natural tenderness and delicacy of our constitution, added to the many dangers we are subject to from your sex, renders it almost impossible for a single lady to travel without injury to her character.

Abigail Adams (1744 - 1818)
U.S. feminist.
Letter to Isaac Smith, Jr.



Technology travels with people. You can't just throw it over the wall and, because it's such a good idea, expect another engineering group to simply pick it up and run with it.

Chuck Geschke (1939 - )
U.S. business executive and computer scientist.



Refusing to surrender to this role of being a travelling salesman for his albums, Van Morrison settled for a career as a cult artist.

Charlie Gillett
British writer and broadcaster.Referring to the artist's hatred of touring.
The Sound of the City, "Echoes from the City Centres 1962-71"



We have a country full of words. Speak, speak so that I can rest my road against a rock.
We have a country full of words. Speak, speak, so that we may know what is the limit of this travelling.

Mahmoud Darwish (1942 - )
Palestinian poet.
Modern Arabic Poetry, "We Travel like Other People" (
Salma Khadra Jayyusi (ed.)

)



If I pass during some nocturnal blackness, mothy and warm,
When the hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn,
One may say, "He strove that such innocent creatures should come to no harm,
But he could do little for them; and now he is gone."

Thomas Hardy (1840 - 1928)
British novelist and poet.
Moments of Vision, "Afterwards"



I think crime pays. The hours are good, you travel a lot.

Woody Allen (1935 - )
U.S. film actor and director.
Take the Money and Run



But the horses had burst before her. In a sort of lightning of knowledge their movement travelled through her, the quiver and strain and thrust of their powerful flanks, as they burst before her and drew on, beyond. She knew they had not gone, she knew they awaited her still.

D. H. Lawrence (1885 - 1930)
British writer.
The Rainbow



"Have I behaved badly?" asked Pippi..."You understand, ma'am, that when your mother is an angel and your father a Cannibal King, and you've travelled all your life on the seas, you don't really know how you oughter behave in a school."

Astrid Lindgren (1907 - 2002)
Swedish writer.Said by Pippi Longstocking. Pippi Longstocking is a children's book.
Pippi Longstocking (
Edna Hurup (tr.)

)



The average pound of food in America travels 1,200 miles before it reaches the kitchen table, and the total transport distances of the ingredients in a pot of German yoghurt totals over 6,000 miles.

Helena Norberg-Hodge
British ecologist and author.
The Future of Progress, "Globalisation Versus Community" (
Helena Norberg-Hodge, Peter Goering, and Steven Gorelick (eds.)

)



"Follow me"—he said—"my name is Jesus:
Have no fear of me—I am a travelling actor.
We'll have a drink together in the nearby inn."

Paul Durcan (1944 - )
Irish poet.
The Berlin Wall Café, "The Haulier's Wife Meets Jesus on the Road near Moone"



I've always been fearful that I'd end up in an industry like the railroads when they sneered at airplane travel.

Michael Eisner (1942 - )
U.S. entertainment executive.



Men who travel should leave their prejudices at home.

Frederick Douglass (1817? - 1895)
U.S. abolitionist, writer, and orator.
Douglass' Monthly



Here lies the body of Jonathan Swift, D.D., dean of this cathedral, where burning indignation can no longer lacerate his heart. Go, traveller, and imitate if you can a man who was an undaunted champion of liberty.

Jonathan Swift (1667 - 1745)
Anglo-Irish writer and clergyman.Jonathan Swift's epitaph, written by himself, on his tomb in St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin.
Epitaph



Was he a malignant creature whose perverted sense of humour delighted to send travellers astray? Was he merely half-witted? Probably not: the Welsh are quite incapable of directing one anywhere.

John Moore (1907 - 1967)
British travel writer.Referring to getting lost after consulting a man outside Llangurig, Wales.
Tramping Through Wales, "Adventures in the South"



For man's Karma travels with him, like his shadow. Indeed it is his shadow, for it has been said, "Man stands in his own shadow and wonders why it is dark."

Alan Watts (1915 - 1973)
British-born U.S. mystic and writer.
The Spirit of Zen



We are not in the habit of traveling close to the speed of light. The testimony of our common sense is suspect at high velocities.

Carl Sagan (1934 - 1996)
U.S. astronomer and writer.
Broca's Brain: The Romance of Science



Human beings are more alike than unalike, and what is true anywhere is true everywhere, yet I encourage travel to as many destinations as possible for the sake of education as well as pleasure.

Maya Angelou (1928 - )
U.S. writer.
Wouldn't Take Nothing for my Journey Now, "Passports to Understanding"



The sixties ended abruptly on August 9, 1969, ended at the exact moment when word of the killings on Cielo Drive traveled like bushfire through the community...The tension broke that day. The paranoia was fulfilled.

Joan Didion (1934 - )
U.S. journalist and writer.Referring to the murders of Sharon Tate and others committed by Charles Manson and his followers.
The White Album, "The White Album"



Much have I travelled in the realms of gold
for which I thank the Paddington and Westminster
Public Libraries: and I have never said sir
to anyone since I was seventeen years old.

Peter Porter (1929 - )
Australian-born British poet and critic.The first line alludes to John Keats's sonnet, "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" (1816).
The Last of England, "The Sanitized Sonnets: 4"



"Is there anybody there?" said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door.

Walter de la Mare (1873 - 1956)
British poet and novelist.
The Complete Poems of Walter de la Mare, "The Listeners"



This sorcery
I do. Being damned, I am amused
to see the centre of love diffused
and the waves of love travel into vacancy.
How easy it is to make a ghost.

Keith Douglas (1920 - 1944)
British poet.
"How to Kill"



You can travel fifty thousand miles in America without once tasting a piece of good bread.

Henry Miller (1891 - 1980)
U.S. novelist.
Remember to Remember, "The Staff of Life"



That is my home of love: if I have rang'd,
Like him that travels, I return again.

William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)
English poet and playwright.
Sonnet 109



A great traveller is a kind of introspective who, as she covers the ground outwardly, so she advances inwardly.

Lawrence Durrell (1912 - 1990)
British novelist and poet.Referring to travel writer Freya Stark.



Gender often forms a bond between women travellers. Women confide in other women.

Mary Morris (1947 - )
U.S. writer.
Virago Book of Women Travellers



A silk American flag which Mrs. Peary gave me fifteen years ago...has done more traveling in high latitudes than any other ever made. I carried it wrapped about my body on every one of my expeditions northward.

Robert Edwin Peary (1856 - 1920)
U.S. explorer.
The North Pole



Travel is a vanishing act, a solitary trip down a pinched line of geography to oblivion.

Paul Theroux (1941 - )
U.S. writer.
The Old Patagonian Express: By Train Through the Americas



We must travel in the direction of our fear.

John Berryman (1914 - 1972)
U.S. poet.
Poems, "A Point of Age"



But the principal failing occurred in the sailing,
And the Bellman, perplexed and distressed,
Said he had hoped, at least, when the wind blew due East,
That the ship would not travel due West!

Lewis Carroll (1832 - 1898)
British writer and mathematician.
The Hunting of the Snark, "Fit the Second: The Bellman's Speech"



FIRST MURDERERThe west yet glimmers with some streaks of day:
Now spurs the lated traveller apace
To gain the timely inn.

William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)
English poet and playwright.
Macbeth Act 3, Scene 3



Hurry! We burn
For Rome so near us, for the phoenix moment
When we have thrown off this traveller's trance,
And mother-naked and ageless-ancient
Wake in her warm nest of renaissance.

Cecil Day-Lewis (1904 - 1972)
Irish-born British writer.
"Flight to Italy"



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)
English writer.
Comus



The traveler need have no scruple in limiting his donations to the smallest possible sums, as liberality frequently becomes a source of annoyance and embarrassment.

Karl Baedeker (1801 - 1859)
German publisher.
Northern Italy, "Gratuities"



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)
British poet, painter, engraver, and mystic.
Songs of Experience, "Ah, Sun-flower"



Ah, what is more blessed than to put cares away, when the mind lays by its burden, and tired with labor of far travel we have come to our own home and rest on the couch we have longed for?

Gaius Valerius Catullus (84? BC - 54? BC)
Roman poet.
Carmina



Principles of travel, like any other rules, can only be proved by exception.

Jan Morris (1926 - )
British travel writer.
Worst Journeys, "My Worst Journey" (
Keath Fraser (ed.)

)



He travelled in order to come home.

William Trevor (1928 - )
Irish novelist, short-story writer, and playwright.
Matilda's England



HAMLET The dread of something after death—
The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns.

William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)
English poet and playwright.
Hamlet Act 3, Scene 1



The only aspect of our travels that is guaranteed to hold an audience is disaster.

Martha Gellhorn (1908 - 1998)
U.S. journalist and author.
Travels with Myself and Another



Travel still suggests "travail" to those who know that by leaving home they risk wire-walking without a net.

Keath Fraser (1944 - )
Canadian writer.
Worst Journeys (
Keath Fraser (ed.)

)



A traveller who stops to inquire the deserts of every individual claimant of a shilling on his road, had best stay quiet at home.

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811 - 1863)
British novelist.
The Irish Sketch Book



To travel
is to return
to strangers.

Dennis Scott (1939 - 1991)
Jamaican editor, actor, and poet.



Journey all over the universe in a map, without the expense and fatigue of traveling, without suffering the inconveniences of heat, cold, hunger, and thirst.

Miguel de Cervantes (1547 - 1616)
Spanish novelist and dramatist.
Don Quixote



The world is a book, and those who do not travel, read only a page.

Attributed to Saint Augustine of Hippo (354 - 430)
Numidian Christian theologian and Doctor of the Church.



There are no formal constituents to define the travel book...The writer is abroad—away from home, in that state of enhanced alertness that comes from being uprooted from one's natural habitat.

Jonathan Raban (1942 - )
British author.



It would be stretching the point to claim the Odyssey and the Book of Exodus as early travel books; but they help to underline the fact that as long as narrative literature has existed, it has taken the form of a journey, real or imagined, or...partly reported and partly invented.

Jonathan Raban (1942 - )
British author.



In America, there are two classes of travel—first class, and with children.

Robert Benchley (1889 - 1945)
U.S. humorist, writer, editor, and critic.
Pluck and Luck



It is my practice in travelling to make my arrangements very carefully, to attend personally to every detail, and to give other people as little trouble as possible.

Isabella Bishop (1831 - 1904)
British traveler and author.
Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan, Letter



The British travel book, though, grew out of a particular set of historical circumstances. It was an inevitable by-product of that lust for empire which was the driving force behind the English Renaissance.

Jonathan Raban (1942 - )
British author.



Mr. Mandela has walked a long road and now stands at the top of the hill. A traveller would sit down and admire the view. But a man of destiny knows that beyond this hill lies another and another. The journey is never complete.

F. W. de Klerk (1936 - )
South African president.Referring to Nelson Mandela.
Observer (London), "Sayings of the Week"



Are there still virgins? One is tempted to answer no. There are only girls who have not yet crossed the line, because they want to preserve their market value...Call them virgins if you wish, these travelers in transit.

Françoise Giroud (1916 - )
Swiss-born French politician, journalist, and editor.
Coronet



And the season it was winter, and they that know the winters of that country know them to be sharp and violent, and subject to cruel and fierce storms, dangerous to travel to known places, much more to search an unknown coast.

William Bradford (1590 - 1657)
English-born American religious leader and colonist.
History of Plimouth Plantation, 1620-1647



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 (1667 - 1745)
Anglo-Irish writer and clergyman.
Polite Conversation



Never seen
a man
travel more
seen more
lands
than this poor
path-
less harbor-
less spade.

Edward Kamau Brathwaite (1930 - )
Barbadian poet, playwright, and historian.
The Arrivants, "The Journeys"



No man can be a Politician, except he be first an Historian or a Traveller; (for except he can see what must be, or what may be, he is no Politician).

James Harrington (1611 - 1677)
English political theorist.
The Commonwealth of Oceana



She was seen as obstinate, unassimilable, refusing to join groups of people like herself for purposes of travel or instruction, in which activities she might be supposed to involve herself honourably, thus leaving the world with no obligations towards her.

Anita Brookner (1928 - )
British novelist and art historian.
A Misalliance



Born of the sun, they travelled a short while towards the sun
And left the vivid air signed with their honour.

Stephen Spender (1909 - 1995)
British poet and critic.
"I Think Continually of Those Who Were Truly Great"



I will not permit thirty men to travel four hundred miles to agitate a bag of wind.

Andrew Dickson White (1832 - 1918)
U.S. educator and diplomat.Refusing to allow the Cornell football team to visit Michigan to play a game.



Who travels alone tells lies.

Anonymous
African (Oji) proverb.



I cannot believe that the great British people, in order to protect their identity, would now be cowering on the very island from which they set sail to travel the world.

Edouard Balladur (1929 - )
Turkish-born French prime minister.On British suspicion of the European Union.
Observer (London), "Sayings of the Week"



Light travels like an arrow and time like a shuttle.

Anonymous
Chinese proverb.

Travel Quotes  Travel Quotes 2