quotations about travel
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
Travel is like death in that it requires separation and, indeed, mourning. And travel by sea, unlike the far more rapid air travel, gives time for mourning, separation, and loss as one sees space slowly open between ship and shore and watches the coastline recede and eventually disappear.
PHILIP H. PFATTEICHER
Liturgical Spirituality
Travel is the last fantasy the 2Oth Century left us, the delusion that going somewhere helps you reinvent yourself.
J. G. BALLARD
Millennium People
Every traveler has a tale to tell.
DAVID C. SMITH & RICHARD L. TIERNEY
The Ring of Ikribu
Half the fun of the travel is the esthetic of lostness.
RAY BRADBURY
attributed, Emily the Strange: Piece of Mind
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
The reason why there are so many narrow-minded people in the world is, because there is so little travelling in it.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
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
Traveling, you realize that differences are lost: each city takes to resembling all cities, places exchange their form, order, distances, a shapeless dust cloud invades the continents.
ITALO CALVINO
Invisible Cities
The traveled mind is the catholic mind educated from exclusiveness and egotism.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education, in the elder, a part of experience.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Travel", The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral
No matter how far we travel, the memories will follow in the baggage car.
AUGUST STRINDBERG
Miss Julie
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
Travel is ... a means of conquering space and time.
JILLY TRAGANOU
Travel, Space, Architecture
Never travel by sea when you can go by land.
CATO
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
The soul of the journey is liberty, to think, feel, do just as one pleases.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Table Talk
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
He didn't really like travel, of course. He liked the idea of travel, and the memory of travel, but not travel itself.
JULIAN BARNES
Flaubert's Parrot
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