If you ask me about the power of words and images, I would say it can motivate me anytime I’m negative. Indeed, at times that my feet are prevented from hiking or wandering at places, travel quotes all inspire me to overcome the hard moments. Sometimes, it reminds me of beautiful days when I traveled to destinations, exploring the cities, or enjoying the delicious foods. Some of the quotes even teach or highlight the truth of adventures.
Here in this post, I collect all of my favorite travel quotes and would love to share it with you so we are all inspired for living a more experienced and adventurous life.
Top 10 Travel Quotes
1. “The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.” – St. Augustine
And the first page doesn’t even bring you out of your safe zone to the outer world. Indeed, the first page of a book is usually just a table of content of some general introduction. It doesn’t carry enough detail to give your mind a fly to the space of knowledge or a hint to what the book really is.
Three years after the first day I put my first step into Canada, I could still remember the first day I saw snow and really knew how it was. Honestly, it was like the kid who was first given the sweetest candy in the world. And that’s what a boy born and lived in a tropical country can describe to you.
2. “Not all those who wander are lost.” – J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
Yas, I feel home waking up in a new place in the morning. Not sure if Tolkien shares the same feeling with me?
3. “Remember happiness is a way of travel not a destination.” – Roy Goodman
4. “A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.” – Lao Tzu
5. “No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.” – Lin Yutang
Absolutely! Just staying at home for social-distancing during the coronavirus pandemic, you will know how correct this travel quote is!
6. “Wherever you go becomes a part of you somehow.” – Anita Desai
From what I can immediately see, yes, all of my trips now become a part of my beautiful memories. Later, I will have tons of nice stories to tell my kids.
7. “Travel far enough, you meet yourself.” – David Mitchell
To those who step out of their comfort zone, David Mitchell is very true on his quote. If you never put yourself in certain situations, you may never know or discover all parts of you.
8. “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
And I’m living my life, well!
9. “One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” – Henry Miller
Undoubtedly, Cameron Highlands has brought me a new way of seeing Malaysia. I have never thought of a such lovely destination in the country before.
10. “Life is short and the world is wide, the sooner you start exploring it, the better.” – Simon Raven
Short Travel Quotes
11. “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.” – Helen Keller
12. “Live with no excuses and travel with no regrets.” – Oscar Wilde
13. “We travel not to escape life but for life not to escape us.” – Anonymous
14. “Don’t listen to what they say, go see.” – Chinese Proverb
15. “Oh, the places you’ll go.” – Dr. Seuss
16. “Life’s a journey, not a destination.” – Aerosmith
Indeed, life is when you keep exploring and experience new things. I can’t imagine how my life’s gonna be if I keep doing the same thing daily. For example, going to the office 9-to-5, earning and saving until I can buy a house?! Perhaps it isn’t a life anymore.
17. “I want to make memories all over the world.”
Thanks to anyone who said this travel quote, it says all my thought. Truly, I just want my whole life and my mind fully stores beautiful memories of my moments at destinations around the world. I would love to tell a lot of great stories to my child, and even grandchild.
18. “Take only memories, leave only footprints.” – Chief Seattle
19. “Travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer.” – Anonymous
I’m on my way to be the richest. Do you follow me?
20. “Never go on trips with anyone you do not love.” – Hemmingway
Yes, go with your 4-leg buddy if there is no one who shares the same interest in traveling around you. Don’t let anything prevent your joy along the way. Who knows, you may find a great friend in your journey.
21. “Great things never came from comfort zones.” – Roy T. Bennett
Exactly! This quote brings me back to the beautiful day when I did trekking at Ta Nang – Phan Dung. I can still remember ‘what happened’ when there wasn’t a washroom, haha. However, waking up early in a tent on top of a mountain wasn’t an experience that everyone could enjoy. And that was one of the greatest!
22. “Fear is only temporary. Regrets last forever.” – Anonymous
Just an example, but have you ever tried the stinky tofu? If you see it, try once at least, or you will regret your decision.
23. “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.” – Neale Donald Walsch
24. “Jobs fill your pocket but adventures fill your soul.” – Jamie Lyn Beatty
25. “Travel doesn’t become adventure until you leave yourself behind.” – Marty Rubin
26. “It’s better to travel well than to arrive.” – Buddha
27. “If your ship doesn’t come in, swim out to it.” – Johnathan Winters
Listen to Johnathan Winters, taking the initiative, never wait things come to you.
28. “Travel has a way of stretching the mind.” – Ralph Crawshaw
29. “We wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment.” – Hilaire Belloc
Fun Travel Quotes to Make You Smile
30. “Don’t worry about the world ending today, it’s already tomorrow in Australia.” – Charles M. Schulz
31. “A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.” – John Steinbeck
I laughed a lot when reading this quote. Honestly, I’m just married, and I totally agree with this LOL.
32. “I told the doctor I broke my leg in two places. He told me to quit going to those places.” – Henny Youngman
33. “There is nothing safer than flying, it’s crashing that is dangerous.” – Theo Cowan
34. “I always like to go to Washington D.C. It gives me a chance to visit my money.” – Bob Hope
35. “Jet lag is for amateurs.” – Dick Clark
Ok Dick, luckily I don’t get jet lag.
36. “Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.” – Paul Theroux
37. “I wish I had never gone traveling. Said no one ever.” – No one ever said
Inspirational Travel Quotes for Wanderlust
38. “There’s a sunrise and sunset every single day, and they’re absolutely free. Don’t miss so many of them.” – Jo Walton
Surely I won’t, and you shouldn’t too! Thank you Jo Walton your travel quote reminding me!
39. “I’m in love with cities I’ve never been to and people I’ve never met.” – John Green
John Green says it so true. When I went to Sapa for the first time in 2016, I loved the cities and the ethnic family there so much that I just wanted to stay as long as possible. Actually, I and my friends extended the length of stay but it wasn’t enough for many things.
40. “Climb the mountain so you can see the world, not so the world can see you.” – David Mccullough
41. “Travel… the best way to be lost and found at the same time.” – Brenna Smith
42. “Traveling is not something you’re good at. It’s something you do, like breathing.” – Gayle Foreman
43. “If you think adventure is dangerous, try routine, it’s lethal.” – Paul Coelho
44. “Stop worrying about the potholes in the road and enjoy the journey.” – Babs Hoffman
45. “Traveling – it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.” – Ibn Battuta
Does anyone want to hear my travel stories? Contact me! Or you can obviously read my blog.
46. “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” – Marcel Proust
47. “Travel makes one modest, you see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.” – Gustave Flaubert
48. “Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe.” – Anotole France
49. “A journey is best measured in friends rather than miles.” – Tim Cayhill
Accurately, spending times with friends on journeys are the most beautiful moment a person can have. I will never ever forget my 14 days trip to North and South Vietnam with my friends in 2016.
50. “I travel not to go anywhere but to go. I travel for travel’s sake.” – Robert Louis Stevenson
51. “It is not the destination where you end up but the mishaps and memories you create along the way.” – Penelope Riley
Have You Known These Famous Travel Quotes?
52. “I would rather own a little and see the world than own the world and see a little of it.” – Alexander Sattler
53. “It is better to see something once than to hear about it a thousand times.” – Asian Proverb
One of the travel quotes as an Asian proverb but reminds me of my Taipei and Taichung trip in Nov 2019. It was also my first time in the country. Before that, I always hear from my friends about their trips and see Taiwan on TV. Trust me, going to the place, and seeing everything directly is definitely the best thing. It brought the best feeling over anything I have experienced.
54. “Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in an office or mowing your lawn. Climb that damn mountain.” – Jack Kerouak
55. “To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.” – Aldous Huxley
56. “You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.” – Mae West
Give me another to thoroughly explore every corner of the world, please!
57. “The only people who ever get anyplace interesting are the people who get lost.” – Henry David Thoreau
58. “Someday I’m going to be free and I’m going to travel the world.”
59. “You may say that I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us and the world will be as one.” – John Lennon
60. “Like all great travelers, I have seen more than I remember and remember more than I have seen.” – Benjamin Disraeli
61. “You go away for a long time and return a different person – you never come all the way back.” – Paul Theroux
Travel Quotes by Anthony Bourdain
Honestly, I knew more about Anthony Bourdain since he has come to my country eating Bún Chả Hà Nội with the ex-President of the USA, Mr. Barrack Obama. At that time, I was just curious about a man with honor to have dinner with the president of a big country. Then, the more I research about him, the more interest and admire I feel about the talented man. I always wish to do things like him, traveling around the world, exploring cultures on the planet, tasting different cuisines, then documenting things to share with everyone. It was such an extremely bad and a huge loss that he passed away, but his heritage and quotes always inspire people.
62. “Travel changes you. As you move through this life and this world you change things slightly, you leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life – and travel – leaves marks on you.”
63. “If you’re twenty-two, physically fit, hungry to learn and be better, I urge you to travel – as far and as widely as possible. Sleep on floors if you have to. Find out how other people live and eat and cook. Learn from them – wherever you go.”
64. “If I’m an advocate for anything, it’s to move. As far as you can, as much as you can. Across the ocean, or simply across the river. The extent to which you can walk in someone else’s shoes or at least eat their food, it’s a plus for everybody. Open your mind, get up off the couch, move.”
65. “The journey is part of the experience – an expression of the seriousness of one’s intent. One doesn’t take the A train to Mecca.”
66. “It seems that the more places I see and experience, the bigger I realize the world to be. The more I become aware of, the more I realize how relatively little I know of it, how many places I have still to go, how much more there is to learn.”
67. “Travel is about the gorgeous feeling of teetering in the unknown.”
68. “It’s an irritating reality that many places and events defy description. Angkor Wat and Machu Picchu, for instance, seem to demand silence, like a love affair you can never talk about. For a while after, you fumble for words, trying vainly to assemble a private narrative, an explanation, a comfortable way to frame where you’ve been and what’s happened. In the end, you’re just happy you were there – with your eyes open – and lived to see it.”
69. “Nothing unexpected or wonderful is likely to happen if you have an itinerary in Paris filled with the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower.”
70. “Do we really want to travel in hermetically sealed popemobiles through the rural provinces of France, Mexico, and the Far East, eating only in Hard Rock Cafes and McDonald’s? Or do we want to eat without fear, tearing into the local stew, the humble taqueria’s mystery meat, the sincerely offered gift of a lightly grilled fish head?”
71. “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.”
72. “Drink heavily with locals whenever possible.”
Haha, this quote somehow makes me laugh a lot. If you traveling around Vietnam, don’t be surprised to see so many people drinking beer. And when the Vietnamese people want to make friends, beer is mainly the bridge for the connection. So, please don’t forget this quote from Anthony Bourdain!
73. “I’m a big believer in winging it. I’m a big believer that you’re never going to find perfect city travel experience or the perfect meal without a constant willingness to experience a bad one. Letting the happy accident happen is what a lot of vacation itineraries miss, I think, and I’m always trying to push people to allow those things to happen rather than stick to some rigid itinerary.”
74. “Plans should be ephemeral, so be prepared to move away from them.”
Dalai Lama’s Travel Quotes
When traveling to Vietnam, surely you may find a lot of temples and pagodas across the country. It can be seen that Buddhism has the strongest impact, as well as its occupation on the locals’ belief. Even to me who follow folk religion, or non-religion to be easily understood, Buddha’s words have a significant effect.
A Dalai Lama, or the spiritual leader of Buddhism, is having the same power. His words motivate people a lot in different aspects of life. Particularly in travel, the quotes to me are so much inspirational!
75. “Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.”
76. “Consider carefully: what prevents you from living the way you want to live your life?”
77. “The goal is not to be better than the other man, but your previous self.”
78. “Let us try to recognize the precious nature of each day.”
79. “The purpose of our lives is to be happy.”
Definitely! Happiness is now my priority in life. Since the days I’ve seen people around me passed away, can’t carry their fortunes but regretted the joy they could experience, it’s when this quote says.
80. “As you breathe in, cherish yourself. As you breathe out, cherish all beings.”
81. “Every day, think as you wake up: Today I am fortunate to be alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it.”
82. “Neither a space station nor an enlightened mind can be realized in a day.”
Mark Twain’s Travel Quotes for Wanderlust
83. “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the things you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbour and catch the Trade Winds in your sails.”
84. “It liberates the vandal to travel – you never saw a bigoted, opinionated, stubborn, narrow-minded, self-conceited, almighty mean man in your life but he had stuck in one place since he was born and thought God made the world and dyspepsia and bile for his especial comfort and satisfaction.”
85. “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.”
86. “There is no unhappiness like the misery of sighting land (and work) again after a cheerful, careless voyage.”
87. “Take the universe as a whole, and it is a very clever conception and quite competently carried out, but I don’t think much of this globe as a work of art. It would have been better to take more time to it and do it right, it seems to me, than to rush it through, helter-skelter, in six days, just for reputation.”
88. “I have found out there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.”
89. “It is a subject that is bound to stir the pulses of any man one talks seriously to about, for in this age of inventive wonders all men have come to believe that in some genius’ brain sleeps the solution of the grand problem of aerial navigation – and along with that belief is the hope that that genius will reveal his miracle before they die, and likewise a dread that he will poke off somewhere and die himself before he finds out that he has such a wonder lying dormant in his brain.”
Travel Quotes by Disney Characters
Have you known that some characters in different Disney movies have very inspiring travel quotes for us? Let’s see some that I collected:
90. “If you focus on what you left behind, you will never be able to see what lies ahead.” – Gusteau, Ratatouille
91. “When’s it my turn? Wouldn’t I love, love to explore that shore above? Out of the sea, wish I could be, part of that world.” – Ariel, The Little Mermaid
92. “Happiness is the richest thing we will ever own.” – Donald Duck
93. “Venture outside your comfort zone. The rewards are worth it.” – Rapunzel, Tangled
94. “Sometimes the right path is not the easiest one.” – Grandmother Willow, Pocahontas
How about getting into the top adventurous destinations in the world? Perhaps the activities at those places will take your excitement to the next level.
95. “If you walk the footsteps of a stranger, you’ll learn things you never knew you never knew.” – Pocahontas
96. “There comes a day when you’re gonna look around and realize happiness is where you are.” – Chief Tui, Moana
97. “On this journey that you’re making, there’ll be answers that you’ll seek. And it’s you who’ll climb the mountain. It’s you who’ll reach the peak.” – Tarzan
98. “It’s up to you how far you’ll go. If you don’t try, you’ll never know.” – Merlin, The Sword in the Stone
Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, traveling to 3 countries on the same day, how does it sounds? But not sure if I get what you say, Merlin.
99. “There’s the whole world at your feet.” – Bert, Mary Poppins
100. “Today’s special moments are tomorrow’s memories.” – Genie, The Return of Jafar
Correct, I live and look for special moments every day. Thanks Genie you say what’s in my mind!
Extra – “Life is a journey. And in the journey, you meet the beauty of life.”
It’s my own thought, as well as the tagline that I want to use for this blog. Honestly, my whole life hasn’t gone as a quiet and calm lake, it waves always. Nevertheless, that’s how I feel my life is interesting with a lot of things I can experience. And it’s when I feel my life is somehow beautiful, especially when I have a chance standing in front of an amazing scene, enjoying my journey.
