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Quotations about travel
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
I do so wish sometimes, that I could just pop home for an hour or two as easily in the flesh as in the spirit. No doubt the explorers of 2015, if there is anything left to explore, will not only carry their pocket wireless telephones fitted with wireless telescopes but will also receive their nourishment and warmth by wireless means & also their power to drive their motor sledges, but, of course, there will be an aerial daily excursion to both Poles then & it will be the bottom of the Atlantic, if not the centre of the earth, that will form the goal in those days.
Thomas Orde-Lees (1877-1948) British naval officer, arctic explorer, mountaineer, writer
Diary entry, HMS Endurance (10 Jan 1915)
Written while the ship was trapped in the ice during Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. Some versions of the quotation refer to "2012," rather than 2015.
While the reference to "pocket wireless telephones" makes this quotation suspect, Orde-Lees has extensive diary material published, and this appears to be genuine.
There are some places so beautiful they can make a grown man break down and weep.
Edward Abbey (1927-1989) American anarchist, writer, environmentalist
“TV Show: Out There On the Rocks,” One Life at a Time, Please (1988)
(Source)
Uneventful. Boring. Tedious. All good adjectives to apply to long-haul travel; much better than exciting, unexpected, and abrupt.
Charles "Charlie" Stross (b. 1964) British writer
The Apocalypse Codex (2012)
In America there are two classes of travel — first class, and with children. Traveling with children corresponds roughly to traveling third class in Bulgaria.
Robert Benchley (1889-1945) American humorist
Pluck and Luck (1925)
Phileas Fogg had won his wager, and had made his journey around the world in eighty days. To do this he had employed every means of conveyance — steamers, railways, carriages, yachts, trading-vessels, sledges, elephants. The eccentric gentleman had throughout displayed all his marvellous qualities of coolness and exactitude. But what then? What had he really gained by all this trouble? What had he brought back from this long and weary journey?
Nothing, say you? Perhaps so; nothing but a charming woman, who, strange as it may appear, made him the happiest of men!
Truly, would you not for less than that make the tour around the world?
[Phileas Fogg avait gagné son pari. Il avait accompli en quatre-vingts jours ce voyage autour du monde! Il avait employé pour ce faire tous les moyens de transport, paquebots, railways, voitures, yachts, bâtiments de commerce, traîneaux, éléphant. L’excentrique gentleman avait déployé dans cette affaire ses merveilleuses qualités de sang-froid et d’exactitude. Mais après ? Qu’avait-il gagné à ce déplacement? Qu’avait-il rapporté de ce voyage?
Rien, dira-t-on? Rien, soit, si ce n’est une charmante femme, qui — quelque invraisemblable que cela puisse paraître — le rendit le plus heureux des hommes!
En vérité, ne ferait-on pas, pour moins que cela, le Tour du Monde?]
Jules Verne (1828-1905) French novelist, poet, playwright
Around the World in Eighty Days, ch. 37 (1873)
(Source)
A man should know something of his own country too, before he goes abroad.
Laurence Sterne (1713-1786) Anglo-Irish novelist, Anglican clergyman
Tristam Shandy, Book 7, ch. 2 (1765)
I feel about airplanes the way I feel about diets. It seems to me that they are wonderful things for other people to go on.
Jean Kerr (1922-2003) American author and playwright [b. Bridget Jean Collins]
“Mirror, Mirror on the Wall,” The Snake Has All the Lines (1958)
Most of the other shops were in fact impossible to identify. When a shop appeared to sell a mixture of ghetto blasters, socks, soap and chickens, it didn’t seem unreasonable to go in and ask if they’d got any paper or toothpaste stuck away in one of their shelves as well, but they looked at me as if I was completely mad. Couldn’t I see that this was a ghetto blaster, socks, soap and chicken shop?
Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English writer
Last Chance to See, ch. 3 (1990)
The system by which Zaire works … is very simple. Every official you encounter will make life as unpleasant for you as he possibly can until you pay him to stop it. In US dollars. He then passes you on to the next official who will be unpleasant to you all over again.
Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English writer
Last Chance to See, ch. 3 (1990)
“Are you lost, daddy?” I asked tenderly.
“Shut up,” he explained.Ring Lardner (1885-1933) American sports columnist and writer [Ringgold Wilmer Lardner]
The Young Immigrants, ch. 10 (1920)
A man builds a house in England with the expectation of living in it and leaving it to his children; while we shed our houses in America as easily as a snail does his shell. We live a while in Boston, and then a while in New York, and then, perhaps, turn up at Cincinnati. Scarcely any body with us is living where they expect to live and die. The man that dies in the house he was born in is a wonder. There is something pleasant in the permanence and repose of the English family estate, which we, in America, know very little of.
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) American author
Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands (1854)
There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer, lexicographer, critic
Comment (21 Mar 1776)
In James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)
Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.
Maya Angelou (1928-2014) American poet, memoirist, activist [b. Marguerite Ann Johnson]
Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now, ch. 2 “Passports to Understanding” (1993)
(Source)
I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.
Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
Tom Sawyer Abroad, ch. 11 “The Sand-Storm” (1905)
(Source)
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things can not be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.
Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
The Innocents Abroad, “Conclusion” (1869)
(Source)
You can’t stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.
A. A. Milne (1882-1956) English poet and playwright [Alan Alexander Milne]
Winnie-the-Pooh
Going away: I can generally bear the separation, but I don’t like the leave-taking.
Samuel Butler (1835-1902) English novelist, satirist, scholar
(Attributed)
Been through Hell? Whaddya bring back for me?
Ashleigh Brilliant (b. 1933) Anglo-American writer, epigramist, cartoonist
Pot-Shots
All things can be cured by salt water: sweat, tears, or the ocean.
Isak Dinesen (1885-1962) Danish writer [pseud. of Karen Christence, Countess Blixen]
(Attributed)
