111 Best Travel Quotes To Feed Your Wanderlust – The Ultimate List

An epic collection of inspirational quotes to help you achieve your travelling dreams

We have searched long and hard for what we think are some of the best, if not the best quotes that relate to our travel adventures and travel in general. Below is a list of what we think are the best 111 travel quotes. Hope you’ll enjoy reading them!

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Need a snappy portion of motivation? Want to see your travel dreams turn into reality? 

You will definitely find inspiration in the list of quotes down below. These are the 111 best travel quotes we gathered from many sources and finally displayed here.

Maybe it’s a cliché to write and speak about motivational travel quotes these days, let alone 111 of them. But two things are certain:

a. You will find them everywhere – from books and commercial products to images and videos on the Internet.

b. These powerful statements from people coming from different backgrounds seem to really work in boosting people’s confidence.

So even though it feels weird talking about it due to the fact that it is a cliché, we still feel the need to post an article with the best 111 travel quotes we heard and read so far.

Many of which resonate with our feelings and our way of living. So make sure not to miss the ones where we explain how we relate with them.

These inspirational 111 travel quotes will feed your wanderlust for adventures to come and bring back the best memories and emotions from your previous travel experiences.

Just by writing this article, we start reliving the days when we were in Costa Rica, French Polynesia, Hong Kong, Oman or Myanmar and so on. And, one by one, we seem to revisit all the places we’ve been to and which have such a special place in our hearts.   

Not to mention that we feel this rush to prepare for our next trip!

We hope that these 111 ultimate travel quotes will motivate you in bringing your future travel plans to fruition. 

So have a read, make a plan, pack your things and head out into the world. 

Who knows what you’re going to discover? And maybe you’ll come up with your own amazing travel quotes that you can add to this list. That, if you haven’t already. If so, feel free to leave a comment down below and tell us what they are.

Our top favourites

2. “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” — Robert Frost

It didn’t take long for us to realise that we don’t like the Instagrammable places. We like that feeling of discovering new places. Even though we know we’re not the first ones to step foot there, at least we get to solve the puzzle.

No scams, no signs, no lines, no security with guns guarding the doors, no exaggerated entry fees, no masks-on for tourists, no fake roles and no Disney-like made-up buildings. We like to see real places and true people and this is what we always find on “the road less traveled by”.

3. “Doing what you like is freedom. Liking what you do is happiness.” — Frank Tyger

4. ”What you’ve done becomes the judge of what you’re going to do — especially in other people’s minds.  When you’re traveling, you are what you are right there and then.  People don’t have your past to hold against you.  No yesterdays on the road.” — William Least Heat Moon

5. “Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realise they were the big things.” — Robert Brault

6. “Life is short and the world is wide, the sooner you start exploring it, the better.” — Simon Raven

7. “It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.” — Sir Edmund Hillary

8. “Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.” — George Addair

9. “This a wonderful day. I’ve never seen this one before.” — Maya Angelou

This is the story of our journey. No day is alike and all are wonderful. Waking up in a different place almost everyday, meeting new people with every single step we take, learning about their cultures and just embracing it all. Priceless moments!  

10. “Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travellers don’t know where they’re going.” — Paul Theroux

11. “Not all those who wander are lost.” — J.R.R. Tolkien

12. “Keep on going, and the chances are that you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I have never heard of anyone ever stumbling on something sitting down.” — Charles F. Kettering

13. “Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain.” — Jack Kerouac 

We travelled continuously for 18 months, but it feels like we’ve been away for around 10 years. The number of places we’ve seen, the things we’ve learned and the people we’ve met – it’s just something that would not have happened if we would have stayed in one place only.

We have acquired so much information, that it feels that more than a year has passed. 

We work for 18 months in the office, or we mow the lawn for the same amount of time, and it will feel that 1 month has passed. 

The more diverse your life is and the less repetitive it gets, the more you will feel that you have lived it.    

14. “And then there is the most dangerous risk of all — the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later.” — Randy Komisar

If you know you want to do something, do it now. As this very moment is what is guaranteed and waiting for tomorrow is just a waste of your time. That, if tomorrow will ever come. It is easier to postpone than to push ourselves to do that thing we want to do.

Most of the times, because we lack courage or self-confidence. We could have left travelling for when we would have retired, right? We could have focused now on finding a way to own a house, plan to have children, pursue our careers and save money.

Then we would retire with no worries and we could travel as much as we want. But spending all these money now on travelling? Who would be that crazy?! Us. What if the days of retirement never come.

And if they do, the chance is that we will not hike for four days in a row, skydive, scubadive, sleep in cars and on the floor in airports. Not to mention, that the world will change completely by the time we’ll be 65. We’ve seen the changes with our own eyes and most of them frighten us. Everything becomes more and more artificial, cultures seem to blend and become similar, many drawn by the power of money. As travel becomes more and more accessible and interaction between people that would have otherwise never met becomes the norm, everything changes at a rapid pace. People share, learn and want things that others have and vice-versa. This takes away from the authenticity of a culture, of a certain nation and slowly erases the lines that were once so well engraved and which made a culture stand out.

15. “Own only what you can always carry with you: known languages, known countries, known people. Let your memory be your travel bag” — Alexandr Solzhenitsyn

16. “Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it.” — Greg Anderson

Always the case. You know that feeling from right before you go on holiday? The anticipation. That feeling is so much stronger than the feeling we have when you are actually on holiday. It’s not that arriving at your destination is not great, but there will be other feelings involved.

One good example is that once you’ve made it to your destination you already start counting the days for when it will come to an end. And that is less of a pleasant feeling and you can even get stressed, just by this though.

In our case, because we never knew when the journey will end, we were lucky enough to hold on to that feeling of anticipation for a very long time.

17. “I am not the same, having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world.” — Mary Anne Radmacher

There is no question about it. This journey has changed both of us and we would not have it any other way. Only by seeing as much of this world as possible will you be able to understand it and to understand yourself. 

18. “Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.” — Gustave Flaubert

19. “Look at everything as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time. Then your time on earth will be filled with glory.” — Betty Smith

20. “Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

21. “Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs.” — Farrah Gray

22. “You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try.” — Beverly Sills

Of course, we were worried about failing. You don’t know what to expect, especially being the first time doing something like this.

We thought that probably, we won’t make it past two months, that maybe we won’t be great at managing our budget or maybe something bad will happen and we will be too afraid to continue. And yet, we didn’t fail.

We lived a nomad life and it worked out perfectly. We saw the world and accomplished a goal. If we would not have tried, this would have definitely turned into one of our biggest regrets in life. And after actually experiencing it, we realise how right we would have been to regret not doing it.  

23. “Traveling – it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.” — Ibn Battuta

Yes, we will always have a story to tell from our travels. Like that time when we suspected Valeria of having Malaria, or when we slept in Tahiti’s Airport for three nights because we were denied boarding and could not afford to sleep in a hotel/hostel, or when we escaped being badly injured or worse on a river in South of Costa Rica.

How we went looking for Kiwi birds on our own at dusk, in the pouring rain, knowing that the chances to see them are really low. How we slept in cars and on volcanos in the freezing cold. How we fought scammers, how we made friends, how we roamed the world and how beautiful the feeling of doing what you love doing is.  

24. “No place is ever as bad as they tell you it’s going to be.” — Chuck Thompson

We were terrified of going to Brazil, Peru or El Salvador, because we would get shot. Most of Latin America is considered dangerous and we began our trip with this feeling that something will go wrong.

In Asia, we were always on alert, thinking that someone will plant drugs on us, or that we’ll have to deal with corrupt police officers, because that’s what you hear and see on television. To be honest, it wasn’t as the media and others pictured it.

These are places where people live. Good and bad. Same as everywhere. You just have to be street wise, be in sync with your common sense and not be in the wrong place at the wrong time.   

25. “To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.” — Aldous Huxley

Due to political, religious and cultural differences there will always be conflicts between countries. Most of the times, neighbouring countries will have bits of land to fight for (e.g. China and Japan).

Others hold a grudge against each other because of something that happened in the past. It’s in the human nature. And countries are ruled and occupied by humans.

So yes, one will always think he’s better than the other. (More examples: India and Pakistan, South Korea and Japan, USA and North Korea). Not to mention that media has such an important role in all of this, pushing people to act and react exactly how it wants them to.

If we could only remember that we are all the same. And most of us would rather live in peace and harmony. Because in the end, most of the times, these wars Don’t happen by people’s choice. It is that of those few selfish ones, but very powerful, who follow their own interests.

26. “Once in a while it really hits people that they don’t have to experience the world in the way they have been told to.” — Alan Keightley

27. “You don’t have to be rich to travel well.” — Eugene Fodor

What does travel well mean? What we understand by “travel well” is that one  wants to explore and discover as much as possible of what this planet of ours has to offer. To meet people, understand their culture and way of life, be one with nature and observe the wildlife.

All of this in its purest form and by causing as less damage as possible. Then, there’s no need for expensive hotels, fancy restaurants, luxury transportation, luxury tour packages, so forth and so on.

We slept in the cheapest places we could find, bought our food from supermarkets and ate cheap street food, travelled by public transport and arranged our own tours and itineraries.

We were living, eating and commuting like the locals and with locals. A real travel experience. So yes, we traveled well and we are not rich. 

28. “A great way to learn about your country is to leave it.” — Henry Rollins

29. “Wherever you go becomes a part of you somehow.” — Anita Desai

30. “To travel is to live.” — Hans Christian Andersen

31. “No one realises how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.” — Lin Yutang

 Cultural Travel Quotes

32. “The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person who is doing it.” — Chinese proverb

33. “The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.” — Buddha

34. “Do it or not. There is no try.” — Yoda

35. “It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.” — Confucius

This is so us. Because we travelled on a budget, we would always spend a lot of time getting from A to B. Why? Because if you want to reach your destination faster, you need to be willing to pay more. We weren’t.

We knew that if we pay more, the journey will come to an end sooner than we would want it to. We’d finish all our money and have to end the trip. So we chose to move slow in order to delay it coming to an end. 

36. “Travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer.” — Anonymous

We can’t agree more! We know, because we bought it. And we feel rich. You know, when you are rich, you always want more. So do we. But we’re not looking to buy material things. Some more travel, please! That’s what we need. 🙂    

37. “Better to see something once than hear about it a thousand times.” — Asian Proverb

38. “Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.” — Dalai Lama

39. “You’re the blacksmith of your own happiness.” — Swedish proverb

A few years ago we would have never thought you can create your own happiness. There are things in life that can make people happy, but they are not in accordance with the way society works as a whole.

But we were about to find out that every system has its loopholes. Against all odds, we chose to do something which was supposed to shake the ground beneath our feet.

Instead of building a career, applying for mortgage, save money for rainy days and have children, we chose to travel. We are now the square peg in a round hole. We travel, we feel the freedom, the happiness and the ground beneath our feet feels more solid than ever.     

40. “Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass; it’s about learning to dance in the rain.” — Anonymous

41. “You can break that big plan into small steps and take the first step right away.” — Indira Gandhi

42. “We travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us.” — Anonymous

More Amazing Inspirational Travel quotes

43. “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.” — Mark Twain 

44. “All our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them.” — Walt Disney

Dreams most of the time, are seen as just dreams. Some created by our wildest imagination. Things you would never believe could become reality. And then when you wake up, you stop dreaming and just go on with your usual, day to day life.

But not those who choose to see that there is a bridge between dreams and reality. And when we find the courage to cross the bridge, that’s when the dream ceases to be just a dream and it comes true.

We wanted to travel for more than just 2-3 weeks at a time, we found the courage and we traveled for one year and a half.

We dreamt of seeing Bora Bora and Lençois Maranhenses, Taipei 101 and the Petronas Towers, the USA’s National Parks, The Salt Flats in Bolivia; hiking the famous Inca Trail; experiencing incredible India; witnessing a spaceship launch from Cape Canaveral and much more. It happened.

To see with our own eyes what we saw until recently only in wildlife and travel documentaries.

45. “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” — Steve Jobs

46. “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.” — Anthony Bourdain

We’re not 22, but we are closer to 22 than we will ever be. So we know that now’s the time to travel – with no responsibilities, with our dear ones healthy and with nothing to lose. Excuses are always to be found, but what we should find is the courage.

And now that we have found it, we will never look at life the same way we did before. We learned on this journey, more than we would have probably learned in a lifetime. And most importantly, we learnt the truth. The truth that you will never learn from Media, be it news and even documentaries.    

47. “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.” — Anthony Bourdain

48. “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

It seems we have survived this test, and we truly love each other. 🙂 Being together, every single day for 18 months can be a true challenge. We won’t deny that there were times when it got difficult, but somehow, we made it work. We know now, that we could travel together for the rest of our lives.    

49. “Live life with no excuses, travel with no regret.” — Oscar Wilde

50. “Do what you can, where you are, with what you have.” — Theodore Roosevelt

51. “I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.” — Susan Sonta

52. “Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.” — Albert Einstein

53. “The most difficult thing is the decision to act; the rest is merely tenacity.” — Amelia Earhart

54. “The roughest road often leads to the top.” — Christina Aguilera

55. “Your imagination is your preview of life’s coming attractions.” — Albert Einstein

56. “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” — Lao Tzu

57. “Take every chance you get in life, because some things only happen once.” — Karen Gibbs

58. “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 cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” ― Mark Twain

59. “Travel far enough, you meet yourself.” — David Mitchell

60. “At its best, travel should challenge our preconceptions and most cherished views, cause us to rethink our assumptions, shake us a bit, make us broader minded and more understanding.” — Arthur Frommer

61. “I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.” — Diane Ackerman

62. “If you look to others for fulfilment, you will never be fulfilled. If your happiness depends on money, you will never be happy with yourself. Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realise there is nothing lacking, the world belongs to you.” — Lao Tzu

63. “If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy, and inspires your hopes.” — Andrew Carnegie

64. “Travel is never a matter of money but of courage.” — Paolo Coelho

65. “Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.” — Rumi

66. “It is not down in any map; true places never are.” — Herman Melville

67. “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” — Anais Nin

68. “The use of traveling is to regulate imagination with reality, and instead of thinking of how things may be, see them as they are.” — Samuel Johnson

69. “To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.” — Bill Bryson

70. “The most beautiful in the world is, of course, the world itself.” — Wallace Stevens

71. “We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm, and adventure. There is no end to the adventures we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.” — Jawaharial Nehru

72. “Live your life by a compass, not a clock.” — Stephen Covey

73. “I travel because it makes me realise how much I haven’t seen, how much I’m not going to see, and how much I still need to see.” — Carew Papritz

74. “A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.” — Lao Tzu

75. “A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles.” — Tim Cahill

76. “Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.” — Benjamin Disraeli

77. “There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars.” — Jack Kerouac

78. “A ship in a harbour is safe, but it not what ships are build for.” — John A. Shedd

79. “I travel not to cross countries off a list, but to ignite passionate affairs with destinations.” — Nyssa P. Chopra

80. “May you live every day of your life.” — Jonathan Swift

81. “One may walk over the highest mountain one step at a time.” — John Wanamaker

82. “Take only memories, leave only footprints.” — Chief Seattle

83. “I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.” — Jimmy Dean

84. “When you come to a roadblock, take a detour.” — Mary Kay Ash

85. “If your ship doesn’t come in, swim out to it.” — Jonathan Winters

86. “Stop chasing the money and start chasing the passion.” — Tony Hsieh

87. “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” — Arthur Ashe

88. “Be content to act, and leave the talking to others.” — Baltasar Gracian

89. “Life is a journey, and if you fall in love with the journey, you will be in love forever.” — Peter Hagerty

90. “Much of the stress that people feel doesn’t come from having too much to do. It comes from not finishing what they’ve started.” — David Allen

91. “Once you do something you love, you never have to work again.” — Willie Hill

92. “Don’t wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles, and less than perfect conditions. So what? Get started now.” — Mark Victor Hansen

93. “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” — Andre Gide

94. “If you wait, all that happens is that you get older.” — Mario Andretti

95. “When you come to a roadblock, take a detour.” — Mary Kay Ash

96. “You get in life what you have the courage to ask for.” — Nancy D. Solomon

97. “No guts, no story.” — Chris Brady

98. “All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.” — Martin Buber

99. “Every man can transform the world from one of monotony and drabness to one of excitement and adventure.” — Irving Wallace

100. “Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

101. “Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comforts of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things. – air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky. – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” — Cesare Pavese

102. “Regret for wasted time is more wasted time.” — Mason Cooley

103. “I’d rather regret the things I’ve done than regret the things I haven’t done.” — Lucille Ball 

104. “One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” — Henry Miller

105. “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.” — Helen Keller

106. “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” — Mary Oliver

107. “We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate.” — Pico Iyer

108. “The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.” — Christopher McCandless

109. “Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.” ― Pat Conroy

110. “There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.” ― Robert Louis Stevenson

Well done for making it all the way to the end of the list! We know that is a lot of travel quotes in there, 111 to be more exact.

But we hope that you enjoyed reading it and found some inspiration. 

If you can think of any other travel quotes which resonate most with your experiences and emotions and which we haven’t included in this list, please feel free to share them by living a comment. 

Furthermore, if you like any of the sayings above or feel like they gave you that confidence to succeed is doing something you never thought you would, by all means, we would love to hear your story in the comments section below.

We can only end the post with what is, of course, another very special travel quote, which will resonate most with the photographer within you. As there is no better way to physically capture all your memories, than through photography.

“You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.” 

— Wayne Gretzky