Inspirational Travel Quotes
Travel quotes always help me express the many emotions I feel when traveling to new places. Feed your wanderlust with my favorite inspirational travel quotes from famous travelers!
I’m slightly embarrassed to say that I love inspirational travel quotes.
Memorable quotes about traveling have the ability to capture little moments of clarity that highlight truths about travel, adventure, and life.
Great quotes like these remind me that the emotions I’ve felt while traveling the world for the past 10-years have been experienced by many other people, too.
We’re all beautifully connected with each other by a love for travel!
Below you’ll find some of my favorite travel quotes, and feel free to share the included image quotes on your own Instagram or Pinterest accounts too.
Hi, I’m Matthew Karsten
I’ve been traveling the world for 10+ years as a professional photographer & writer. I hope you enjoy my favorite travel quotes! If you find them useful, please consider sharing. Thanks!
About The Author
Top 50 Travel Quotes Of All Time
1. “Adventure is worthwhile.” – Aesop
It doesn’t get more simplistic than Aesop’s take on traveling, the ancient Greek storyteller. This classic travel quote continues to inspire me.
2. “Traveling – it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.” – Ibn Battuta
3. “We travel, some of us forever, to seek other places, other lives, other souls.” – Anais Nin
Anais Nin’s quote about traveling on a constant search for things that will make us feel whole sums up the desire to keep learning through experiences.
4. “A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles.” – Tim Cahill
I’ve made many friends around the world, and the people you meet are always more memorable than checking things off a bucket list.
5. “The gladdest moment in human life, methinks, is a departure into unknown lands.” – Sir Richard Burton
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6. “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
The late, great Anthony Bourdain really hit the nail on the head. I will truly miss his wisdom. I’ve seen both sad and awe-inspiring things on my travels that I thought I’d never be able to explain to others properly.
7. “No place is ever as bad as they tell you it’s going to be.” – Chuck Thompson
8. “I am not the same, having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world.” – Mary Anne Radmacher
9. “Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.” – Gustave Flaubert
Flaubert’s insightful take on travel. I definitely used to think that my life, and my country, played a bigger role in the world until I packed up and hit the road.
10. “He who would travel happily must travel light.” – Antoine de St. Exupery
This is one of my travel mottoes after an unfortunate experience trying to haul a massive travel backpack from the airport to a hotel via public transportation.
Enjoying these travel quotes? Feel free to share my quote photos on Pinterest or Instagram accounts! Also, check out my favorite motivational adventure quotes here…
Famous Quotes About Travel
11. “The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.” – Henry David Thoreau
12. “To awaken alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.” – Freya Stark
13. “The life you have led doesn’t need to be the only life you have.” – Anna Quindlen
14. “Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all of one’s lifetime.” – Mark Twain
We all have preconceived notions, but traveling has shown me that many are usually false. One of his top travel quotes!
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15. “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” – Andre Gide
I used to be afraid to reach beyond my comfort zone. This is a great travel quote about throwing off the so-called safety net of your comfortable surroundings.
16. “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
17. “The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.” – Saint Augustine
We may feel safe in our little bubble, but it’s also boring. That’s the primary reason I started traveling several years ago, and I’ve fallen in love with the thrill of discovery. It doesn’t get any more real than this short travel quote.
18. “Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind.” – Seneca
When I travel, I’m able to give my mind something new and exciting to focus on. Studies say that we need to keep learning in order for our minds to thrive.
19. “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 (?)
While this is one of the most popular travel quotes of all time, it’s actually FAKE. Mark Twain never said this. The real author is H. Jackson Browne Jr. in his book PS I Love You, about letters written to his mom.
There are a few fake travel quotes out there, so be careful what you share!
20. “With age, comes wisdom. With travel, comes understanding.” – Sandra Lake
Anonymous Quotes On Traveling
21. “Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.” – Anonymous
This simple travel quote says it all. My mind craves new experiences, and I quite simply cannot get them from my hometown anymore. By going somewhere new at least once a year, I continue to grow in numerous ways.
22. “Travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer.” – Anonymous
23. “Better to see something once than hear about it a thousand times.” – Asian Proverb
24. “Work, save, travel, repeat.” – Anonymous
This is basically the story of my life! I work to save money for travel, in a never-ending cycle. Travel is an addiction for some of us. This photo was taken on a very expensive trip to Antarctica!
25. “We travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us.” – Anonymous
26. “Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.” – Ray Bradbury
27. “Traveling tends to magnify all human emotions.” — Peter Hoeg
I’ve been at my best, and at my absolute worst while traveling. Emotions are bigger during these trips because there’s so much new information to process. Peter’s travel quote reveals a truth that many travelers can relate to.
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28. “You don’t have to be rich to travel well.” – Eugene Fodor
Creator of the famous Fodor Guides Eugene Fodor’s quote helps highlight that people of almost any budget can travel. For example, a few years ago I hitchhiked across the United States for 5 weeks, and it was one of my best travel experiences.
29. “If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay at home.” – James Michener
30. “People don’t take trips, trips take people.” – John Steinbeck
31. “When overseas you learn more about your own country, than you do the place you’re visiting.” – Clint Borgen
32. “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
33. “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” – Helen Keller
34. “Travel is never a matter of money, but of courage.” — Paulo Coelho
Yes, travel does require some money. However, you’ll also need to gather enough courage to temporarily cast off everything about your daily life that makes it so comfortable — and boring.
35. “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.” – Neale Donald Walsch
36. “Every man can transform the world from one of monotony and drabness to one of excitement and adventure.” – Irving Wallace
READ MORE: How To Find The Cheapest Flights
37. “Not all those who wander are lost.” – J.R.R. Tolkien
38. “The more I traveled the more I realized that fear makes strangers of people who should be friends.” – Shirley MacLaine
39. “I travel a lot; I hate having my life disrupted by routine.” – Caskie Stinnett
Wanderlust Travel Quotes
40. “A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes
Everything I’ve learned during my travels has forever expanded and changed my mind. This travel quote shows Holmes clearly grew in a similar way.
41. “Remember that happiness is a way of travel – not a destination.” – Roy M. Goodman
42. “Stop worrying about the potholes in the road and enjoy the trip.” – Babs Hoffman
43. “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
44. “One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” – Henry Miller
45. “I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.” – Susan Sontag
READ MORE: Money Saving Travel Resources
46. “Take only memories, leave only footprints.” – Chief Seattle
This is one of the classic wanderlust quotes that’s perfect for your Instagram captions. It breaks my heart to see historic areas filled with trash by careless travelers. We have a responsibility to preserve things as much as possible.
47. “Two roads diverged in a wood and I – I took the one less traveled by.” – Robert Frost
48. “There is no moment of delight in any pilgrimage like the beginning of it.” – Charles Dudley Warner
Travel Quotes For Inspiration
49. “Oh the places you’ll go.” – Dr. Seuss
Dr. Seuss serves as a reminder that we can go anywhere if we stop putting restrictions on ourselves. The world is waiting; we just have to have the courage to answer the call. Doing this, again and again, has given my life meaning.
50. “Investment in travel is an investment in yourself.” – Matthew Karsten
Yup. I totally just included one of my own travel quotes. Ha! But I really mean it too. When I first quit my unfulfilling day job to go backpacking around the world, I didn’t know what I was doing, or where it would all take me.
Traveling has taught me a lot about life, and myself.
51. “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
52. “Our happiest moments as tourists always seem to come when we stumble upon one thing while in pursuit of something else.” — Lawrence Block
53. “To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.” – Aldous Huxley
54. “Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.” – Jack Kerouac
55. “Life is short and the world is wide, the sooner you start exploring it, the better.” – Simon Raven
56. “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
57. “To travel is to live.” – Hans Christian Andersen
58. “Travel makes a wise man better but a fool worse.” – Thomas Fuller
59. “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
60. “When preparing to travel, lay out all your clothes and all your money. Then take half the clothes and twice the money.” – Susan Heller
Heller’s widely quoted travel adage has influenced the way I travel. I used to pack way more than I needed, and this hindered my travels. Cutting your luggage down and packing more money always makes things easier.
61. “Travel far enough, you meet yourself.” – David Mitchell
62. “I travel because it makes me realize how much I haven’t seen, how much I’m not going to see, and how much I still need to see.” – Carew Papritz
63. “Wherever you go becomes a part of you somehow.” – Anita Desai
Indian novelist Anita Desai nails this one with her inspiring quote about traveling. We’re all shaped by each of our experiences. I love it that every new adventure helps shape me for the better.
64. “We travel for romance, we travel for architecture, and we travel to be lost.” – Ray Bradbury
Final Thoughts On Traveling
Traveling is one of the best ways to open your mind and heart to the world. As a result, I’ve experienced the full range of emotions during my travels.
Although this has sometimes meant having my lifestyle and point of view challenged, I wouldn’t give up a single second of it because it helped shape me into the person I am today. Travel can change your perspective.
Many of these quotes have inspired me to keep exploring our world.
If you’re looking for inspiration to fuel your wanderlust, you’re certain to find the perfect quotation above!
I hope they inspire you to pack up everything and head out into the unknown, to explore the farthest reaches of our planet (and your soul) — to see the world for what it really is. ★
FAQ: Popular Travel Quote Questions
What Should I Caption A Travel Photo?
Well, you can’t go wrong with using a travel quote in your Instagram caption! The list above should provide you with plenty of ideas.
What Is The Best Quote Ever?
This is going to differ depending on personal preference, but my vote for the best quote ever is: “Not all those who wander are lost.” – J.R.R. Tolkien
Can I Use Your Travel Quote Images?
Yes! By all means, feel free to use these quotes as travel captions for Instagram, Pinterest, TikToc, or another platform. You can use my images too. If you want to tag me in your post: @ExpertVagabond.
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READ MORE TRAVEL INSPIRATION
I hope you enjoyed my guide to the best travel quotes for inspiration! Hopefully you found it useful. Here are a few more wanderlust-inducing articles that I recommend you read next:
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- Get inspired with photography from Afghanistan that you won’t see in the news. I had an awesome trip!
- Want to improve your photos? Read my best travel photography tips and guide to choosing a travel camera.
Have any other great travel quotes I might have missed? Which is your favorite? Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter to share!
