21 Quotes About Travel To Explain Life On The Road

“Yeah, I had three friends break their necks at that beach. Those waves are a hell of a lot of fun.” He chuckled, as my boy and I looked at him gasping. Why would this fuckwad send us to a beach with waves that break people’s necks? The thought kept running through my mind.

I guess that’s what you get when you take travel advice from a crackhead who owns a rundown hotel instead of sticking with Lonely Planet. Still, we walked away unscathed. And to this day, those are still the best waves I’ve ever seen for bodysurfing. Spending the day frolicking around in the ocean, bodysurfing, doing pull-ups from a tree, and buying $1.00 pineapple smoothies from the local vendor is tough to beat. Sunburns be damned.

Quotes About Travel to Explain Life on the Road

Life on the road is always full of surprises. If you travel long enough, you’ll probably get jumped by teenage gangbangers, make friends from countries you’ve never heard of, learn languages you despised studying in high school, use substances you’d never imagined you would in elementary school, spend mornings in beds you didn’t know the night before with someone you don’t recognize, and generally engage in a myriad of behaviors that gradually reduces your reluctance to take risks.

In an odd way, it’s damn beautiful. And there’s so much more to it. Instead of attempting to explain life on the road myself, I gathered my favorite quotes about travel. Travel quotes that eloquently explain life on the road in a manner I’ve yet to express myself in.

So here are 15 quotes about travel that help explain why I live on the road:

1. “Thoreau wrote, “the mass of men live lives of quiet desperation.” This is as true today as it was back then. How many men stand on a balcony and wonder what happened?… He wanted adventure and he got two weeks’ vacation. He wanted a mission and he got a lawn that needs mowing. He wanted purpose and he got a cubicle. He wanted a mighty steed and he got a minivan. He wanted a castle and he got a mortgage. He wanted a battle to fight and he got televised sports. He wanted wisdom and he got talking heads on TV. He wanted treasure and he got endless debt. He wanted every part of his life to be wonderful, and here he is… standing on a balcony, in bleak, ruminating hesitation.” – Zan Perrion

2. “Not all those who wander are lost.” – J.R.R. Tolkien

3. “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

4. “Beauty needs a witness.”- Zan Perrion

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

6. “Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!” – Hunter S. Thompson

7. “The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.” – Saint Augustine

8. “If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay at home.” – James Michener

9. “The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.” – G. K. Chesterton

10. “You’re born alone and you die alone and this world just drops a bunch of rules on top of you to make you forget those facts, but I never forget. I’m living like there’s no tomorrow, because there isn’t one.” – Don Draper

11. “I live for myself and I answer to nobody” – Steve McQueen

12. “Adventure is a path. Real adventure – self-determined, self-motivated, often risky – forces you to have firsthand encounters with the world. The world the way it is, not the way you imagine it. Your body will collide with the earth and you will bear witness. In this way, you will be compelled to grapple with the limitless kindness and bottomless cruelty of humankind – and perhaps realize that you yourself are capable of both. This will change you. Nothing will ever again be black-and-white.” – Mark Jenkins

13. “Fortune favor’s the bold” – Pliny the Elder in Rome.

14. “A traveler without observation is a bird without wings.” – Moslih Eddin Saadi

15. “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

16. “Stop worrying about the potholes in the road and celebrate the journey.” – Fitzhugh Mullan

17. “Traveling is like flirting with life. It’s like saying, ‘I would stay and love you, but I have to go; this is my station.’” – Lisa St. Aubin de Teran 

18. “A child on a farm sees a plane fly overhead and dreams of a faraway place. A traveler on the plane sees the farmhouse… and thinks of home.” – Carl Burns

19. “He who has seen one cathedral ten times has seen something; he who has seen ten cathedrals once has seen but little; and he who has spent half an hour in each of a hundred cathedrals has seen nothing at all.” – Sinclair Lewis

20. “Travel at its truest is thus an ironic experience, and the best travelers… seem to be those able to hold two or three inconsistent ideas in their minds at the same time, or able to regard themselves as at once serious persons and clowns.” – Paul Fussell

21. “When preparing to travel, lay out all your clothes and all your money. Then take half the clothes and twice the money.” – Susan Heller