Famous Quotes & Sayings

Maria Mitchell

A traveller, lost on a desert plain, feels that the recognition of one star, the Pole star, is of itself a great acquisition.

Maria Mitchell

I was a little doubtful about the propriety of going to the Mammoth Cave without a gentleman escort, but if two ladies travel alone they must have the courage of men.

Paul Theroux

In the best travel books the word alone is implied on every exciting page, as subtle and ineradicable as a watermark.

Paul Theroux

Railways are irresistible bazaars, snaking along perfectly level no matter what the landscape, improving your mood with speed, and never upsetting your drink.

Paul Theroux

Travel is a vanishing act, a solitary trip down a pinched line of geography to oblivion.

Paul Theroux

Truly, the worst trains take one across the best landscapes.

Paul Theroux

Mark Twain was a great traveler and he wrote three or four great travel books. I wouldn't say that I'm a travel novelist but rather a novelist who travels - and who uses travel as a background for finding stories of places.

Paul Theroux

A travel book is about someone who goes somewhere, travels on the ground, sees something and spends quite a lot of time doing it, and has a hard time, and then comes back and writes about it. It's not about inventing.

Paul Theroux

Extensive traveling induces a feeling of encapsulation, and travel, so broadening at first, contracts the mind.

Paul Theroux

The traveler's boast, sometimes couched as a complaint, is that of having been an eyewitness, and invariably this experience - shocking though it may seem at the time - is an enrichment, even a blessing, one of the life-altering trophies of the road.

Paul Theroux

... the grand tour is just the inspired man's way of heading home.

Paul Theroux

Going slowly [...] was the best way of being reminded that there is a relationship between Here and There, and that travel narrative was the story of There and Back.

Paul Theroux

It is almost axiomatic that the worst trains take you through magical places.

Paul Theroux

Most travel, and certainly the rewarding kind, involves depending on the kindness of strangers, putting yourself into the hands of people you don't know and trusting them with your life.

Paul Theroux

Travel is only glamorous in retrospect.

Paul Theroux

The amount of hassle involved in travel can be overwhelming.

Paul Theroux

Tourists don't know where they've been, travelers don't know where they're going.

Paul Theroux

The wish to travel seems to me characteristically human: the desire to move, to satisfy your curiosity or ease your fears, to change the circumstances of your life, to be a stranger, to make a friend, to experience an exotic landscape, to risk the unknown..

Otis Redding

Sittin' here resting my bones, this loneliness won't leave me alone. Two thousand miles I roam, just to make this dock my home. I'm just gon' sit at the dock of the bay, watching the tide roll away. Sittin' on the dock of the bay, wastin' time.

Judith Thurman

Every dreamer knows that it is entirely possible to be homesick for a place you've never been to, perhaps more homesick than for familiar ground.

Judith Viorst

Suffering makes you deep. Travel makes you broad. In case I get my pick, I'd rather travel.

Richard Paul Evans

I don't want to go to Peru. "How do you know? You've never been there." I've never been to hell either and I'm pretty sure I don't want to go there.

Richelle Mead

Sometimes it's worth lingering on the journey for a while before getting to the destination.

Rex Reed

Just living in Los Angeles guarantees the loss of a few I.Q. points each year.

Rose Macaulay

Traveling together is a great test, which has damaged many friendships and even honeymoons, and some people such as [Thomas] Gray and Horace Walpole, never feel quite the same to one another again, and it is nobody's fault, as one knows if one listens to the stories of both, though it seems to be some people's fault more than others.

Rose Macaulay

One never feels such distaste for one's countrymen and countrywomen as when one meets them abroad.

Rose Macaulay

The great and recurrent question about Abroad is, is it worth the trouble of getting there?

Truman Capote

Venice is like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go.

William S. Burroughs

Man is an artifact designed for space travel. He is not designed to remain in his present biologic state any more than a tadpole is designed to remain a tadpole.

William J. Clinton

I spent a lot of time when I was president, trying to end wars, prevent killing, and promote understanding. What I have seen is that peace works better than conflict, and one of the best manifestations of it is in travel and tourism.

William F. Buckley, Jr.

All adventure is now reactionary.

Richard M. Nixon

Italy hasn't had a government since Mussolini.

Richard Russo

What I discovered I liked best about striking out on my bicycle was that the farther I got from home, the more interesting and unusual my thoughts became.