To move, to breathe, to fly, to float,
To gain all while you give.
To roam the roads of lands remote,
To travel is to live.
~ Hans Christian Andersen ~

Not all who wander are lost.
~ J. R. R. Tolkien ~

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered.
An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.
~ G. K. Chesterton ~

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step
~ Lao Tzu ~

Only the curious have, if they live, a tale worth telling at all
~ Curiosity - Alistair Reid ~

Thank God! there is always a Land of Beyond
For us who are true to the trail;
A vision to seek, a beckoning peak,
A farness that never will fail;
A pride in our soul that mocks at a goal,
A manhood that irks at a bond,
And try how we will, unattainable still,
Behold it, our Land of Beyond!
~ The Land of Beyond (Last Verse) - Robert Service ~

A nomad I will remain for life,
in love with distant and uncharted places.
~ Isabelle Eberhardt ~

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

Growing old is mandatory
Growing up is optional

The impulse to travel is one of the hopeful symptoms of life.
~ Agnes Repplier ~

Now more than ever do I realize that I shall never be content with a sedentary life,
and that I shall always be haunted by thoughts of a sun-drenched elsewhere.
~ Isabelle Eberhardt ~

I travel not to go anywhere, but to go.
I travel for travels sake.
The great affair is to move.
~ Robert Louis Stevenson ~

The freedom of travel opens the mind to unlimited possibilities.

If you do nothing unexpected,
nothing unexpected happens.
~ Fay Weldon ~

I may not have gone where I intended to go,
but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.
~ Douglas Adams ~

But do not ask me where I am heading,
As I travel in this limitless world
Where every step I take is my home
~ Portion of a Poem by Eihei Dogen ~

Alone I wander a thousand miles,
and I ask my way from the white clouds.
~ Maitreya ~

Each day in life is training - training for myself;
Though failure is possible, living each moment equal to anything,
ready for everything, I am alive - I am this moment - my future is here and now.
For if I cannot endure today, when and where will I?
~ Soen Ozeki ~

An adventure is never an adventure when it's happening.
Challenging experiences need time to ferment,
and an adventure is simply physical and emotional discomfort
recollected in tranquility.
~ Tim Cahill ~

Surely it is the right wish that draws us to the right place.
Nothing of importance happens accidentally in our life.
~ Lama Anagarika Govinda - The Way of the White Clouds ~

The wonders of a journey consist far more of such intangible experiences and unexpected situations than of factual things and events of material reality.
~ Lama Anagarika Govinda - The Way of the White Clouds ~

The gladdest moment in human life, methinks, is a departure into unknown lands. The blood flows with the fast circulation of childhood.
~ Sir Richard Burton - African Explorer ~

I want to know - therefore I go.

Dream big, and dare to fail.
~ Norman Vaughan ~

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the places and moments that take our breath away.

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did.
So throw off the bowlines.
Sail away from the safe harbor.
Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Explore. Dream. Discover.
~ Mark Twain ~

Some people travel only to look - others to see.

Tourists see the world, travelers experience it.

The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.
~ St. Augustine of Hippo ~

The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.
~ Jack London ~

They have cradled you in custom, they have primed you with their preaching,
They have soaked you in convention through and through;
They have put you in a showcase; you're a credit to their teaching -
But can't you hear the Wild? - it's calling you.
Let us probe the silent places, let us seek what luck betide us;
Let us journey to a lonely land I know.
There's a whisper on the night-wind, there's a star agleam to guide us,
And the Wild is calling, calling...let us go.
~ The Call of the Wild (Last Verse) - Robert Service ~

Learn a lot.
Live a lot.
See a lot.

Make your choice, adventurous stranger.
Strike the bell and bide the danger.
Or wonder 'til it drives you mad,
What would have followed, if you had.
~ The Magicians Nephew - C.S. Lewis ~

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
~ The Road Not Taken - Robert Frost ~

It is fine wherever my feet take me
As long as there are sights to see

The true traveler is without goal. It is the absence of goals which creates the ultimate traveler.

Live the life you love, and love the life you live.

Finding fortune among the accidents of life - is there any greater talent?

A man's reach should exceed his grasp.

We want fewer, but higher-paying guests than before. Backpackers spend almost nothing, stay for a long time, and stir up the Tibetans against us. We definitely do not want them.
~ Senior tourist official in Chengdu as quoted in South China Morning Post ~

Don't dream your life
Live your dream.

May all your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view......where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you.
~ Edward Abbey ~

We also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope, and hope does not disappoint us.

Physical discomfort is important only when the mood is wrong. Then you fasten on to whatever thing is uncomfortable and call that the cause. But if the mood is right, then physical discomfort doesn't mean much.

No one ever travels so high as he who knows not where he is going.
~ Cromwell ~

Most people don't see the world as it is.....they see it as they are.

As with all travelers, I've seen more than I remember, and remember more than I've seen.

Security is mostly a superstition.
It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it.
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.
~ Helen Keller ~

Whatever you can do,
or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius,
power and magic in it.
~ Goethe ~

Learn as if you will live forever; live as if you will die tomorrow.

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs,
even though checkered by failure,
than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer too much,
because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.
~ Theodore Roosevelt ~

From a certain point onwards there is no turning back.
That is the place that must be reached.

Only dead fish go with the current.

Never confuse a street address for where you actually live.

Everyone who lives, dies
But not everyone who dies has lived.

No rest is as good as the one that comes after an endeavor.
No accomplishment is as satisfying as one that contained doubt.
And no courage is as great as one that included fear.

The same thing that makes you live can kill you in the end.

Everything is funny if you wait long enough.

Don't let your fears stand in the way of your dreams

You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in.

Life's a journey, not a destination

The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd.
The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been.
~ Alan Ashley-Pitt ~

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.

Don't take life too seriously -- you'll never get out if it alive.

There's a race of men that don't fit in,
A race that can't stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain's crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
And they don't know how to rest.
~ The Men That Don't Fit In (First Verse) - Robert Service ~

Suddenly you are five years old again. You can't read anything. You only have the most rudimentary sense of how things work; you can't even reliably cross a street without endangering your life. Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses.
~ Neither Here Nor There - Bill Bryson ~

Everything...we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is golden for him who has the vision to realize it as such.
~ Henry Miller ~

The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see.
~ G. K. Chesterton ~

Tourists don't know where they've been. Travelers don't know where they're going.
~ Paul Theroux ~

Don't simply seek interesting surroundings, but be continually interested in whatever surrounds you.

And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
~ Little Gidding - T. S. Eliot ~

It is fatal to know too much at the outset. Boredom comes as quickly to the traveler who knows his route as to the novelist who is over certain of his plot.
~ To the Ends of the Earth - Paul Theroux ~

A good traveler has no fixed plan, and is not intent on arriving.
~ The Way of Life - Lao-Tzu ~

When you travel you experience, in a very practical way, the act of rebirth. You confront completely new situations, the day passes more slowly, and on most journeys you don't even understand the language the people speak....You begin to be more accessible to others, because they may be able to help you in difficult situations.
~ The Pilgrimage - Paulo Coelho ~

Bear in mind that the special advantage of vagabonding is the experience of not really knowing what happens next, which you can obtain at bargain rates in all cases....The challenges you face offer no alternative but to cope with them. And in doing that, your life is being fully lived.
~ Vagabonding in Europe and North Africa - Ed Buryn ~

What I find is that you can do almost anything or go almost anywhere, if you're not in a hurry.
~ The Happy Isles of Oceania - Paul Theroux ~

Those who visit foreign nations, but associate only with their own countrymen, change their climate, but not their customs. They see new meridians, but the same men; and with heads as empty as their pockets, return home with traveled bodies, but untraveled minds.
~ Lacon - Charles Caleb Colton ~

We do not need to understand other people and their customs fully to interact with them and learn in the process; it is making the effort to interact without knowing all the rules, improvising certain situations, which allows us to grow.
~ Peripheral Visions - Mary Catherine Bateson ~

The man who is truly good and wise will bear with dignity whatever fortune sends, and will always make the best of his circumstances.
~ Ethics - Aristotle ~

The pleasure in traveling consists of the obstacles, the fatigue, and even the danger. What charm can anyone find in an excursion when he is always sure of reaching his destination, of having horses ready waiting for him, a soft bed, an excellent supper, and all the eases and comfort he can enjoy in his own home! One of the great misfortunes of modern life is the want of any sudden surprise, and the absence of all adventure. Everything is so well arranged.
~ Wanderings in Spain - Theophile Gautier ~

The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they really are.
~ Anecdotes of Samuel Johnson - Samuel Johnson ~

Often I feel I go to some distant region of the world to be reminded of who I really am....Stripped of your ordinary surroundings, your friends, your daily routines, your refrigerator full of your food, your closet full of your clothes, you are forced into direct experience. Such direct experience inevitably makes you aware of who it is that is having the experience. That's not always comfortable, but it is always invigorating.
~ Travels - Michael Crichton ~

The "danger" of vagabonding resides in having your eyes opened - in discovering the world as it really is.
~ Vagabonding in Europe and North Africa - Ed Buryn ~

People say that what we are all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think this is what we're really seeking. I think what we're seeking is an experience of being alive.
~ The Power of Myth - Joseph Campbell ~