Profoundly inspirational wanderlust quotes will challenge the way you think, change the way you live and transform your whole life.
Famous Wanderlust Quotes
He who would travel happily must travel light. — Antoine de St. Exupery
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
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Travel is never a matter of money but of courage. — Paulo Coelho
All I wanted was to live a life where I could be me and be okay with that. I had no need for material possessions, money or even close friends with me on my journey. I never understood people very well anyway, and they never seemed to understand me very well either. All I wanted was my art and the chance to be the creator of my own world, my own reality. I wanted the open road and new beginnings every day. ― Charlotte Eriksson
The more I traveled the more I realized that fear makes strangers of people who should be friends. — Shirley MacLaine
Wherever you go, go with all your heart. — Confucius
You’re not sorry to go, of course. With people like us our home is where we are not… No one person in the world is necessary to you or to me. ― F. Scott Fitzgerald
Because he had no place he could stay in without getting tired of it and because there was nowhere to go but everywhere, keep rolling under the stars. — Jack Kerouac
With age, comes wisdom. With travel, comes understanding. — Sandra Lake
Nostalgia in reverse, the longing for yet another strange land, grew especially strong in spring. ― Vladimir Nabokov
Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world. — Gustave Flaubert
Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore. — Andre Gide
There’s something about arriving in new cities, wandering empty streets with no destination. I will never lose the love for the arriving, but I’m born to leave. ― Charlotte Eriksson
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. — Jawaharlal Nehru
Remember that happiness is a way of travel – not a destination. — Roy M. Goodman
To belong nowhere is a blessing and a curse, like any kind of freedom. ― Leah Stewart
Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before. — Dalai Lama
I met a lot of people in Europe. I even encountered myself. — James Baldwin
He found himself wondering at times, especially in the autumn, about the wild lands, and strange visions of mountains that he had never seen came into his dreams. ― J.R.R. Tolkien
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. — Marcel Proust
It is not down in any map; true places never are. — Herman Melville
The desire to go home that is a desire to be whole, to know where you are, to be the point of intersection of all the lines drawn through all the stars, to be the constellation-maker and the center of the world, that center called love. To awaken from sleep, to rest from awakening, to tame the animal, to let the soul go wild, to shelter in darkness and blaze with light, to cease to speak and be perfectly understood. ― Rebecca Solnit
To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries. — Aldous Huxley
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all. — Helen Keller
She had a wild, wandering soul but when she loved, she loved with chaos and that made all the difference. ― Ariana Dancu
Travel is glamorous only in retrospect. — Paul Theroux
Better to see something once than hear about it a thousand times.
A person does not grow from the ground like a vine or a tree, one is not part of a plot of land. Mankind has legs so it can wander. ― Roman Payne
Certainly, travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living. — Miriam Beard
Adventure may hurt you, but monotony will kill you.
The Wanderlust has got me… by the belly-aching fire. ― Robert W. Service
Two roads diverged in a wood and I †I took the one less traveled by. — Robert Frost
Never go too long without watching a sunset. — Atticus
Paradise was always over there, a day’s sail away. But it’s a funny thing, escapism. You can go far and wide and you can keep moving on and on through places and years, but you never escape your own life. I, finally, knew where my life belonged. Home. ― J. Maarten Troost
Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travelers don’t know where they’re going. — Paul Theroux
The journey not the arrival matters. — T.S. Eliot
She’s an old soul with young eyes, a vintage heart, and a beautiful mind. ― Nicole Lyons
All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost. — J.R.R. Tolkien
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
There is strange comfort in knowing that no matter what happens today, the Sun will rise again tomorrow. ― Aaron Lauritsen
Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quiestest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey. — Pat Conroy
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So, throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. ― Sarah Frances Brown
Oh, the places you’ll go. — Dr. Seuss
That’s the place to get to—nowhere. One wants to wander away from the world’s somewheres, into our own nowhere. ― D.H. Lawrence
Travel is like an endless university. You never stop learning. — Harvey Lloyd
The most beautiful in the world is, of course, the world itself. — Wallace Stevens
Adventure is worthwhile. — Aesop
“You don’t even know where I’m going.” “I don’t care. I’d like to go anywhere.” ― John Steinbeck
Traveling tends to magnify all human emotions. — Peter Hoeg
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
A ship in a harbor is safe, but it not what ships are built for. — John A. Shedd
All my life i have lived and behaved very much like the sandpiper just running down the edges of different countries and continents, looking for something. ― Elizabeth Bishop
Traveling, it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller. — Ibn Battuta
The struggles we endure today will be the ‘good old days’ we laugh about tomorrow. ― Aaron Lauritsen
We wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment. — Hilaire Belloc
All you need to know is that it’s possible. — Wolf, an Appalachian Trail Hiker
We travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us. — Anonymous
The best traveler is one without a camera. ― Kamand Kojouri
The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page. — St. Augustine
The best view comes after the hardest climb. — Unknown
Travel far enough, you meet yourself. — David Mitchell
Wandering flushes a glory that fades with arrival. ― J. A. Baker
You don’t even know where I’m going. I don’t care. I’d like to go anywhere. — John Steinbeck
To Travel is to Live. — Hans Christian Andersen
If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay at home. — James Michener
I travel a lot; I hate having my life disrupted by routine. — Caskie Stinnett
Life’s trials will test you, and shape you, but don’t let them change who you are. — Aaron Lauritsen
Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe. Anatole France
The life you have led doesn’t need to be the only life you have. — Anna Quindlen
People don’t take trips, trips take people. — John Steinbeck
It’s in those quiet little towns, at the edge of the world, that you will find the salt of the earth people who make you feel right at home. ― Aaron Lauritsen
I was an adventurer, but she was not an adventuress. She was a ‘wanderess.’ Thus, she didn’t care about money, only experiences – whether they came from wealth or from poverty, it was all the same to her. — Roman Payne
I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list. — Susan Sontag
Jobs fill your pocket, but adventures fill your soul. — Jamie Lyn Beatty
Let there be room left in your heart for the unimaginable ~ serendipity has a way of showing itself just when you feel like giving up. ― Nikki Rowe
We travel, some of us forever, to seek other places, other lives, other souls. — Anais Nin
Blessed are the curious for they shall have adventures. — Lovelle Drachman
Travel is only glamorous in retrospect. — Paul Theroux
For many years, I have been moved by the blue at the far edge of what can be seen, that color of horizons, of remote mountain ranges, of anything far away. The color of that distance is the color of an emotion, the color of solitude and of desire, the color of there seen from here, the color of where you are not. And the color of where you can never go. ― Rebecca Solnit
Travelers never think that they are the foreigners. — Mason Cooley
Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends. — Maya Angelou
I was lieing to myself when I thought I was lost, I have never been lost – I just wasn’t ready to be found. ― Nikki Rowe
The impulse to travel is one of the hopeful symptoms of life. — Agnes Repplier
I’m in love with cities I’ve never been to and people I’ve never met. — John Green
What is a Wanderess? Bound by no boundaries, contained by no countries, tamed by no time, she is the force of nature’s course. ― Roman Payne
Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind. — Seneca
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
Adventure is a path. Real adventure, self-determined, self-motivated, often risky, forces you to have firsthand encounters with the world. — Mark Jenkins
Adventure is allowing the unexpected to happen to you. Exploration is experiencing what you have not experienced before. How can there be any adventure, any exploration, if you let somebody else – above all, a travel bureau – arrange everything before-hand? ― Richard Aldington
She is free in her wildness, she is a wanderess, a drop of free water. She knows nothing of borders and cares nothing for rules or customs. ‘Time’ for her isn’t something to fight against. Her life flows clean, with passion, like fresh water. — Roman Payne
Take only memories, leave only footprints. — Chief Seattle
Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends.
You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things: air, sleep, dreams, sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it. — Cesare Pavese
It’s hard to go. It’s scary and lonely…and half the time you’ll be wondering why the hell you’re in Cincinnati or Austin or North Dakota or Mongolia or wherever your melodious little finger-plucking heinie takes you. There will be boondoggles and discombobulated days, freaked-out nights and metaphorical flat tires.
But it will be soul-smashingly beautiful… It will open up your life. ― Cheryl Strayed
All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware. — Martin Buber
No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his own, familiar pillow. — Lin Yutang
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. — Lao Tzu
Don’t worry about the world coming to an end today. It is already tomorrow in Australia. — Charles M. Schulz
She was completely whole
and yet never fully complete. ― Maquita Donyel Irvin
The key to a wonderful life is to never stop wandering into wonder. — Suzy Kassem
Traveling – it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller. — Ibn Battuta
The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to. — Alain de Botton
There was something much greater she needed to feed her soul, and perhaps one day soon she would go… ― Danielle Steel
The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are. — Samuel Johnson
Paris is always a good idea. — Audrey Hepburn
It sounds so far away and different. I like different places. I like any places that isn’t here. ― Edna Ferber
It’s the ‘everyday’ experiences we encounter along the journey to who we wanna be that will define who we are when we get there. ― Aaron Lauritsen
Take a few minutes of every day to fantasize about how you would wander, travel, or explore if you could. — Wayne Dyer
The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page. — Augustine of Hippo
A person susceptible to wanderlust” is not so much addicted to movement as committed to transformation. — Pico Iyer
How you live your life is up to you. You have to go out and grab the world by the horns. Rope it before it ties you down and decides for you. ― Sarah Reijonen
Without struggle, success has no value. ― Aaron Lauritsen
The symbol of joy to-day is travel. There is a wanderlust that infects the blood. — Rollin A. Sawyer
If you think adventures are dangerous, try routine: It’s Lethal. — Paul Coelho
Travel doesn’t become adventure until you leave yourself behind. — Marty Rubin
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
You thought too hard. Same with travel. You can’t work too much at it, or it feels like work. You have to surrender yourself to the chaos. To the accidents. ― Gayle Forman
No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow. — Lin Yutang
Live your life by a compass not a clock. — Stephen Covey
We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls. — Anais Nin
If you didn’t earn something, it’s not worth flaunting. ― Aaron Lauritsen
I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move. — Robert Louis Stevenson
If you want to go somewhere you like but no one else wants to, go by yourself. You’ll meet people with similar interests as you. — Unknown
The world makes way for the man who knows where he is going. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
One’s destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things. — Henry Miller
While she was in transit, being unattached was exhilarating, but the moment she stopped, so did the high. ― Whitney Otto
Half the fun of the travel is the esthetic of lostness. — Ray Bradbury
Not all those who wander are lost. — J.R.R. Tolkien
There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign. — Robert Louis Stevenson
But that’s the glory of foreign travel, as far as I am concerned. I don’t want to know what people are talking about. I can’t think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Suddenly you are five years old again. You can’t read anything, you have only 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. — Bill Bryson
A map such as that one is worth many hundreds, and as luck will have it, thousands of dollars. But more than this, it is a remembrance of that time before our planet was so small. When this map was made, I thought, you could live without knowing where you were not living. ― Jonathan Safran Foer
But wanderlust is like a pretty girl – you wake up one morning, find she’s grown old and decide that either you’re going to commit your life or you’re going to walk away. ― Charlie LeDuff
A wise traveler never despises his own country. — Carlo Goldoni
Live life with no excuses, travel with no regret. — Oscar Wilde
It’s not what you look at that matters. It’s what you see. — Henry David Thoreau
To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world. — Freya Stark
From this point forward, you don’t even know how to quit in life. ― Aaron Lauritsen
Every man can transform the world from one of monotony and drabness to one of excitement and adventure. — Irving Wallace
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
A journey is best measured in friends rather than miles. — Tim Cahill
All night, after the exhausting games of canasta, we would look over the immense sea, full of white-flecked and green reflections, the two of us leaning side by side on the railing, each of us far away, flying in his own aircraft to the stratospheric regions of his own dreams. There we understood that our vocation, our true vocation, was to move for eternity along the roads and seas of the world. Always curious, looking into everything that came before our eyes, sniffing out each corner but only ever faintly–not setting down roots in any land or staying long enough to see the substratum of things the outer limits would suffice. ― Ernesto Guevara
