21 Quotes For My Wanderlust

Do you ever read something that makes you feel like you can take on anything in the world? Do you ever read something that makes you say, ‘Oh my gosh…that’s exactly how I feel! I couldn’t put it into words, but now someone has!’? Well, I am a sucker for a good quote, so sometimes when I’m lacking motivation or inspiration, I look up quotes on Pinterest to help steer me in the correct direction. So to help others get inspired to travel as well, I’ve gathered 21 of my favorite quotes that inspire me to get out there and travel the world!

I think most people think of travel as something that goes smoothly every time it happens. It’s easy to forget that travelling to a completely foreign area can be scary; however, when you get out of your comfort zone, you realize it’s not that bad. You can make decisions based on your own experiences, instead of relying on others’ experiences. You find humanity exists, and that there is good in the world. Your mind is opened to all the possibilities that you never imagined. Your eyes are opened to seeing all countries have beauty within them. Your heart is opened to trusting strangers and finding that genuinely good people thrive in this world. These quotes remind me that differences are okay— that they are something to be learned, something to be embraced, and something to be cherished:

1. “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, the sea, the sky—all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” –Cesare Pavese

2. “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” –Mark Twain

3. “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

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

5. “Wanderlust consumed her; foreign hearts and exotic minds compelled her. She had a gypsy soul and a vibrant hope for the unknown.” –D. Marie

6. “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. You whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses.” –Bill Bryson

7. “Traveling is about finding those things you never knew you were looking for.” –Unknown

As I have stated before, many people travel for many different reasons. I believe travelling is a life-long experience. It covers every subject and every class, in some way, shape, or form. But most importantly, it goes beyond what is taught in the rooms and from the books. It goes to the very core of our very existence. We are social creatures, and we can learn so much more about our world if we just take time to explore it; if we just take time to listen; if we just take time to see. These quotes remind me of my own reasons I have for travelling:

8. “This is why once you’ve traveled for the first time all you want to do is leave again. They call it the travel buy, but really it’s the effort to return to a place where you are surrounded by people who speak the same language as you. Not English or Spanish or Mandarin or Portuguese, but that language where others know what it’s like to leave. Change. Grow. Experience. Learn. Then go home again and feel more lost in your hometown than you did in the most foreign place you visited. This is the hardest part about traveling, and it’s the very reason why we all run away again.” –Unknown

9. “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” –Albert Einstein

10. “It is a big and beautiful world. Most of us live and die in the same corner where we were born and never get to see any of it. I don’t want to be most of us.” –Oberyn Martell

11. “You will never be completely at home again, because part of your heart always will be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place.” –Miriam Adeney

12. “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

13. “Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.” –Terry Pratchett

14. “When I say I want to travel, I don’t mean I want to stay at resorts and go on tours with tour guides or buy key chains from souvenir shops. I don’t want to be a tourist. When I say I want to travel, I mean I want to explore another country and become part of it. I want to discover small coffee shops in Germany and Italy and France. I want to walk on beaches in Australia and browse the book stores of England. I want to hike the Great Wall of China and go cliff diving in Hawaii. I want to meet people who are not like me, but people who I can like all the same. I want to take pictures of things and places and people I meet. I want my mind to be in constant aw of life on earth. I want to see things with new eyes. I want to look at a map and be able to remember how I was transformed by the places I’ve been to, the things I’ve seen, and the people I’ve met. I want to come home and realize that I have not come home whole, but have left a piece of my heart in each place I have been This, I think, is what is at the heart of Adventure and this is why I plan on making my life one.” –Unknown

Time is a funny concept. Even though the same amount of time may pass, one may find that it passed a lot quicker than another. Travelling changes you from the inside out—at least it does for me. It makes me want to be a better person. It allows me the opportunity to humble myself and to gain a different perspective. But I don’t have all the time in the world to have these experiences. These quotes are a friendly reminder that life is full of adventure; a reminder that one life is all we have to live; and a reminder that life waits for no one:

15. “It’s better to look back on life and say, ‘I can’t believe I did that’ than to look back and say, ‘I wish I did that.’” –Unknown

16. “This heart of mine was made to travel this world.” –Unknown

17. “I have an insane calling to be where I’m not.” –Unknown

18. “I was never going to go if I waited for someone to come with me.” –Unknown

19. “The trouble is, you think you have time.” –Jack Kornfield

20. “I’m a travel addict on the road to recovery. Just kidding. I’m on the road to the airport.” –Unknown

21. “Travel, not to find yourself, but to remember who you’ve been all along.” –Unknown

I hope at least one of these quotes has encouraged you to even think about travelling in your lifetime.  Let me know which quote from my list was your favorite, or which travel quote{s} are your top picks. What makes you feel like you can tackle the world? I’m always all ears for a good quote because as I already said, I’m a sucker for quotes 🙂 Comment below and let me know what you’re thinking!!