We are lucky to live in a day and age where travel is accessible in a way that it’s never been before.
With so many travel agencies and so many travel options out there, all you really need is some encouragement, a little nudge, to book a tour and get travelling.
And there’s nothing more encouraging, no better way to inspire wanderlust, than a good travel quote.
We’ve scoured the web and found inspiring quotes from writers, philosophers, and travellers whose words have endured because they understood that travel is about perception followed by introspection, rather than trying to see it all, as fast as possible.
You can use these quotes to give you the push to plan your next adventure, or to create a couple of fun Instagram or Pinterest posts.
Classic Travel Quotes About Wanderlust
“Not all those who wander are lost.” — J.R.R. Tolkien
“Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.” — Dalai Lama
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” — Mark Twain
“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 harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” — H. Jackson Brown
“The only man I envy is the man who has not yet been to Africa—for he has so much to look forward to.” — Richard Mullin
“All I wanted to do was get back to Africa. We had not left it, yet, but when I would wake in the night I would lie, listening, homesick for it already.” — Karen Blixen (from Out of Africa)
Travel Quotes About Perspective and Awareness
“The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.” — Saint Augustine
“Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.” — Gustave Flaubert
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” — Marcel Proust
“To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.” — Aldous Huxley
“Africa changes you forever, like nowhere on Earth. Once you have been there, you will never be the same. But how do you begin to describe its magic to someone who has never felt it? How can you explain the fascination of this vast, dusty continent, whose oldest roads are elephant paths?” — Brian Jackman
“Nothing but breathing the air of Africa, and actually walking through it, can communicate the indescribable sensations.” — William Burchell (English explorer, early 1800s)
Quotes About Slow Travel
“Half the fun of travel is the aesthetic of lostness.” — Ray Bradbury
“I am not the same, having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world.” — Mary Anne Radmacher
“A good traveller has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.” — Lao Tzu
“Your true traveller finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty—his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure.” — Aldous Huxley
“The slower you travel, the more you learn.” — Deborah Fallows
“There is something about safari life that makes you forget all your sorrows and feel as if you had drunk half a bottle of champagne—bubbling over with heartfelt gratitude for being alive.” — Karen Blixen
“The most hazardous part of our expedition to Africa was crossing Piccadilly Circus.” — Joseph Thomson
Literary Quotes About Journey and Meaning
“A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles.” — Tim Cahill
“Wherever you go becomes a part of you somehow.” — Anita Desai
“Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travellers don’t know where they’re going.” — Paul Theroux
“We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls.” — Anaïs Nin
“You cannot leave Africa. Africa said, ‘It is always with you, there inside your head. Our rivers run in currents in the swirl of your thumbprints; our drumbeats counting out your pulse; our coastline, the silhouette of your soul.’” — Bridget Dore (from the poem Africa Smiled)
“Why is it you can never hope to describe the emotion Africa creates? You are lifted. Out of whatever pit, unbound from whatever tie, released from whatever fear. You are lifted and you see it all from above.” — Beryl Markham (adventurer and author, West with the Night)
Travel Quotes About Curiosity and Openness
“To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world. You are surrounded by adventure.” — Freya Stark
“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” — André Gide
“The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.” — Samuel Johnson
“To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.” — Aldous Huxley
“How nice it would be, I thought, if someone reading the narrative of my African trip felt the same, that it was the next best thing to being there.” — Karen Blixen
Quotes About Travel and Inner Change
“We travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us.” — Attributed to Anonymous
“If you’re brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting, which can be anything from your house to bitter, old, resentments and out on a truth-seeking journey, either externally or internally, and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher and if you are prepared, most of all, to face and forgive some very difficult realities about yourself, then the truth will not be withheld from you.” – Elizabeth Gilbert
“Travel and change of place impart new vigour to the mind.” — Seneca
“We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next to find ourselves.” — Pico Iyer
“I hope you have an experience that alters the course of your life because, after Africa, nothing has ever been the same.” — Suzanne Evans
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” — Mark Twain (frequently cited in African travel reflections for its humbling effect)
Bushwillow Media is a specialised digital travel marketing company based in South Africa, dedicated to helping tourism brands, such as travel agencies, lodges, safari operators, and hotels, thrive in the online world.
With over a decade of experience in copywriting and SEO, we deliver authentic, human-first strategies that capture the true essence of Africa, avoiding generic or AI-generated content.
Our bespoke digital tourism marketing services include SEO-optimised website design, content marketing, in-depth blogs and itineraries, social media management, and strategic consulting, all aimed at turning wanderlust into confirmed bookings for travel brands that value genuine storytelling and real results.