Stevenson Robert Louis, At the sea-side

At the sea-side
When I was down beside the sea
A wooden spade they gave to me
To dig the sandy shore.
My holes were empty like a cup,
In every hole the sea came up,
Till it could come no more.

Stevenson, Robert Louis. Il mio letto è una nave. Feltrinelli Editore, 2010.

Steinbeck John, Thruways

When we get these thruways across the whole country, as we will and must, it will be possible to drive from New York to California without seeing a single thing.

John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Kerouac Jack, Old road

All that old road of the past unreeling dizzily as if the cup of life had been overturned and everything gone mad. My eyes ached in nightmare day.

Jack Kerouac, On the road

Potts Rolf, Vagabonding

Thus, the question of how and when to start vagabonding is not really a question at all. Vagabonding starts now. Even if the practical reality of travel is still months or years away, vagabonding begins the moment you stop making excuses, start saving money, and begin to look at maps with the narcotic tingle of possibility. From here, the reality of vagabonding comes into sharper focus as you adjust your worldview and begin to embrace the exhilarating uncertainty that true travel promises.

Rolf Potts, Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel

Eliot George, New land

Even people whose lives have been made various by learning sometimes find it hard to keep a fast hold on their habitual views of life, on their faith in the Invisible - nay, on the sense that their past joys and sorrows are a real experience, when they are suddenly transported to a new land, where the beings around them know nothing of their history, and share none of their ideas - where their mother earth shows another lap, and human life has other forms than those on which their souls have been nourished. Minds that have been unhinged from their old faith and love have perhaps sought this Lethean influence of exile in which the past becomes dreamy because its symbols have all vanished, and the present too is dreamy because it is linked with no memories.

George Eliot, Silas Marner

Kapuściński Ryszard, Going somewhere

Such people, while useful, even agreeable, to others, are, if truth be told, frequently unhappy–lonely in fact. Yes, they seek out others, and it may even seem to them that in a certain country or city they have managed to find true kinship and fellowship, having come to know and learn about a people; but they wake up one day and suddenly feel that nothing actually binds them to these people, that they can leave here at once. They realize that another country, some other people, have now beguiled them, and that yesterday’s most riveting event now pales and loses all meaning and significance. For all intents and purposes, they do not grow attached to anything, do not put down deep roots. Their empathy is sincere, but superficial. If asked which of the countries they have visited they like best, they are embarrassed–they do not know how to answer. Which one? In a certain sense–all of them. There is something compelling about each. To which country would they like to return once more? Again, embarrassment–they had never asked themselves such a question. The one certainty is that they would like to be back on the road, going somewhere. To be on their way again–that is the dream.

Ryszard Kapuściński, Travels with Herodotus

Ferry Peter, Look at me

I would go to parties and say I was an editor, and people, especially women – and that was important to me back then – would say, Oh, really? and raise their eyebrows and look at me a little more carefully. I remember the first party I went to after I became a teacher, someone asked me what I did for a living, and I said, Well, I teach high school. He looked over my shoulder, nodded his head, said, I went to high school, and walked away.

Once I repeated this anecdote around a big table full of Mexican food in the garden at a place called La Choza in Chicago, and Becky Mueller, another teacher at the school, said that I was a storyteller. I liked that. I was looking for something to be other than just a teacher, and storyteller felt about right. I am a teacher and a storyteller in that order. I have made my living and my real contribution to my community as a teacher, and I have been very lucky to have found that calling, but all through the years I have entertained myself and occasionally other people by telling stories.

Peter Ferry, Travel Writing

Hemingway Ernest, New world of writing

To have come on all this new world of writing, with time to read in a city like Paris where there was a way of living well and working, no matter how poor you were, was like having a great treasure given to you. You could take your treasure with you when you traveled too, and in the mountains where we lived in Switzerland and Italy, until we found Schruns in the high valley in the Vorarlberg in Austria, there were always the books, so that you lived in the new world you had found, the snow and the forests and the glaciers and their winter problems and your high shelter in the Hotel Taube in the village in the day time, and at night you could live in the other wonderful world the Russian writers were giving you.

Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

Boorstin Daniel J., Traveller - tourist

The traveler was active; he went strenuously in search of people, of adventure, of experience. The tourist is passive; he expects interesting things to happen to him. He goes sightseeing.

Daniel J. Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America

Krohn John Albert, Firstclass coaches

I had observed that most people who wrote stories of travel journeyed over the country in firstclass coaches. They visited only the great cities and points of known interest. . . . Their stories are of beaten paths and, dress them as artistically and originally as they may, they are only telling a tale that has been told. While making no particular claim to superiority in writing, I thought by assuming the garb of a sailor and traveling as one of the plain, everyday toilers I could get closer to nature and her children and tell a story of our country such as had never been told.

John Albert Krohn, The Walk of Colonial Jack

Fletcher John, Go far

Go far—too far you cannot, still the farther

The more experience finds you: And go sparing;—

One meal a week will serve you, and one suit,

Through all your travels; for you'll find it certain,

The poorer and the baser you appear,

The more you look through still.

John Fletcher, The Woman's Prize, or The Tamer Tamed

Johnson Samuel, Knowledge

As the Spanish proverb says, He who would bring home the wealth of the Indies must carry the wealth of the Indies with him. So it is in travelling: a man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring home knowledge.

Samuel Johnson, reported in James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson

Leland Lilian, The born traveler

If you travel from choice and not from necessity, you are as glad to be on the road again as you were to rest a day, for to the born traveler there is nothing quite so satisfactory as motion. When the train moves out of the depot or the steamer leaves her wharf, then is such a person truly happy.

Lilian Leland, Traveling Alone

Stevenson Robert Louis, El Dorado

When we have discovered a continent, or crossed a chain of mountains, it is only to find another ocean or another plain upon the further side…. O toiling hands of mortals! O wearied feet, travelling ye know not whither! Soon, soon, it seems to you, you must come forth on some conspicuous hilltop, and but a little way further, against the setting sun, descry the spires of El Dorado. Little do ye know your own blessedness; for to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.

Robert Louis Stevenson, El Dorado