Solo Travel Quotes to Inspire You
For as long as I can remember I’ve always chased inspiring quotes. Seeking words to help encourage me, to enrich my life, and to provoke a new way to see things. And during tough times I always turn to my collection of quotes. So, I hope to help inspire you with some of my favourite solo travel quotes. Because for me, my journey through solo travel has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.
The Truth About My Solo Journey
I honestly never thought I’d travel solo. And if I’m being completely honest, I never thought I’d fly either growing up. But then my brother moved overseas and my desire to see him and experience the world outweighed my fear. So, my travelling began back in 2005. I developed a passion for travel and wanted to see the world. But go it alone? The thought of it terrified me. People chirped that solo female travel was dangerous. But then I read a solo travel quote by Henry David Thoreau. And it shook me.
“The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready…” ~ Henry David Thoreau
I didn’t want to wait to live my life. Life is meant to be lived. Right here, right now. I refused to sit on my couch waiting for someone else to be ready to live my life. I knew I had to face my fear. I had to face my fear of travelling alone. And I realized that I wanted to travel more than I feared traveling solo. And so, I took the leap.
I started off small for my first trip solo. I spent a week in Charlotte, North Carolina for my birthday. A nice gift to myself, in more ways than one. And I gradually worked my way up to an epic solo adventure that took me across Europe over three months. I’d never felt so free. And I made some interesting observations about solo travel. It was like all of my senses were electrically enhanced. Colours were more vibrant. Food tasted richer. And even the smallest of things filled me with pure joy. Travelling solo helped me become more present, more confident, and helped me start living.
28 Inspiring Solo Travel Quotes
So, when you read each of these solo travel quotes, let them sink in. And think about what travelling solo could do for you. How it can not only change your life but change the way you see the world. Some will be eye-opening while others will seem like common sense – but we all need a reminder. And some will hit you right in the core, just like that simple Henry David Thoreau quote did for me, and answer that question you might not even know you needed answering.
“The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready…” ~ Henry David Thoreau
“When you’re (traveling) with someone else, you share each discovery, but when you are alone, you have to carry each experience with you like a secret, something you have to write on your heart, because there’s no other way to preserve it.” ~ Shauna Niequist (from Cold Tangerines: Celebrating the Extraordinary Nature of Everyday Life)
“The treasured vistas of our solo journeys are not always about the landscape.” ~ Gina Greenlee (from Postcards and Pearls: Life Lessons from Solo Moments on the Road)
“Traveling alone will be the scariest, most liberating, life changing experience of your life. Try it at least once!” ~ Unknown
“I think one travels more usefully when they travel alone, because they reflect more.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
“I wondered why it was that places are so much lovelier when one is alone” ~ Daphne Du Maurier
“Life offers you a thousand chances…all you have to do is take one.” ~ Frances Mayes (from Under the Tuscan Sun)
“The beginning of the adventure of finding yourself is to lose your way.” ~ Joseph Campbell
“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” ~ T.S. Eliot
“Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you. You must travel it by yourself.” ~ Walt Whitman
Related Post: 10 Awesome Gifts for Solo Travelers
“The woman who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The woman who walks alone is likely to find herself in places no one has ever been before.” ~ Albert Einstein
“…if adventures will not befall a young lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad…” ~ Jane Austen
“To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world. You are surrounded by adventure.” ~ Freya Stark
“Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you.” ~ John Muir
“I hate to travel alone…But if I am alone I see more clearly.” ~ Paul Theroux
“Don’t be scared to walk alone. Don’t be scared to like it.” ~ John Mayer
“Some journeys can be only traveled alone.” ~ Kein Poirot
“Travel only with thy equals or thy betters; if there are none, travel alone.” ~ Buddha
“If you make friends with yourself you will never be alone.” ~ Maxwell Maltz
“Travel far enough, you meet yourself.” ~ David Mitchell
“There are some places in life where you can only go alone. Embrace the beauty of your solo journey.” ~ Mandy Hale
“The best trip is the journey you take in finding yourself.” ~ Angela Vallely
“I have traveled many roads in my life. Some were imbued with pain and I needed to avert my gaze. Others were so beautiful that I would have remained there forever. But always, at some point in these routes, I reached a place where I encountered myself.” ~ Pablo Holmberg
“Solo travel not only pushes you out of your comfort zone, it also pushes you out of the zone of other’s expectations.” ~ Suzy Strutner
“You are the one that possesses the keys to your being. You carry the passport to your own happiness.” ~ Diane Von Furstenberg
“Traveling solo does not always mean you’re alone. Most often, you meet marvelous people along the way and make connections that last a lifetime.” ~ Jacqueline Boone
Someone else’s legs are no good to you when you’re travelling. ~ Nigerian Proverb
He who has traveled alone can tell what he likes. ~ Rwandan Proverb
32 More Inspiring Travel Quotes
Need a little more inspiration? Here are some more travel quotes, many from some of the world’s most incredible people, which may just strike a chord in you. I hope these inspiring words motivate you, lift you up, and push you out of your comfort zone and into this magical world we call home.
“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.” ~ Helen Keller
“It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end” ~ Ursula K. Le Guin
“Traveling—it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.” ~ Ibn Battuta
“What good are wings without the courage to fly?” ~ Harper Lee
“See the World. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.” ~ Ray Bradbury
“If we truly want to know the secret of soulful travel, we need to believe that there is something sacred waiting to be discovered in virtually every journey.” ~ Phil Cousineau (from The Art of Pilgrimage)
“The man who has no imagination has no wings.” ~ Muhammad Ali
“For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.” ~ Robert Louis Stevenson
“Our happiest moments as travellers always seems to come when we stumble upon one thing while in pursuit of something else.” ~ Lawrence Black
“Experience is not what happens to you, it is what you do with what happens to you.” ~ Aldous Huxley
“Train travel is a riverbed of imagination, a movement where fantasy liquefied and passed you images from closed chambers of the soul.” ~ Peter Bieri (from Night Train to Lisbon)
“Touch the place or risk not being touched, touch the world with hands of the wandering traveler.” ~ Phil Cousineau (from The Art of Pilgrimage)
“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
”In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.” ~ John Muir
“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
“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone” – Neale Donald Walsch
“Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.” – Gustav Flaubert
“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.” – Mark Twain
“If you never go, you’ll never know.” – Unknown
“Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere.” – Mae West
“When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable.” – Clifton Fadiman
“Two roads diverged in a wood and I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference” – Robert Frost
“To Travel is to Live” – Hans Christian Andersen
“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.” –Augustine of Hippo
“I’m not the same, having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world.” –Mary Anne Radmacher
“Life is short and the world is wide.”
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes” –Marcel Proust
“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
“Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.”– Dalai Lama
“Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all people 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
“We travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us.” – Anonymous
“We travel for romance, we travel for architecture, and we travel to be lost.” – Ray Bradbury
And ONE Bonus Quote about Happiness
And if 60 solo travel quotes and more isn’t enough how about one more from one of my favourite authors, Elizabeth Gilbert about happiness. Because all too often some people thing travel is the escape to joy, but we need to first find it in our everyday life before we can start to fully appreciate it abroad.
“Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it. You must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it.” ~ Elizabeth Gilbert (from Eat, Pray, Love)
Do you have any favourite solo travel quotes?
Check back often! I’ll continue to add more incredible travel and solo travel quotes!
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