Quotes about travel

Pepi II Neferkarā

23rd century BC · Memphis, ancient Egypt · To his official Harkhuf, coming home from the far south with a dancer

When he cometh down with thee in the boat, cause trustworthy men to be about him on both sides of the boat, to prevent him from falling into the water. When he is asleep at night cause trustworthy men to sleep by his side on his bedding. See [that he is there] ten times [each] night. [My] Majesty wisheth to see this pygmy more than any offering of the countries of Ba and Punt.

Letter to Harkhuf (on the wall of Harkhuf's tomb, Aswan) · in place of the original: the English translation by E. A. Wallis Budge (1914)

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Homer Ὅμηρος

c. 8th century BC · Ionia, ancient Greece · Odysseus's answer when the one-eyed giant Polyphemus asks his name

Nobody is my name. Nobody is what they call me, my mother and my father and all my companions besides.

Οὖτις ἐμοί γʼ ὄνομα· Οὖτιν δέ με κικλήσκουσι μήτηρ ἠδὲ πατὴρ ἠδʼ ἄλλοι πάντες ἑταῖροι.

Odyssey 9.366–367

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Seneca Lucius Annaeus Seneca

c. AD 63 · Roman Empire · To a friend whose gloom would not lift however far he travelled

It is your mind you must change, not the sky above you.

Animum debes mutare, non caelum.

Letters to Lucilius 28

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Li Bai 李白

759 · Tang China · Turning back after word reached him, on the road to exile, that he had been pardoned

At dawn I leave Baidi among the bright clouds; a thousand li to Jiangling, home in a single day. On both banks the gibbons cry without end, and my light boat has already passed ten thousand folds of hills.

朝辭白帝彩雲間，千里江陵一日還。 兩岸猨聲啼不盡，輕舟已過萬重山。

"Leaving Baidi at Dawn," in the Complete Tang Poems

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Jia Dao 賈島

early 9th century · Tang China

Under the pines I asked the boy. He said, "The master has gone to gather herbs. He is somewhere on this mountain, but the clouds are deep and I do not know where."

松下問童子，言師採藥去。 只在此山中，雲深不知處。

"Looking for a Hermit and Not Finding Him"

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Ibn Fadlan ابن فضلان

winter 922 · Abbasid Baghdad · On the way to the Volga, wintering in Khwarazm

I would come out of the bathhouse, and when I got into the house I would look at my beard and it was one solid lump of ice, so that I had to hold it close to the fire.

ولقد كنت أخرج من الحمام فإذا دخلت إلى البيت نظرت إلى لحيتي وهي قطعة واحدة من الثلج حتى كنت أدنيها إلى النار

The Travel Account (Risala) of Ibn Fadlan

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Marco Polo

c. 1298 · Venice · The opening of the book he dictated to a writer imprisoned with him in Genoa

Great Princes, Emperors, and Kings, Dukes and Marquises, Counts, Knights, and Burgesses! and People of all degrees who desire to get knowledge of the various races of mankind and of the diversities of the sundry regions of the World, take this Book and cause it to be read to you.

The Travels of Marco Polo, prologue · in place of the original: the English translation by Henry Yule (1871)

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Ibn Battuta ابن بطوطة

June 1325 (dictated 1355) · Tangier, Morocco

I was alone, with no companion whose company might cheer me and no caravan to join, moved by a firm resolve in my soul and a longing for those noble sanctuaries hidden deep in my breast. So I made up my mind to leave my dear ones, women and men, and I left my homeland as birds leave their nests. My parents were still living, and it weighed on me sorely to part from them; I, like them, was afflicted by the separation. I was then twenty-two years old.

منفردا عن رفيق آنس بصحبته، وراكب أكون في جملته، لباعث على النفس شديد العزائم، وشوق إلى تلك المعاهد الشريفة كامن في الحيازم. فحزمت أمرى على هجر الأحباب من الإناث والذكور، وفارقت وطني مفارقة الطيور للوكور. وكان والداي بقيد الحياة فتحملت لبعدهما وصبا، ولقيت كما لقيا من الفراق نصبا وسني يومئذ اثنتان وعشرون سنة

The Travels (Rihla) of Ibn Battuta, the opening

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Yi I 李珥

16th century · Joseon Korea

Gathering herbs, I suddenly lost the path: a thousand peaks, all deep in autumn leaves. A mountain monk goes home with the water he has drawn, and at the edge of the wood, smoke rises from the tea.

採藥忽迷路 千峯秋葉裏 山僧汲水歸 林末茶煙起

Yulgok jeonseo, "In the Mountains"

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Matsuo Basho 松尾芭蕉

1689 · Edo Japan

The months and days are travellers of eternity, and the years that come and go are voyagers too.

月日は百代の過客にして、行き交ふ年もまた旅人なり。

Oku no hosomichi (The Narrow Road to the Deep North), the first sentence

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Matsuo Basho 松尾芭蕉

October 1694 · Edo Japan · At an inn in Osaka, four days before he died

Sick on a journey, my dreams go wandering over withered fields.

旅に病んで夢は枯れ野をかけめぐる

His last haiku

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

1774 · Frankfurt, Germany · Weimar

How glad I am to be away! Dearest friend, what a thing is the human heart!

Wie froh bin ich, daß ich weg bin! Bester Freund, was ist das Herz des Menschen!

The Sorrows of Young Werther, the first letter

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Walt Whitman

1856 · United States

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road, Healthy, free, the world before me, The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

"Song of the Open Road," in Leaves of Grass

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Banjo Paterson A. B. Paterson

1889 · New South Wales, Australia · Envying his old friend Clancy, gone droving into the outback

And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended, And at night the wond'rous glory of the everlasting stars.

"Clancy of the Overflow"

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Mori Ogai 森鷗外

1890 · Shimane, Japan · Tokyo · A night in the port of Saigon, on the voyage home from Germany

The coal has already been loaded. Around the table in the second-class saloon all is very still, and the brightness of the electric lamps is wasted. For tonight the card players who gather here every evening are staying at a hotel, and I alone am left on the ship.

石炭をば早や積み果てつ。中等室の卓のほとりはいと靜にて、熾熱燈の光の晴れがましきも徒なり。今宵は夜毎にこゝに集ひ來る骨牌仲間も「ホテル」に宿りて、舟に殘れるは余一人のみなれば。

"The Dancing Girl" (Maihime), the opening

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Pauline Johnson E. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake)

1892 · Six Nations, Ontario, Canada

And up on the hills against the sky, A fir tree rocking its lullaby, Swings, swings, Its emerald wings, Swelling the song that my paddle sings.

"The Song My Paddle Sings," in Flint and Feather

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Taneda Santoka 種田山頭火

1926 · Taisho–Showa Japan · Setting out as a wandering beggar monk, carrying a heart he could not untangle

Pushing in, and pushing further in: still green mountains.

分け入つても分け入つても青い山

Free-verse haiku, in the collection Somokuto

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