There are a few things that I love with a passion so deep that I include them in everything I do. One of them is food (that’s will be for a later blog), the other is quotes. Any time I write a letter or paper, half of the copy is going to be quotes. In my mind, someone else has said what I want to say in a more eloquent way. Listed below are some of my favorite quotes for travel. I think of them every time I travel to anywhere new or I need to be reminded on why I travel.

“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.”

Let’s start off strong with my favorite quote. When I bring up travel to people, their first thought is some fancy resort. That was never the way I wanted to travel. I wanted to get down into the nitty gritty of travel and do things that will change me. Having drinks brought to me while I lounge around a pool is not appealing to me. I want to walk down a street with merchants yelling out their products and I want to get lost while exploring the forests (not too lost I’m deathly afraid of bears). I don’t want my traveling to be constant relaxing because where is the living in that?

“Actually, the best gift you could have given to her was a lifetime of adventure”

Travel is always an adventure. You don’t mean it to be sometimes, but you can never plan every single detail. Life is meant to be lived largely and travel leads to the biggest adventures of them all. I know people who think that it doesn’t matter what you do because we all end up in the same place but honestly why not live a crazy and adventure filled life?

“Into the wild I go, losing my mind and finding my soul”

When I feel the greatest desire to travel, its usually when I feel like I’ve lost sight of where I want to go. This quote resonates with me because I understand that where ever I go, and no matter how lost I get, I get found in the end. I feel more myself and more self-aware. Going somewhere new brings me into a headspace that brings the real me out.

“We came. We saw. We loved.”

I had a professor once that told us, “only take pictures and only leave footprints.” You go to a place to learn everything you can, to admire the culture, to eat the food, to take a million pictures to show everyone when you get home. You don’t go there to take it over or ruin what makes that place beautiful. If you’re in Australia, leave the coral in the ocean. If you’re in Yellowstone, don’t leave trash all up and down the trails. Love that place with everything you have and treat it the way you would want your home treated.

“Seek Discomfort”

This is my new life motto and it came from a YouTube channel. Yes Theory is a group of three guys that decided that they wanted to start saying yes. They do things that people would think would be impossible: survive in Paris with no money and only through the kindness of strangers, throw a party only inviting strangers, sneak into a millionaires Oscars’ party, and a hundred other crazy ideas. Their whole premise is to seek discomfort, to go out of their comfort zone in the craziest way possible because there is so much more beyond fear. And I personally love that/