Thinking about a solo trip? If so, I completely encourage it.
Getting on that one-way flight to Bangkok, Thailand back in 2009 was the best thing I’d ever experienced at the time. I went on to journey around most of Southeast Asia, strolling around new cities alone, going on long bus rides, and meeting people who went on to become lifelong friends.
Solo travel is an incredible way to learn about yourself, see the world in a new light, and create incredible experiences that change who you are.
These 59 solo travel quotes will inspire you to explore the world alone.
Solo Travel Quotes
I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
Henry David Thoreau
A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.
Lao Tzu
The mind is sharper and keener in seclusion and uninterrupted solitude.
Nikola Tesla
The best thinking has been done in solitude.
Thomas A. Edison
To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world. You have no idea of what is in store for you, but you will, if you are wise and know the art of travel, let yourself go on the stream of the unknown and accept whatever comes in the spirit in which the gods may offer it.
Freya Stark
One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.
Henry Miller
I wondered why it was that places are so much lovelier when one is alone.
Daphne du Maurier
Be a loner. That gives you time to wonder, to search for the truth. Have holy curiosity. Make your life worth living.
Albert Einstein
Sometimes the journey has to be traveled alone in order to appreciate the strengths that lie deep inside of you.
Steven Aitchison
Climb the mountain so you can see the world, not so the world can see you.
David McCullough Jr.
It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Don’t be scared to walk alone. Don’t be scared to like it.
John Mayer
Travel…the best way to be lost and found at the same time.
Brenna Smith
The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.
Henry David Thoreau
There is something so different and empowering about travelling solo. It’s a unique experience and one that is so self-educating.
Kunal Khemu
Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind.
Seneca
I’ve often been with someone and wished I was alone. I’ve never been alone and wished I was not.
Derek Sivers
In the end, we only regret the chances we didn’t take.
Lewis Carroll
Solo travel not only pushes you out of your comfort zone, it also pushes you out of the zone of others’ expectations.
Suzy Strutner
Travel far enough, you meet yourself.
David Mitchell
One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.
Von Goethe
Not being comfortable alone means you must spend more time alone.
Maxime Lagacé
Without great solitude no serious work is possible.
Pablo Picasso
I myself am best when least in company.
William Shakespeare
Solitude is not the absence of company, but the moment when our soul is free to speak to us and help us decide what to do with our life.
Paulo Coelho
In the temple of his spirit, each man is alone.
Ayn Rand
I travel because it makes me realize how much I haven’t seen, how much I’m not going to see, and how much I still need to see.
Carew Papritz
To say yes to life is at one and the same thing to say yes to oneself.
Dag Hammarskjold
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
The happiest of all lives is a busy solitude.
Voltaire
Every man who possibly can should force himself to a holiday of a full month in a year, whether he feels like taking it or not.
William James
A nomad I will remain for life, in love with distant and uncharted places.
Isabelle Eberhardt
Loneliness adds beauty to life. It puts a special burn on sunsets and makes night air smell better.
Henry Rollins
When you’re travelling with someone, 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
I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.
Albert Einstein
We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope.
Rolf Potts
Wherever you go, go with all your heart!
Confucius
What a lovely surprise to finally discover how unlonely being alone can be.
Ellen Burstyn
When the traveler goes alone he gets acquainted with himself.
Liberty Hyde Bailey
It is far better to be alone, than to be in bad company.
George Washington
The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.
Aldous Huxley
Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s OK. 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
Half of the fun of travel is the aesthetic of lostness.
Ray Bradbury
Not I, nor anyone else, can travel that road for you. You must travel it for yourself.
Walt Whitman
Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.
Neale Donald Walsch
Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.
Henry David Thoreau
A person susceptible to “wanderlust” is not so much addicted to movement as committed to transformation.
Pico Iyer
Travel doesn’t become adventure until you leave yourself behind.
Marty Rubin
The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Never go on trips with anyone you do not love.
Ernest Hemingway
Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.
Marcus Aurelius
Travel brings power and love back to your life.
Rumi
The journey not the arrival matters.
T.S. Eliot
We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls.
Anais Nin
The world makes way for the man who knows where he is going.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.
Carl Sagan
You must go on adventures to find out where you belong.
Sue Fitzmaurize
You do not travel if you are afraid of the unknown. You travel for the unknown, the reveals you within yourself.
Ella Maillart
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
Marcel Proust
Parting Words
I still credit my first solo trip with igniting my passion for real travel.
So don’t hesitate. Plan your dream trip and go explore the world solo. There’s nothing quite like traveling on your own terms.
Have any other solo travel quotes you’d add to the collection? Let me know in the comments!
P.S. If you liked this, you might also enjoy these related quote collections:
- Quotes About Travel With Friends
- Quotes About Vacations
- Quotes About Being Authentic and Authenticity
- Quotes About Exploration
- Quotes About Journeys
Originally published June 26, 2021. The date of the last significant edit is reflected at the top of the post.
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Very well explained 🙂