Travel Quotes For Fun and Profit

I think that every home-based travel agent should make a point of collecting quotations from famous (and not so famous) writers about the thrill, the terror, and the tedium of travel.

Why? Because it's fun, to begin with. But these little gems also remind us why we are in this business in the first place: our love of travel, even when it's difficult or boring. Travel is built into our genes, after all. If it hadn't been, we'd all still be living in a little corner of Africa!

Reading what others have said about the art, the appreciation, and the arduousness of getting from Point A to Point B and the reasons to even bother can inspire us when we get bogged down in the messy details of running a business.

That's where the profit comes in. When we're inspired we work better, we work smarter, and we work with a lighter heart.

Here are some thoughts on travel that were cited in just one book. (Any guesses which one?)

Before the development of tourism, travel was conceived to be like study, and its fruits were considered to be the adornment of the mind and the formation of the judgement.
-- Paul Fussel, Abroad

There is more to life than increasing its speed.
-- Mahatma Gandhi

Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel from coast to coast without seeing anything.
-- Charles Kuralt, CBS newsman

Travelling is the ruin of all happiness! There's no looking a building here after seeing Italy.
--Fanny Burney (1752 - 1840), Cecilia

It is fatal to know too much at the outset: boredom comes as quickly to the traveler who knows his route as to the novelist who is overcertain of his plot.
-- Paul Theroux, To the Ends of the Earth

Have your own favorites? If so, feel free to add them in the Comments.