Travel

He did not care in which direction the car was travelling, so long as he remained in the driver's seat.
~ William Maxwell Aitken (Lord Beaverbrook)

Mile after boring mile ...
~ Bill Anderson, quoted in Criswell Freeman The Book of Country Music Wisdom (1994).

I would come back to the ways I know,
But I would not stay when I want to go.
~ Karle Wilson Baker, from Burning Bush (1922). Box-car Letters

There's a farm on the horizon, looking eastward to Siam,
We could have some ham and eggs there, if they had some eggs and ham.
~ Billy Bennett, Mandalay

Never fly anything that doesn't have the paint worn off the rudder pedals.
~ Harry Bill

An adventure differs from a mere feat in that it is tied to the externally unattainable. Only one end of the rope is in the hand, the other is not visible, and neither prayers, nor daring, nor reason can shake it free.
~ William Bolitho, Twelve Against the Gods (1929).

Everyone was down there getting ready to make deals once this blockade is lifted. You couldn't find a more relaxing place. No metal detectors. No rope lines. No Secret Service-types running around in dark glasses and radios coming out of their ears.
~ Willie L. Brown, Jr., The San Francisco Chronicle (15 December 2002). Willie and Fidel make nice: Hatted one and the bearded one hit it off during visit to Cuba

Fair scenes shall greet thee where thou goest -- fair,
But different --
~ William Cullen Bryant, To Cole, the Painter, Departing for Europe

Lone wandering, but not lost.
~ William Cullen Bryant, from Poems (1821). To a Waterfowl (originally printed in the North American Review: 1817; written in 1815)

There is always a little more toothpaste in the tube. ... Think about it.
~ Bill Bryson, I'm a Stranger Here Myself (1999).

What an odd thing tourism is. You fly off to a strange land, eagerly abandoning all the comforts of home, and then expend vast quantities of time and money in a largely futile attempt to recapture the comforts that you wouldn't have lost if you hadn't left home in the first place.
~ Bill Bryson, Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe (1991). Chapter 21: Sofia

You can always tell a Midwestern couple in Europe because they will be standing in the middle of a busy intersection looking at a wind-blown map and arguing over which way is west. European cities, with their wandering streets and undisciplined alleys, drive Midwesterners practically insane.
~ Bill Bryson, The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America (1989).

All adventure is now reactionary.
~ William F. Buckley, Jr.

Asking nothing, revealing naught,
But minting his words from a fund of thought.
~ (William) Bliss Carman, from Songs from Vagabondia (1894). The Joys of the Road

Men travel faster now, but I do not know if they go to better things.
~ Willa Sibert Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927).

Very cold. Set out early, the wind still hard.
~ Captain William Clark, Journal entry (1 October 1804).

The sunlight flashes off your windshield,
and when I look up into the small, posted mirror,
I watch you diminish--my echo, my twin--
and vanish around a curve in this whip
of a road we can't help traveling together.
~ Billy Collins, The Art of Drowning (1995). Dear Reader

I can't use escalators. The bannisters are always moving faster than the stairs.
~ Billy Connolly

When I'm on the road, I always have to have a good pen -- if you've just got a Bic, they think you're on the skids.
~ Billy Connolly

Jolly boating weather,
And a hay harvest breeze,
Blade on the feather,
Shade off the trees
Swing, swing together
With your body between your knees.
~ William Johnson (Cory), in Eton Scrap Book (1865). Eton Boating Song (first performed on 4 June 1863)

Himself a wanderer from the narrow way,
His silly sheep, what wonder if they stray?
~ William Cowper, from Poems by William Cowper of the Inner Temple, Esq. (1782). The Progress of Error

How much a dunce that has been sent to roam
Excels a dunce that has been kept at home!
~ William Cowper, from Poems by William Cowper of the Inner Temple, Esq. (1782). The Progress of Error

We're a band of Gypsies, we come from everywhere.
~ Billy Cox

It is not the ship so much as the skillful sailing that assures the prosperous voyage.
~ George William Curtis

It was June, I was fifteen, the weather was fine -- so I stowed away. My mother cried and my father laughed and said, "Don't come back."
~ William Boone "Billy" Daniels, (on leaving Florida on a freighter bound for New York)

Nature is magnified when you are on a bike. I felt like I was in a painting. I felt like I was riding through a work of art. I will not forget that sunrise. It's part of me.
~ Willie G. Davidson, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (22 August 2003). Enlightenment on wheels: For Harley's chief style officer, nature is magnified while on a motorcycle

De win' can blow lak hurricane
An' s'pose she blow some more,
You can't get down on Lac St. Pierre
So long you stay on shore.
~ William Henry Drummond, from The Habitant and other French-Canadian Poems (1897). The Wreck of the "Julie Plante", A Legend of Lac St. Pierre

The best way of travel, however, if you aren't in any hurry at all, if you don't care where you are going, if you don't like to use your legs, if you want to see everything quite clearly, if you don't want to be annoyed at all by any choice of directions, is in a balloon.
~ William Pene Du Bois, The Twenty-One Balloons (1947). Introduction

There are two kinds of travel. The usual way is to take the fastest imaginable conveyance along the shortest road. The other way is not to care particularly where you are going or how long it will take you, or whether you will get there or not.
~ William Pene Du Bois, The Twenty-One Balloons (1947). Introduction

A bicycle does get you there and more. ... And there is always the thin edge of danger to keep you alert and comfortably apprehensive. Dogs become dogs again and snap at your raincoat; potholes become personal. And getting there is all the fun.
~ Bill Emerson (on bicycling), Saturday Evening Post (29 July 1967).

The last sound on the worthless earth will be two human beings trying to lauch a homemade spaceship and already quarreling about where they are going next.
~ William Faulkner, quoted in The New York Times (3 October 1959). Speech to UNESCO Commission

Why that's a hundred miles away. That's a long way to go just to eat.
~ William Faulkner (on declining invitation to White House dinner honoring Nobel laureates), in Life magazine (20 January 1962).

In the 20th century, we provided the world with mobility by making it affordable. In the 21st century, we want to continue to provide the world with mobility by making it environmentally sustainable.
~ William Clay Ford, Jr., Ford Update Magazine (2001).

The 10 Frenchmen journeyed to America despite warnings from their mothers that they would be mugged within 5 minutes of their arrival in New York and mowed down by gangsters in Chicago -- provided, of course, that they were not scalped by Indians along the way [or captured by] crowds of American women waiting at the airport to get their hands on a Frenchman.
~ William E. Geist, in The New York Times (20 April 1985).

The fickle wanderer else will stray
Back to the world's wide parched way.
~ William Ewart Gladstone, Holy Communion. Stanza 1 (May 1836)

I just don't want to get there and find out it stinks.
~ William Goldman

In travelling, we visit names as well as places.
~ William Hazlitt, Notes of a Journey through France and Italy (1826). Chapter XXV

One of the pleasantest things in the world is going a journey; but I like to go by myself. I can enjoy society in a room; but out of doors, Nature is company enough for me. I am then never less alone than when alone.
~ William Hazlitt, in New Monthly Magazine (January 1822). On Going a Journey

The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do, just as one pleases.
~ William Hazlitt, in New Monthly Magazine (January 1822). On Going a Journey

Those who wish to forget painful thoughts, do well to absent themselves for a while from the ties and objects that recall them; but we can be said only to fulfil our destiny in the place that gave us birth. I should on this account like well enough to spend the whole of my life in travelling abroad, if I could anywhere borrow another life to spend afterwards at home!
~ William Hazlitt, in New Monthly Magazine (January 1822). On Going a Journey

We go a journey chiefly to be free of all impediments and of all inconveniences; to leave ourselves behind, much more to get rid of others. It is because I want a little breathing-space to muse on indifferent matters ...
~ William Hazlitt, in New Monthly Magazine (January 1822). On Going a Journey

You know more of a road by having traveled it than by all the conjectures and descriptions in the world.
~ William Hazlitt, Table-talk; Or, Original Essays, Volume II (1825 edition). On The Conduct Of Life; or, Advice to a School-Boy (1822 essay)

Be careful going in search of adventure -- it's ridiculously easy to find.
~ William Least Heat-Moon, Blue Highways: A Journey into America (1982).

I was heading toward those little towns that get on the map -- if they get on at all -- only because some cartographer has blank space to fill.
~ William Least Heat-Moon, Blue Highways: A Journey into America (1982).

It wasn't, of course, the beginning, for who can say where a voyage starts -- not the actual passage but the dream of a journey and its urge to find a way?
~ William Least Heat-Moon, River-Horse: A Voyage Across America (1999).

On the road, where change is continuous and visible, time is not; rather it is something the rider only infers. Time is not the traveler's fourth dimension -- change is.
~ William Least Heat-Moon, Blue Highways: A Journey into America (1982).

There are two kinds of adventurers: those who go truly hoping to find adventure and those who go secretly hoping they won't.
~ William Least Heat-Moon, Blue Highways: A Journey into America (1982).

When you're travelling, you are what you are right there and then. People don't have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.
~ William Least Heat-Moon, Blue Highways: A Journey into America (1982).

They think they can make fuel from horse manure. ... Now, I don't know if your car will be able to get 30 miles to the gallon, but it's sure gonna put a stop to siphoning.
~ Billie Holiday

It's one of those images associated with freedom, individuality. Riders talk about motorcycling as a peaceful experience, a frontier activity. There's a tribal nature to it. Information and history are passed on orally.
~ Bill Jack (senior archivist at Harley-Davidson Motorcycle Co.), Reuters (27 August 2003). Assets: Harley-Davidson motorbikes rev up value in 100th year

Some folks like to get away
Take a holiday from the neighborhood
Hop a flight to Miami Beach
Or to Hollywood
But I'm talking a Greyhound
On the Hudson River Line
I'm in a New York state of mind.
~ Billy Joel, New York State Of Mind (in Turnstiles, released: May 1976)

We should be grateful for subways. At least they've taken crime off the street.
~ William George Jordan

Wherein euery dayes iourney is pleasantly set downe, to satisfie his friends the truth, against all lying Ballad-makers; what he did, how hee was welcome, and by whome entertained.
~ William Kemp, Kemps Nine Daies Wonder: Performed in a daunce from London to Norwich (1600).

Keep thy airspeed up, less the earth come from below and smit thee.
~ William Kershner

If you look like your passport picture, you're too ill to travel.
~ Will Kommen

The mastery of the turn is the story of how aviation became practical as a means of transportation. It is the story of how the world became small.
~ William Langewiesche, published in The Atlantic Monthly (December 1993). The Turn

What can you conceive more silly and extravagant than to suppose a man racking his brains, and studying night and day how to fly?
~ William Law, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (1728). Chapter XI

Our Boeing 747 has been fleeing westward from darkened California, racing across the Pacific toward the sun, the incandescent eye of God, but slowly, three hours later than West Coast time, twilight gathers outside, veil upon lilac veil.
~ William Raymond Manchester, Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War (1980).

we travel far and fast
and as we pass through we forget
where we have been.
~ William Stanley (W.S.) Merwin, from The Rain in the Trees (1988). Airport

[A] delightful trip through a sewer in a glass-bottomed boat.
~ Wilson Mizner (of Hollywood), quoted in The Legendary Mizners (1953).

Hollywood is a sewer with service from the Ritz Carlton.
~ Wilson Mizner

It's a terrible tragedy, but you don't stop flying airplanes because an airplane crashed. You don't stop driving automobiles because you have an automobile accident. It's the same sort of thing, but it's that this is so dramatic it tears at you emotionally.
~ Bill Pogue (addressing tourists at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex), The Associated Press (1 February 2003). Quotes About the Space Shuttle Disaster

It was almost 17 years to the day that we have this additional tragedy. America will come back and we will find the problem and we will fix it and we will fly again.
~ Bill Nelson, The Associated Press (4 February 2003). Space pioneers honour crew

We will fly again. It's important to us as adventurers and explorers. ... The nation needs a vision.
~ Bill Nelson, NBC TV (2 February 2003). Meet the Press

Because it costs so much to keep one in paint and powder.
~ Fleet Admiral Chester William Nimitz (when asked why a ship is always referred to as "she"), Society of Sponsors of the United States Navy, Washington, DC (13 February 1940).

Morning's the time to start
Just with a tipsy heart.
Wisdom, a tiny part
Taking, you fail.
~ William Alexander Percy, from In April Once (1920). Part II. Lyrical Pieces. Adventure

With the peddler-man I should like to roam,
And write a book when I came home;
All the people would read my book,
Just like the Travels of Captain Cook!
~ William Brighty Rands, Lilliput Levee (1864). The Pedlar's Caravan

Today was a very stark reminder this is a very risky endevour, pushing back the frontiers in outer space. Unfortunately, people have a tendency to look at it as something that is more or less routine. I can assure you, it is not.
~ William Readdy, quoted in CBS News "Status Report" (2 February 2003). Update: Shuttle Columbia destroyed in entry mishap

We launched this vehicle into space thinking it was fully safe. You can count on that.
~ William Readdy (on the Space Shuttle Columbia), NASA News Conference, Johnson Space Center, Houston TX (3 February 2003).

The journey of a thousand miles must begin with wondering if you turned off the iron.
~ William Rotsler

It provides an excuse for morning tardiness and an alibi for late returns. It provides grist for party talk and harrowing tales of accidents narrowly missed, potholes hit, tires blown and hubcaps lost.
~ William Robbins (on Philadelphia's Schuylkill Expressway), in The New York Times (13 July 1984).

I traveled a good deal all over the world, and I got along pretty good in all these foreign countries, for I have a theory that it's their country and they got a right to run it like they want to.
~ Will Rogers

It's a great place to live, but I wouldn't want to visit there.
~ Will Rogers (on Hollywood).

The only way to solve the traffic problems of the country is to pass a law that only paid-for cars are allowed to use the highways. That would make traffic so scarce, we could use our boulevards for children's playgrounds.
~ Will Rogers, in The Autobiography of Will Rogers (1949).

Perhaps it is better to stay at home. The armchair traveler preserves his illusions.
~ William Sansom, from Blue Skies, Brown Studies (1961).

He wanted to be a passenger on anything that was going anywhere, but most of all on a ship.
~ William Saroyan, Short Drive, Sweet Chariot (1966).

The bicycle is the noblest invention of mankind. I love the bicycle. I always have. I can think of no sincere, decent human being, male or female, young or old, saint or sinner, who can resist the bicycle.
~ William Saroyan, in The Noiseless Tenor (1982). Foreward

Now spurs the lated traveller apace
To gain the timely inn.
~ William Shakespeare, Macbeth. Act III, scene iii

Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire,
I do wander everywhere.
~ William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream

These high wild hills and rough uneven ways
Draw out our miles and make them wearisome;
But yet your fair discourse hath been as sugar,
Making the hard way sweet and delectable.
~ William Shakespeare, King Richard II. Act II, scene iii

To unpathed waters, undreamed shores.
~ William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale. Act IV, scene iv

And is there any peace for him whose doom is endless flight?
~ William Sharp (as Fiona MacLeod), From the Hills of Dream: Mountain Songs and Island Runes (1896). In the Shadow

We're just starting a long journey.
~ Capt. William M. Shepherd (in a telephone call to Russian Mission Control outside Moscow upon arrival at the International Space Station), (2 November 2000).

Whoe'er has travell'd life's dull round,
Where'er his stages may have been,
May sigh to think he still has found
The warmest welcome at an inn.
~ William Shenstone, in Works in Verse and Prose, Vol. I (1764). III. Levities; or, Pieces of Humour. Written at an Inn at Henley (1753)

The aircraft was out of control and we all had to eject. We had multiple aircraft system malfunctions, which made it impossible for us to fly the aircraft.
~ Air Force Capt. William Steele, CNN TV (12 December 2001). B-1 pilot: Aircraft was out of control

A commercial aircraft is a vehicle capable of supporting itself aerodynamically and economically at the same time.
~ William Bushnell Stout

A tourist takes trips; a traveller sets off on grand journeys and, okay, trips a lot.
~ William J. Thomas, Never Hitchhike on the Road Less Travelled (October 2002).

Heavier than air flying machines are impossible.
~ Lord Kelvin (William Thomson), (c. 1895)

I have not the smallest molecule of faith in aerial navigation other than ballooning.
~ Lord Kelvin (William Thomson), (1896).

He traveled in order to come home.
~ William Trevor, Matilda's England (1995).

There are two kinds of adventurers: those who go truly hoping to find adventure and those who go secretly hoping they won't.
~ William Trogdon

Man is the animal that intends to shoot himself out into interplanetary space, after having given up on the problem of an efficient way to get himself five miles to work and back each day.
~ William E. "Bill" Vaughan, quoted in Reader's Digest (January 1956).

Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,
Who bidd'st the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep;
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea!
~ William Whiting, For Those In Peril On The Sea (1860-61; aka Eternal Father, Strong to Save, or The Navy Hymn).

One ship drives East, and another West
With the self-same winds that blow.
'Tis the set of the sails
and not the gales
which tell us the way to go.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox, in Munsey's Magazine (1897). Fate

The players in this drama of frustration and indignity are not commas or semicolons in a legislative thesis; they are people, human beings, citizens of the United States of America.
~ Roy Wilkins (on difficulties blacks experience in transcontinental travel), New York Herald Tribune Testimony to Senate Commerce Committee (26 April 1964)

Today the riskiest part of air travel is the drive to the airport, and the airlines use a barrage of stimuli to protect passengers from ennui.
~ George F. Will

I was hit by a car about four or five times, and the only reason I'm here is because God is really looking out for me. I have really no reason to be here, I mean talking about four or five times.
~ Anthony Williams, Speaking at Tubman Elementary School, Washington, DC, on International Walk to School Day (2 October 2002)

A vacuum makes sure that everything goes in the right direction. Nobody wants to be the astronaut who breaks the toilet in space. The back-up plan involves little baggies. You just don't want to do that.
~ Dafydd (Dave) Rhys Williams (on astronauts using the facilities in outer space), The McGill Reporter, Vol. 31, No. 3 (8 October 1998). Ground control to Dr. Dave

It's a long, long way to Tipperary, but my heart's right there.
~ Harry Williams

I had a lovely military flight, thank you. I love spiraling in -- nothing like that to make your colon go, "Fire in the hole!"
~ Robin Williams, Associate Press Robin Williams Visits U.S. Troops (21 October 2002)

The only people flying to Europe will be terrorists, so it will be, "Will you be sitting in armed or unarmed?"
~ Robin Williams, quoted in US magazine (3 November 1986).

What is a stealth bomber? It's a bomber that doesn't show up on radar, and you can't see it. Then we don't need one.
~ Robin Williams

Make voyages. Attempt them. There's nothing else.
~ Thomas Lanier ("Tennessee") Williams

I have discovered that most of
the beauties of travel are due to
the strange hours we keep to see them ...
~ William Carlos Williams, from Al Que Quiere! A Book of Poems (1917). January Morning

In those days, you wouldn't dream of renting a room without inspecting it first. I wanted to create a brand that people could trust.
~ Kemmons Wilson (on the original Holiday Inn), USA TODAY (23 May 2002). Come Inn off the highway

White sail upon the ocean verge,
Just crimsoned by the setting sun,
Thou hast thy port beyond the surge,
Thy happy homeward course to run
And winged hope, with heart of fire,
To gain the bliss of thy desire.
~ William Winter, from The Poems of William Winter (1909). Arthur

What the camel is to desert tribes, what the horse is to the Arab, what the ship is to the colonizing Briton, what all modern means of locomotion are to the civilized world today, that, and more than that, the canoe was to the Indian who lived beside the innumerable waterways of Canada.
~ William Wood

A traveller between life and death.
~ William Wordsworth, from Poems in Two Volumes, Volume I (1807). She Was a Phantom of Delight

I travelled among unknown men,
In lands beyond the sea:
Nor England! Did I know till then
What love I bore to thee.
~ William Wordsworth, , from Lyrical Ballads, Vol. II (1800 edition). Lucy III: I Travelled Among Unknown Men

Unprofitably travelling toward the grave,
Like a false steward who hath much received
And renders nothing back.
~ William Wordsworth, The Prelude (1805). Book I: Introduction -- Childhood and School-time

What, you are stepping westward?
~ William Wordsworth, from Memorials of a Tour in Scotland (1803). VII. Stepping Westward