Solo Travel Quotes: Verified Lines for Going It Alone
Every quote on this page is verified to its source, book and year. No Pinterest paraphrases, no borrowed signatures. Just the real words for travelling on your own.
Solo travel quotes are shared harder than almost any other kind, and the attributions suffer for it. The lines get lifted onto sunset photos, the names drift, and the sources vanish. This page is the other way of doing it: the best lines about travelling alone that we can verify, each one sourced to a book, an essay or an interview with a year attached, organised by where you are in the journey, working up the courage, out on the road, or back home and quietly different.
If you are after the lighter side, our funny solo travel quotes collection covers the table-for-one comedy, and the quotes about traveling solo list goes deeper on independence and self-discovery.
The first solo trip
To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.
— Freya Stark Baghdad Sketches (1932) The original solo travel line, verified to its book. Stark spent five decades earning it.
I left because travelling around the world was something I dreamed of doing for years, and with the passage of time the trip had morphed from a want into a need.
— Jodi Ettenberg Why I Quit My Job to Travel Around the World, Legal Nomads (2010) Verified word for word against the essay, which is still live on Legal Nomads.
Feel the fear and do it anyway.
— Susan Jeffers Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway (1987) The book title that became the first-booking mantra. Verified primary source.
Stark wrote that after years of proving it, mostly alone, across the Middle East; her full story is in our Freya Stark profile. Ettenberg’s line is the one for anyone whose trip has quietly morphed from a want into a need: she left a law career she liked, and her profile has the essay it comes from. Jeffers supplied the five words that have carried more first bookings than any travel writer, and her profile explains why the book behind them was about far more than travel.
Solo and unafraid
Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.
— Henry David Thoreau Walden (1854), Chapter 8, 'The Village' Verified primary source. The long original behind every shortened get-lost caption.
What I craved was freedom.
— Kristin Addis Authority Magazine interview, 3 March 2020 Four words from the banker who bought a one-way ticket.
The only way to get rid of the fear of doing something is to go out and do it.
— Susan Jeffers Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway (1987) Verified primary source.
Thoreau barely left Concord, which is exactly why he is the patron of travelling alone: the going inward was the point. The full case is in our Henry David Thoreau profile. Addis said hers in four words, after trading a banking career for a one-way ticket; her profile has the interview it comes from.
Coming home changed
There ain't no journey what don't change you some.
— David Mitchell Cloud Atlas (2004) Zachry in the Sloosha's Crossin' section, in the book's far-future dialect.
I have travelled a good deal in Concord.
— Henry David Thoreau Walden (1854), Chapter 1, 'Economy' The founding joke of inward travel: he meant it.
Each milestone is just a step while on the voyage, and the joy has to come from the journey. There is no destination.
— Kristin Addis Authority Magazine interview, 3 March 2020 Verified against the published interview.
Mitchell gave the coming-home truth its bluntest form, in the far-future dialect of Cloud Atlas no less; our David Mitchell profile sorts his real lines from the film’s. And Thoreau’s Concord line is the quiet joke that lands after any long trip alone: the distance was never the measure.
Before you post it: check the attribution
One warning from the people who verify these for a living. The much-shared caption “Not all who wander are lost” is a shortened form. The verbatim line, from the poem in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring (1954), is “Not all those who wander are lost.” Small difference, but if it is going on a print or into a journal, quote the real one. The habit applies everywhere: a famous name with no book, chapter or year attached is a warning sign. The full story of the line is in our J.R.R. Tolkien profile, and every line in our 100 best travel quotes collection passed the same test before it was published.
More solo travel quotes
Frequently asked questions
What is a good solo travel quote?
The most reliable classic is Freya Stark’s “To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world” from Baghdad Sketches (1932), widely considered the original solo travel line. For something shorter, Susan Jeffers’ “Feel the fear and do it anyway” (1987) has carried a lot of first bookings.
Who said “to awaken quite alone in a strange town”?
Freya Stark, in Baghdad Sketches (1932). She spent five decades travelling the Middle East, mostly alone, and the line is the opening case for going by yourself. It is one of the most reliable attributions in the travel-quote canon.
What is a short caption for travelling alone?
Kristin Addis’s “What I craved was freedom” (Authority Magazine, 2020) fits any departure photo, and “Feel the fear and do it anyway” works for the moment before. Every line on this page is verified, so credit the author and the year.
Are the quotes on this page verified?
Yes. Every quote is checked against a primary source and carries its book, essay or interview and year. Where a famous line is really a shortened form, like the Tolkien wander line, we say so and give you the verbatim original.
Take the window seat anyway
The nine writers on this page disagree about nearly everything, century, style, even whether you need to leave your home town at all. The one thing they agree on is that going alone changes the going. If one of these lines names something you have been circling, that is the one to keep. Write it in the front of the journal, or book the thing and let the line prove itself.