QuoteProject
I think that travel comes from some deep urge to see the world, like the urge that brings up a worm in an Irish bog to see the moon when it is full.
Lord Dunsany
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Travel is driven by an innate desire to explore and experience the world.

This quote by Lord Dunsany suggests that the act of traveling is not just a physical journey but a profound instinct inherent in humans, akin to a creature's natural urge to seek out light and beauty, represented by a worm emerging from a bog to gaze at the full moon. It highlights the deep-rooted curiosity and longing we have to discover our world and the experiences it offers.

Themes

TravelExplorationCuriosityAdventureWanderlust

In practice

Example use cases

In a travelogue presented at the conference, I quoted Dunsany to emphasize the importance of exploration.

More from Lord Dunsany

Come with me, ladies and gentlemen who are in any wise weary of London: come with me: and those that tire at all of the world we know: for we have new worlds here.
Lord DunsanyRead
I have lived to see that being seventeen is no protection against becoming seventy, but to know this needs the experience of a lifetime, for no imagination copes with it.
Lord DunsanyRead
And little he knew of the things that ink may do, how it can mark a dead man's thought for the wonder of later years, and tell of happening that are gone clean away, and be a voice for us out of the dark of time, and save many a fragile thing from the pounding of heavy ages; or carry to us, over the rolling centuries, even a song from lips long dead on forgotten hills.
Lord DunsanyRead
And at that moment a wind came out of the northwest, and entered the woods and bared the golden branches, and danced over the downs, and led a company of scarlet and golden leaves, that had dreaded this day but danced now it had come; and away with a riot of dancing and glory of colour, high in the light of the sun that had set from the sight of the fields, went wind and leaves together.
Lord DunsanyRead
A man is a very small thing, and the night is very large and full of wonders.
Lord DunsanyRead
Once I found out the secret of the universe. I have forgotten what it was, but I know that the Creator does not take Creation seriously, for I remember that He sat in Space with all His work in front of Him and laughed.
Lord DunsanyRead

Similar quotes

One of the great things about travel is you find out how many good, kind people there are.
Edith WhartonRead
Vagabonding is an attitude — a friendly interest in people, places, and things that makes a person an explorer in the truest, most vivid sense of the word.
Rolf PottsRead
Travel, which had once charmed him, seemed, at length, unendurable, a business of color without substance, a phantom chase after his own dream's shadow.
F. Scott FitzgeraldRead
It's a common mistake for vacationing Americans to assume that everyone around them is French and therefore speaks no English whatsoever. [...] An experienced traveler could have told by looking at my shoes that I wasn't French. And even if I were French, it's not as if English is some mysterious tribal dialect spoken only by anthropologists and a small population of cannibals.
David SedarisRead
They hadn't much faith in travel, nor a great belief in a change of scene as a panacea for spiritual ills; they were simply glad to be going.
Zelda FitzgeraldRead
Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends
Cesare PaveseRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.