Adventure Quotes

View of Half Dome from Glacier Point in Yosemite National Park, June 2022

"I travel because it is my happy place.  I can't sit still when there is a whole world of wonderful people and beautiful views and crazy fun to be had out there.  I crave to fill my soul with stories and memories, good friends and grand adventures.  I want to take chances.  I want to laugh with strangers...I like the idea of recreating myself, where each trip symbolizes a new beginning and a time of hope for all the good the world holds.  My wild and adventurous spirit needs to challenge myself and continually discover who I am, for that is how I grow, how I am happy.  After all, you only live once, and that once is far too short.

I need to live.

I need to travel.

I need to adventure on."


“A lot of us first aspired to far-ranging travel and exotic adventure early in our teens; these ambitions are, in fact, adolescent in nature, which I find an inspiring idea...Thus, when we allow ourselves to imagine as we once did, we know, with a sudden jarring clarity, that if we don't go right now, we're never going to do it. And we'll be haunted by our unrealized dreams and know that we have sinned against ourselves gravely.”  

- Tim Cahill


Elements of an Adventure:



“A journey is best measured in friends, not in miles. ”

― Tim Cahill


"Sadly, the traffic lights of life will never all be great at the same time.  Conditions are never perfect.  "Someday" (Someday I'll do this, someday I'll do that") is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you."

-Rolf Potts


“Most of us abandoned the idea of a life full of adventure and travel sometime between puberty and our first job. Our dreams died under the dark weight of responsibility. Occasionally the old urge surfaces, and we label it with names that suggest psychological aberrations: the big chill, a midlife crisis.”

― Tim Cahill, Jaguars Ripped My Flesh


“The hunter who wanders through these lands sees sights which ever afterward remain fixed in his mind…Apart from this, yet mingled with it, is the strong attraction of the silent places, of the large tropic moons, and the splendor of the new stars; where the wanderer sees the awful glory of sunrise and sunset in the wide waste spaces of the earth, unworn of man, and changed only  by the slow change of the ages through time everlasting.”    --   Theodore Roosevelt




“That's why the words "Let's go!" are intrinsically courageous. It's the decision to go that is, in itself, entirely intrepid.”

― Tim Cahill


“When there is no keyboard to hide behind, no phones to gaze into and nothing but the beauty of the wilderness to admire... Only then do you truly understand who you are and what you are about.”

George Bullard


"It's a terrible thing, I think, in life to wait until you're ready.  I have this feeling now that actually no one is ever ready to do anything.  There is almost no such thing as ready.  There is only now.  And you may as well do it now.  Generally speaking, now is as good a time as any."

Hugh Laurie


“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”

― Terry Pratchet


“Adventure may hurt you, but monotony will kill you.”

— Marcus Purvis


“Attitude is the difference between an ordeal and an adventure.”

— Bob Bitchin


The trail is the thing, not the end of the trail.  Travel too fast, and you miss all you are traveling for." Louis L'Amour


It’s not about how far you go, but about what you learn on the journey.


"A friendly interest in people, places, and things makes a person and explorer in the truest, most vivid sense of the word."

-Rolf Potts


“Don’t ask what the world needs.  Ask what makes you come alive and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

–Howard Thurman


“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”

— Anais Nin


“Traveling – it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.”

— Ibn Battuta


“To Travel is to Live”

— Hans Christian Andersen


“Jobs fill your pockets, but adventures fill your soul.”

― Jaime Lyn


  “Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”

― Helen Keller


“Adventure is worthwhile in itself.”

― Amelia Earhart


“The danger of adventure is worth a thousand days of ease and comfort.”

― Paulo Coelho


“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”

― Andre Gide


“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.”

― Mark Twain


“Sometimes getting lost is not a waste of time.”

― Unknown


“Go where you feel most alive.”

— Unknown


“The gladdest moment in human life is a departure into unknown lands.”

— Sir Richard Burton


“Live your life by a compass, not a clock.”

— Stephen Covey


“It’s time to say goodbye, but I think goodbyes are sad, and I’d much rather say hello. Hello to a new adventure.”

― Ernie Harwell


“The biggest adventure you can ever take is to live the life of your dreams.”

― Oprah Winfrey


“Blessed are the curious for they shall have adventures.”

— Lovelle Drachman


“One way to get the most out of life is to look upon it as an adventure.”

— William Feather


“In every walk with nature, one receives far more than he seeks.”

― John Muir


“Every day is an adventure, and no two days are ever alike.”

― Scott Borchetta.


“The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.”

― Christopher McCandless


“Life is full of adventure. There’s no such thing as a clear pathway.”

― Guy Laliberte


 “Kids are curious, and if you don’t lose that, then everything is an adventure.”

― Diane Greene


“There are 30,000 days in your life. When I was 24, I realized I’m almost 9,000 days down. There are no warm-ups, no practice rounds, no reset buttons. Your biggest risk isn’t failing. It’s getting too comfortable. Every day, we’re writing a few more words of a story. I wanted my story to be an adventure, and that’s made all the difference.”

― Drew Houston


“I travel because I’d rather look back at my life, saying ‘I can’t believe I did that’ instead of ‘if only I had’.”

― Florine Bos


“Then I realized that to be more alive, I had to be less afraid. So I did it. I lost my fear and gained my whole life.”

― Unknown


“Instead of trying to make your life perfect, give yourself the freedom to make it an adventure.”

― Drew Houston


“Go out in the woods, go out. If you don’t go out in the woods, nothing will ever happen, and your life will never begin.”

—Clarissa Pinkola Estes


“Every man’s life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.”

— Ernest Hemingway


“Every man dies; not every man really lives.”

– Character of William Wallace in “Braveheart”


“A traveler is really not someone who crosses ground so much as someone who is always hungry for the next challenge and adventure.”

― Pico Iyer


“The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it.”

— W.M. Lewis


 “Adventures don’t come calling like unexpected cousins calling from out of town. You have to go looking for them.”

― Unknown


“The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure.”

― Christopher McCandless


“It feels good to be lost in the right direction.”

— Unknown


 “I travel because I become uncomfortable being too comfortable.”

― Carew Papritz


“It’s bad manners to keep an adventure waiting.”

― Unknown


If it doesn’t challenge you, it doesn’t change you.


“Road trips never get old, do they? There's just something about a car full of your favorite people, good music, and nothing but adventure ahead that puts you in that special state of completely carefree and stoked.”



“It’s not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.”

― Sir Edmund Hillary

A classic adventure quote.

This one may sound a bit cliche, but a lot of people don’t figure this out until it’s too late. Every mountain, every journey, every action that takes us outside of our comfort zone is a scary adventure.

But the adventure itself is not the frightening part. The scary part is inside us. That inner voice inside you that demand to stay in the known, safe place you’re now.  When you conquer that inner voice, you’ve conquered the mountain.



“It is never too late to be who you might have been.”

— George Eliot

George Eliot was the pen name of the author Mary Anne Evans who started her writing career at 37 (which is quite old for the Victorian era). She used man’s name so her books could be taken seriously, and she most definitely succeeded. 

Her words give us the motivation to ignore the age-excuse and just go for it. If Mary Anne Evans can become a successful “male” writer after her prime years were long gone, what is our excuse?



"Energy, not time, is our most precious resource."  - Jim Loehr

"Chronological age is fixed.  Biological age can be modified with training."  - Jim Loehr