130 Adventure Quotes To Inspire & Ignite Your Wanderlust

Looking for ADVENTURE QUOTES that are guaranteed to ignite something inside you, and get up off your couch to go do something new? Well, you’ve come to the right place!

Adventure. Something that humans have turned to since the dawn of time to challenge and inspire ourselves. And as a result, we have a goldmine of quotes about adventure to read, enjoy and take inspiration from.

I’ve compiled the best list of adventure quotes out there, from free spirits from all walks of life throughout history. And to accompany these quotes, I’ve included some shots from my own travel albums that really encompass the spirit of adventure.

Short quotes, funny quotes, inspiring quotes, movie quotes, and so much more – it’s all there!

So without further ado, let’s go on an adventure together.…

The Best Adventure Quotes

Some quotes about adventure just go down in history as the best of the best. These poignant words encapsulate the true spirit of adventure.

1) “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain

2) “Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!” – Hunter S. Thompson

3) “Adventure isn’t hanging off a rope on the side of a mountain. Adventure is an attitude we must apply to the day to day obstacles of life.”– John Amat

4) “For my part, I travel not to go anywhere but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

5) “The purpose of life, after all, is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

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

7) “Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things: air, sleep, dreams, sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” – Cesare Pavese

8) “Run from what’s comfortable. Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious. I have tried prudent planning long enough. From now on I’ll be mad.” – Rumi

9) “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

10) “I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.” – Douglas Adams

11) “Don’t die without embracing the daring adventure your life was meant to be.” – Steve Pavlina

12) “To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the most pleasant sensations in the world. You are surrounded by adventure.” – Freya Stark

13) “May your adventures bring you closer together, even as they take you far away from home.” – Trenton Lee Stewart

14) “Every man can transform the world from one of monotony and drabness to one of excitement and adventure.” – Irving Wallace

15) “Nothing ventured, nothing gained. And venture belongs to the adventurous.” – Navjot Singh Sidhu

Inspiring Adventure Quotes

Seeking inspiration to head out on your own dream adventure? These uplifting adventure quotes will light a fire under you.

16) “I do not want to get to the end of my life and find that I just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.” – Diane Ackerman

17) “You can’t call it an adventure unless it’s tinged with danger. The greatest danger in life, though, is not taking the adventure at all. To have the objective of a life of ease is death. I think we’ve all got to go after our own Everest.” – Brian Blessed

18) “If I see anything vital around me, it is precisely that spirit of adventure, which seems indestructible and is akin to curiosity.” – Marie Curie

19) “Life is a fatal adventure. It can only have one end. So why not make it as far-ranging and free as possible” – Thornton Wilder

20) “Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.” – Ray Bradbury

21) “Every man can transform the world from one of monotony and drabness to one of excitement and adventure.” – Irving Wallace

22) “It is in the compelling zest of high adventure and of victory, and in creative action, that man finds his supreme joys.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery

23) “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” – Albert Camus

24) “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

25) “Believe me! The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from life is to live dangerously!” – Friedrich Nietzsche

26) “It’s not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.” – Sir Edmund Hillary

27) “A person does not grow from the ground like a vine or a tree, one is not part of a plot of land. Mankind has legs so it can wander.” – Roman Payne

28) “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” – Anais Nin

29) “A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.” – John Augustus Shedd

30) “If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try.” – Seth Godin

31) “Stop worrying about the potholes in the road and enjoy the journey.” – Babs Hoffman

32) “Don’t die without embracing the daring adventure your life was meant to be.’’ – Steve Pavlina

Short Adventure Quotes

The most profound quotes about adventure aren’t always the most lengthy. These short adventure quotes sum up the importance of adventure in just a few powerful words.

33) “Adventure is worthwhile in itself.” – Amelia Earhart

34) “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less traveled by.” – Robert Frost

35) “A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step” – Lao Tzu

36) “Travel doesn’t become adventure until you leave yourself behind.” – Marty Rubin

37) “If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try.”- Seth Godin

38) “Life is an adventure, not a predicament.” – James Broughton

39) “Art flourishes where there is a sense of adventure.” – Alfred North Whitehead

40) “Adventure: An undertaking usually involving danger and unknown risks.” – Merriam Webster

41) “You must go on adventures to find out where you truly belong” – Sue Fitzmaurice

42) “Nothing adventured, nothing attained”- Peter Mcwilliams

43) “Some beautiful paths can’t be discovered without getting lost.” – Erol Ozan

44) “Life is an adventure, not a package tour” – Eckhart Tolle

45) “Adventure is in the eye of the beholder” – Annie Andre

46) “Adventure is worthwhile.” – Aesop

47) “Jobs fill your pockets, but adventures fill your soul.” – Jaime Lyn

48) “You must go on adventures to find out where you truly belong” – Sue Fitzmaurice

49) “To die will be an awfully big adventure.” – James M. Barrie

Literary Quotes About Adventure

Great writers throughout history have turned to adventure for inspiration for some of the greatest words ever written. From Dr Seuss to Anne Frank, these literary adventure quotes are eloquent and memorable.

50) “I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.” – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

51) “Oh, the places you’ll go.” – Dr. Seuss

52) “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.” – J.R.R Tolkien

53) “Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go.” – T.S Eliot

54) “I have often been downcast but never in despair; I regard our hiding as a dangerous adventure, romantic and interesting at the same time.” – Anne Frank

55) “People don’t take trips, trips take people.” – John Steinbeck

56) “Perhaps the most terrible (or wonderful) thing that can happen to an imaginative youth, aside from the curse (or blessing) of imagination itself, is to be exposed without preparation to the life outside his or her sphere – the sudden revelation that there is a there out there.” – Tom Robbins

57) “Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.” – Helen Keller

58) “Life’s the adventure. You don’t have to drop your bundle and go bush. It’s about being brave within the context that you’re in.” – Robyn Davidson

59) “Security is a kind of death.” – Tennessee Williams

60) “When you see someone putting on his Big Boots, you can be pretty sure that an Adventure is going to happen.” – A.A Milne

Celebrity Adventure Quotes

Actors and actresses, TV personalities, musicians and entrepreneurs feature in the below selection of celebrity adventure quotes. Which is your favorite?

61) “Adventure should be 80 percent ‘I think this is manageable,’ but it’s good to have that last 20 percent where you’re right outside your comfort zone. Still safe, but outside your comfort zone.” – Bear Grylls

62) “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” – Steve Jobs

63) “What I love most about this crazy life is the adventure of it.” – Juliette Binoche

64) “My friends have named me the person they least want to do extreme adventures with, because I always seem to be very close to being part of a disaster. If a cat has nine lives, I think I’ve used a few.” – Leonardo DiCaprio

65) “I still have a Gypsy sense of adventure. I don’t think I have slept in the same bed for more than three or four months my whole life. I am always planting vegetables that I never get to eat and flowers that I never see flower. I have always moved around the world.” – Helen Mirren

66) “I feel very adventurous. There are so many doors to be opened, and I’m not afraid to look behind them.” – Elizabeth Taylor

67) “I’m still a kid. I’m like six years old. But it’s just a matter of wanting to get up, it’s just a big journey. I felt like when I left home that I was on a journey, and I still am.” – Heath Ledger

68) “If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.” – Katharine Hepburn

69) “Then one day, when you least expect it, the great adventure finds you.” – Ewan McGregor

70) “If you don’t take risks, you’ll have a wasted soul.” – Drew Barrymore

71) “I think it’s my adventure, my trip, my journey, and I guess my attitude is, let the chips fall where they may.” – Leonard Nimoy

72) “The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams.” – Oprah Winfrey

73) “If you don’t get out of the box you’ve been raised in, you won’t understand how much bigger the world is.” – Angelina Jolie

74) “I’m on this extraordinary adventure, and if I have no one to talk to at the end of the night, I feel lonely.” – Katy Perry

75) “If happiness is the goal – and it should be, then adventures should be top priority.” – Richard Branson

Funny Adventure Quotes

These quotes about adventure are quick-witted, sharp and downright funny. Because who said chasing that adventure has to be serious all the time?

76) “If you think adventure is dangerous, try routine. It’s lethal!” – Paulo Coelho

77) “I feel the need to endanger myself every so often.” – Tim Daly

78) “When you’re safe at home you wish you were having an adventure; when you’re having an adventure you wish you were safe at home.” – Thornton Wilder

79) “I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.” – Oscar Wilde

80) “It’s not a real adventure when you have to pay for it.” – Edmund Hillary

Adventure Quotes for Instagram Captions

These Instagram captions and quotes about adventure will convey the meaning behind that travel snap when you just can’t find the right words yourself.

81) “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.”

82) “Unplug and go on a new adventure.”

83) “Adventure is waiting for you.”

84) “Travel light, live light, spread the light, be the light.” – Yogi Bhajan

85) “Go where you feel most alive.”

86) “Say “Hell Yes” to new adventures.”

87) “It feels good to be lost in the right direction” – Anonymous

88) “Spontaneity is the best kind of adventure.’’

89) “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.” – Anonymous

90) “If you never go you will never know.”

91) “As soon as I saw you, I knew an adventure was about to happen.” – A.A. Milne

92) “Life is short and the world is wide.”

93) “If we wait until we are ready, we will be waiting for the rest of our life!”

94) “Oh darling, let’s be adventurers.”

95) “The best views come after the hardest climb.”

96) “Adventure more worry less.”

97) “Go see.”

98) “To travel is to live.”

99) “Adventure is out there.”

Adventure Quotes from Famous Movies

Film is a powerful medium, and these movie quotes about adventure come from a range of genres. Drama, animated, sci-fi, comedy action – there’s an adventure quote to be found in each and every one of these cinematic hits.

100) “Get busy living or get busy dying.” – The Shawshank Redemption

101) “I want adventure in the great wide somewhere. I want it more than I can tell.” – Beauty and the Beast

102) “Never refuse an invitation, never resist the unfamiliar, never fail to be polite and never outstay the welcome. Just keep your mind open and suck in the experience. And if it hurts, you know what? It’s probably worth it.” – The Beach

103) “A whole new world. A dazzling place I never knew, but when I’m way up here, it’s crystal clear that now I’m in a whole new world with you.” – Aladdin

104) “You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.” – The Matrix

105) “You know, everybody dies. My parents died. Your father died. Everybody dies. I’m going to die too. So will you. The thing is, to have a life before we die. It can be a real adventure having a life.” – The World According to Garp

106) “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” – Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

107) “Indiana Jones, this is one night you’ll never forget. This is the night I slipped right through your fingers. Sleep tight and pleasant dreams. I could’ve been your greatest adventure.” – Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

108) “My thirst for adventure will never be quenched!” – Puss In Boots

109) “I believe our adventure through time has taken a most serious turn.” – Bills and Ted’s Excellent Adventure

110) “Carpe diem. Seize the day boys. Make your lives extraordinary.” – The Dead Poets Society

111) “The core of man’s spirit comes from new experiences.” – Into The Wild

112) “To infinity and beyond.” – Toy Story

113) “Adventure is out there.” – Up

114) “I would rather have 30 minutes of wonderful than a lifetime of nothing special.” – Steel Magnolias

115) “We’re on the brink of adventure, children. Don’t spoil it with too many questions.” – Mary Poppins

116) “I love waking up in the morning and not knowing what’s gonna happen. Who I’m gonna meet. Where I’m gonna wind up.” – Titanic

117) “A life lived in fear is a life half lived.” – Strictly Ballroom

Song Lyrics About Adventure

When musicians are searching for songwriting inspiration, the concept of adventure is a popular place to start. And as a result, we have generations of memorable song lyrics about adventure to uplift us when we need it.

118) “If I could fall into the sky / Do you think time would pass me by? / ‘Cause you know I’d walk a thousand miles / If I could just see you tonight.” – A Thousand Miles, Vanessa Carlton

119) “Wanna feel the warm breeze. Sleep under a palm tree. Feel the rush of the ocean. Get on board a fast train. Travel on a jet plane, far away.” – Breakaway, Kelly Clarkson

120) “I’ve got my ticket for the long way ‘round / The one with the prettiest of views / It’s got mountains, it’s got rivers, it’s got sights to give you shivers / But it sure would be prettier with you.” – Cups, Anna Kendrick

121) “Just close your eyes and let’s pretend we’re dancing’ in the street in Barcelona.” – Barcelona, Ed Sheeran

122) “I’m leavin’ on a jet plane / I don’t know when I’ll be back again / Oh babe, I hate to go.” – Leaving On A Jet Plane, Peter, Paul and Mary

123) “I wish that I could fly, into the sky, so very high, just like a dragonfly. I’d fly above the trees, over the seas in all degrees, to anywhere I please.” – Fly Away, Lenny Kravitz

124) “Sweet dreams are made of this. Who am I to disagree? I travel the world and the seven seas. Everybody’s looking for something.” – Sweet Dreams, The Eurythmics

125) “I’ve been everywhere, man / I’ve been everywhere, man / Crossed the desert’s bare, man / I’ve breathed the mountain air, man / Of travel I’ve a’had my share, man / I’ve been everywhere.” – I’ve Been Everywhere, Johnny Cash

126) “Aruba, Jamaica, oh I want to take ya / Bermuda, Bahama, come on pretty mama / Key Largo, Montego, baby why don’t we go, Jamaica.” – Kokomo, The Beach Boys

127) “Hold me closer tiny dancer, count the headlights on the highway.” – Tiny Dancer, Elton John

128) “Born to be wild.” – Born To Be Wild, Steppenwolf

129) “On the road again / I just can’t wait to get on the road again / The life I love is makin’ music with my friends / And I can’t wait to get on the road again.” – On The Road Again, Willie Nelson

130) “Life’s like a road that you travel on / Where there’s one day here and the next day gone / Sometimes you bend sometimes you stand / Sometimes you turn your back to the wind.” – Life Is A Highway, Tom Cochrane

Did I miss any of the best adventure quotes?

There’s just so many adventure quotes out there, and I did my best to pull together a collection of the absolute best. However, if there’s a quote about adventure that didn’t make my list but that really speaks to you – and you think it will speak to my readers too – get in touch! I’ll see if I can add it to the list.

In search of the best adventure inspiration?

I hope you’ve found these quotes about adventure as uplifting as my personal photo collection that accompanies them! Now that you’ve had a taste of my life as a traveler, you should check out more of my work. I suggest starting with the below blogs, list and guides that are all about adventure!

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