“To move, to breathe, to fly, to float,
To gain all while you give,
To roam the roads of lands remote,
To travel is to live.”

― Hans Christian Andersen, The Fairy Tale of My Life: An Autobiography

In real-life travel, I am a flaneur. I love to aimlessly wander cities to experience them as they are, not as I’m told they should be. I enjoy the spontaneity, serendipity, and surprises of having no set itinerary.

In literary travel tales, I enjoy being a voyeur. There is nothing better than immersing oneself in a place made interesting by good writing. And some authors, through their traveling characters, have given eloquent advice that stands the test of time.

Odysseus is the hero of Homer’s 8th or 7th century B.C. epic poem Odysseus. He is depicted as being renowned for his intellectual brilliance, guile, and versatility. One of his profound statements is, “A man who has been through bitter experiences and traveled far enjoys even his sufferings after a time.” In other words, time heals all wounds such that we can look back and laugh at our worst moments.

Geoffrey Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales in 1392, but some of his advice still resonates today. This one is from The Wife of Bath Tale: “It seems to me that poverty is an eyeglass through which one may see his true friends.” 

The traveling duo of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza was created by the 17th-century Spanish novelist, Miguel de Cervantes. Though Don Quixote is a crazy gentleman with delusions about chivalry, he occasionally gives some good advice, such as: “all human efforts to communicate—even in the same language—are equally utopian, equally luminous with value, and equally worth the doing.” 

In Gulliver’s Travels, written in 1726 by Jonathan Swift, Gulliver experiences the disorientation of being different from the locals but he keeps an open mind. He learned from his experiences and passed on this advice: “They have a notion, that when people are met together, a short silence does much improve conversation: this I found to be true; for during those little intermissions of talk, new ideas would arise in their minds, which very much enlivened the discourse.” 

Mark Twain (a.k.a. Samuel Clemens) wrote his novel Huckleberry Finn in 1885. It’s a morality tale about a white boy and a black man both seeking freedom from oppression. Huck dispenses his advice in a southwestern U.S. dialect:  “Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain’t got no business doing wrong when he ain’t ignorant and knows better.” And “If you tell the truth you do not need a good memory!”

In the novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, written by L. Frank Baum in 1900, a young girl named Dorothy is sent on a journey when she is caught up in a twister. Along the way, she dispenses advice to new friends: “A heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others” and “True courage is in facing danger when you are afraid...” 

In the Harry Potter novels written by J.K. Rowling (1997-2005), the characters travel in mind-blowing ways—by a train invisible to non-wizards, by apparition, and by flying broomsticks. Some of them give excellent advice:  "It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends" (Albus Dumbledore),  "Time will not slow down when something unpleasant lies ahead." (Harry Potter), and  "If you want to know what a man’s like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals" (Sirius Black).