According to the law of custom, and perhaps of reason, foreign travel completes the education of an English gentleman.
—Edward Gibbon, c. 1794Quotes
In the Middle Ages people were tourists because of their religion, whereas now they are tourists because tourism is their religion.
—Robert Runcie, 1988There is nothing worse for mortals than a wandering life.
—Homer, c. 750 BCThe traveler was active; he went strenuously in search of people, of adventure, of experience. The tourist is passive; he expects interesting things to happen to him. He goes “sightseeing.”
—Daniel Boorstin, 1961A traveler’s chief aim should be to make men wiser and better, and to improve their minds by the bad—as well as good—example of what they deliver concerning foreign places.
—Jonathan Swift, 1726When a traveler returneth home, let him not leave the countries where he hath traveled altogether behind him.
—Francis Bacon, 1625The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.
—Saint Augustine, c. 390The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do just as one pleases. We go on a journey chiefly to be free of all impediments and of all inconveniences—to leave ourselves behind, much more to get rid of others.
—William Hazlitt, 1822For 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, 1879I think that to get under the surface and really appreciate the beauty of any country, one has to go there poor.
—Grace Moore, 1944Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will—whatever we may think.
—Lawrence Durrell, 1957Thanks to the interstate highway system, it is now possible to travel from coast to coast without seeing anything.
—Charles Kuralt, c. 1980Those who travel heedlessly from place to place, observing only their distance from each other and attending only to their accommodation at the inn at night, set out fools, and will certainly return so.
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 1747