Travelers, poets, and liars are three words all of one significance.

One should always have one’s boots on and be ready to leave.

More and more I like to take a train. I understand why the French prefer it to automobiling—it is so much more sociable, and of course these days so much more of an adventure, and the irregularity of its regularity is fascinating.

In the Middle Ages people were tourists because of their religion, whereas now they are tourists because tourism is their religion.

Traveling is like flirting with life. It’s like saying, “I would stay here and love you, but I have to go; this is my station.”

It is delightful to read on the spot the impressions and opinions of tourists who visited a hundred years ago, in the vehicles and with the aesthetic prejudices of the period, the places which you are visiting now. The voyage ceases to be a mere tour through space; you travel through time and thought as well.

The 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.

Travel is like adultery: one is always tempted to be unfaithful to one’s own country. To have imagination is inevitably to be dissatisfied with where you live.

Thanks to the interstate highway system, it is now possible to travel from coast to coast without seeing anything.

People commonly travel the world over to see rivers and mountains, new stars, garish birds, freak fish, grotesque breeds of human; they fall into an animal stupor that gapes at existence, and they think they have seen something.

I think that to get under the surface and really appreciate the beauty of any country, one has to go there poor.

Traveling is like gambling: it is ever connected with winning and losing, and generally where least expected we receive more or less than we hoped for.

See one promontory (said Socrates of old), one mountain, one sea, one river, and see all.