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.

A 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.

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

For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.

After midnight the moon set and I was alone with the stars. I have often said that the lure of flying is the lure of beauty, and I need no other flight to convince me that the reason flyers fly, whether they know it or not, is the aesthetic appeal of flying.

There ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.

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.

Traveling is the ruin of all happiness! There’s no looking at a building here after seeing Italy.

The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.

I am leaving the town to the invaders: increasingly numerous, mediocre, dirty, badly behaved, shameless tourists.

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.

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

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