There is nothing worse for mortals than a wandering life.

The traveler with nothing on him sings in the robber’s face.

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.

According to the law of custom, and perhaps of reason, foreign travel completes the education of an English gentleman.

If I had no duties, and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Journeys, 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.