Archive

Quotes

Our nature lies in movement; complete calm is death.

—Blaise Pascal, c. 1640

I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.

—Susan Sontag, 1977

There is nothing worse for mortals than a wandering life.

—Homer, c. 750 BC

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

—Juvenal, c. 125

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

—Michel de Montaigne, 1580

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

—Mark Twain, 1894

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

—Edward Gibbon, c. 1794

The 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, 1961

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

—Charles Kuralt, c. 1980

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.

—Gertrude Stein, 1943

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.

—William Hazlitt, 1822

Those 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

When a traveler returneth home, let him not leave the countries where he hath traveled altogether behind him.

—Francis Bacon, 1625