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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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