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.

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.

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

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.

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.”

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

Our nature lies in movement; complete calm is death.

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

There is nothing worse for mortals than a wandering life.

All traveling becomes dull in exact proportion to its rapidity.

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

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.”