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.

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

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.”

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.

There is nothing worse for mortals than a wandering life.

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

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.

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.

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

Our nature lies in movement; complete calm is death.

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

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

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