Archive

Quotes

People commonly travel the world over to see rivers and mountains, new stars, garish birds, freak fish, grotesque breeds of human; they fall into an animal stupor that gapes at existence, and they think they have seen something.

—Søren Kierkegaard, 1843

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.”

—Lisa St. Aubin de Terán, 1989

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

—Brigitte Bardot, 1989

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

—Mark Twain, 1894

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

—Robert Burton, c. 1620

There is nothing worse for mortals than a wandering life.

—Homer, c. 750 BC

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.

—Aldous Huxley, 1925

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

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

—Robert Runcie, 1988

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

—Robert Louis Stevenson, 1879

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.

—Amelia Earhart, 1935

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

—Juvenal, c. 125