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.

I think that to get under the surface and really appreciate the beauty of any country, one has to go there poor.

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.

All traveling becomes dull in exact proportion to its rapidity.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Our nature lies in movement; complete calm is death.

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