Archive

Quotes

All traveling becomes dull in exact proportion to its rapidity.

—John Ruskin, 1856

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.

—Jonathan Swift, 1726

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

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

—Juvenal, c. 125

Our nature lies in movement; complete calm is death.

—Blaise Pascal, c. 1640

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

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

—Susan Sontag, 1977

There is nothing worse for mortals than a wandering life.

—Homer, c. 750 BC

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.

—Lawrence Durrell, 1957

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

—Mark Twain, 1894

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

—Fanny Burney, 1782

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

—Robert Runcie, 1988

Travelers, poets, and liars are three words all of one significance.

—Richard Brathwaite, 1631