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, 1843Quotes
The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.
—Saint Augustine, c. 390Traveling is the ruin of all happiness! There’s no looking at a building here after seeing Italy.
—Fanny Burney, 1782Our nature lies in movement; complete calm is death.
—Blaise Pascal, c. 1640Thanks to the interstate highway system, it is now possible to travel from coast to coast without seeing anything.
—Charles Kuralt, c. 1980More 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.
—Gertrude Stein, 1943One should always have one’s boots on and be ready to leave.
—Michel de Montaigne, 1580Travelers, poets, and liars are three words all of one significance.
—Richard Brathwaite, 1631In the Middle Ages people were tourists because of their religion, whereas now they are tourists because tourism is their religion.
—Robert Runcie, 1988Traveling 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.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1797Journeys, 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, 1957I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.
—Susan Sontag, 1977It 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