Archive

Quotes

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.”

—Daniel Boorstin, 1961

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

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

—Robert Runcie, 1988

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

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

—Grace Moore, 1944

Those who travel heedlessly from place to place, observing only their distance from each other and attending only to their accommodation at the inn at night, set out fools, and will certainly return so.

—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 1747

All traveling becomes dull in exact proportion to its rapidity.

—John Ruskin, 1856

When a traveler returneth home, let him not leave the countries where he hath traveled altogether behind him.

—Francis Bacon, 1625

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

—Robert Burton, c. 1620

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

—Saint Augustine, c. 390

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

—Edward Gibbon, c. 1794

Travel is like adultery: one is always tempted to be unfaithful to one’s own country. To have imagination is inevitably to be dissatisfied with where you live.

—Anatole Broyard, 1989

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

—Brigitte Bardot, 1989