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

Thanks to the interstate highway system, it is now possible to travel from coast to coast without seeing anything.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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

If I had no duties, and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman.

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

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

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

One should always have one’s boots on and be ready to leave.

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.