One should always have one’s boots on and be ready to leave.
—Michel de Montaigne, 1580Quotes
For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.
—Robert Louis Stevenson, 1879In the Middle Ages people were tourists because of their religion, whereas now they are tourists because tourism is their religion.
—Robert Runcie, 1988The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.
—Saint Augustine, c. 390Traveling 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, 1797Travel 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, 1989All traveling becomes dull in exact proportion to its rapidity.
—John Ruskin, 1856Our nature lies in movement; complete calm is death.
—Blaise Pascal, c. 1640More 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, 1943Traveling is the ruin of all happiness! There’s no looking at a building here after seeing Italy.
—Fanny Burney, 1782I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.
—Susan Sontag, 1977There is nothing worse for mortals than a wandering life.
—Homer, c. 750 BCAfter 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.
—Amelia Earhart, 1935