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Quotes

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

Traveling 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, 1797

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

—Michel de Montaigne, 1580

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

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

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

—Brigitte Bardot, 1989

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

—Francis Bacon, 1625

All traveling becomes dull in exact proportion to its rapidity.

—John Ruskin, 1856

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, 1879

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 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

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.

—William Hazlitt, 1822