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.

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.

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

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.

All traveling becomes dull in exact proportion to its rapidity.

Our nature lies in movement; complete calm is death.

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.”

There is nothing worse for mortals than a wandering life.

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.

For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.

After 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.

The traveler with nothing on him sings in the robber’s face.

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