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

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

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.

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

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

More 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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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