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.

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.”

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.

Our nature lies in movement; complete calm is death.

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

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 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.

All traveling becomes dull in exact proportion to its rapidity.

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

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.

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

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

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