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

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

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.”

Our nature lies in movement; complete calm is death.

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

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

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.

Those who travel heedlessly from place to place, observing only their distance from each other and attending only to their accommodation at the inn at night, set out fools, and will certainly return so.

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

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

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.

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 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.”