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.

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.

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

Traveling is the ruin of all happiness! There’s no looking at a building here after seeing Italy.

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.

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

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.”

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.

All traveling becomes dull in exact proportion to its rapidity.

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.

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

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.