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.

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.”

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

All traveling becomes dull in exact proportion to its rapidity.

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.

It is delightful to read on the spot the impressions and opinions of tourists who visited a hundred years ago, in the vehicles and with the aesthetic prejudices of the period, the places which you are visiting now. The voyage ceases to be a mere tour through space; you travel through time and thought as well.

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

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.”

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

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.

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

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