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.
—Aldous Huxley, 1925Quotes
All traveling becomes dull in exact proportion to its rapidity.
—John Ruskin, 1856The 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.
—William Hazlitt, 1822Traveling is the ruin of all happiness! There’s no looking at a building here after seeing Italy.
—Fanny Burney, 1782A 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.
—Jonathan Swift, 1726I think that to get under the surface and really appreciate the beauty of any country, one has to go there poor.
—Grace Moore, 1944The traveler with nothing on him sings in the robber’s face.
—Juvenal, c. 125Traveling 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.”
—Lisa St. Aubin de Terán, 1989More 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.
—Gertrude Stein, 1943In the Middle Ages people were tourists because of their religion, whereas now they are tourists because tourism is their religion.
—Robert Runcie, 1988I am leaving the town to the invaders: increasingly numerous, mediocre, dirty, badly behaved, shameless tourists.
—Brigitte Bardot, 1989The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.
—Saint Augustine, c. 390I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.
—Susan Sontag, 1977