Our nature lies in movement; complete calm is death.

There is nothing worse for mortals than a wandering life.

All traveling becomes dull in exact proportion to its rapidity.

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.

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

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

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.”

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.

If I had no duties, and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman.

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.

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.

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

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