There is nothing worse for mortals than a wandering life.

Our nature lies in movement; complete calm is death.

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.

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

In the Middle Ages people were tourists because of their religion, whereas now they are tourists because tourism is their religion.

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.

All traveling becomes dull in exact proportion to its rapidity.

I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.

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.

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

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

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.