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.
—Samuel Johnson, 1777Quotes
Travelers, poets, and liars are three words all of one significance.
—Richard Brathwaite, 1631All traveling becomes dull in exact proportion to its rapidity.
—John Ruskin, 1856After 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.
—Amelia Earhart, 1935The traveler with nothing on him sings in the robber’s face.
—Juvenal, c. 125See one promontory (said Socrates of old), one mountain, one sea, one river, and see all.
—Robert Burton, c. 1620The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.
—Saint Augustine, c. 390There is nothing worse for mortals than a wandering life.
—Homer, c. 750 BCThere ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.
—Mark Twain, 1894The 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.”
—Daniel Boorstin, 1961It 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, 1925The 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, 1822More 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, 1943