Traveling is like gambling: it is ever connected with winning and losing, and generally where least expected we receive more or less than we hoped for.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1797Quotes
See one promontory (said Socrates of old), one mountain, one sea, one river, and see all.
—Robert Burton, c. 1620Thanks to the interstate highway system, it is now possible to travel from coast to coast without seeing anything.
—Charles Kuralt, c. 1980In the Middle Ages people were tourists because of their religion, whereas now they are tourists because tourism is their religion.
—Robert Runcie, 1988The 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, 1961Traveling is the ruin of all happiness! There’s no looking at a building here after seeing Italy.
—Fanny Burney, 1782Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will—whatever we may think.
—Lawrence Durrell, 1957One should always have one’s boots on and be ready to leave.
—Michel de Montaigne, 1580A 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, 1726It 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, 1925There is nothing worse for mortals than a wandering life.
—Homer, c. 750 BCFor my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.
—Robert Louis Stevenson, 1879More 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