Archive

Quotes

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.

—William Hazlitt, 1822

See one promontory (said Socrates of old), one mountain, one sea, one river, and see all.

—Robert Burton, c. 1620

When a traveler returneth home, let him not leave the countries where he hath traveled altogether behind him.

—Francis Bacon, 1625

There ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.

—Mark Twain, 1894

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, 1797

For 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, 1879

I am leaving the town to the invaders: increasingly numerous, mediocre, dirty, badly behaved, shameless tourists.

—Brigitte Bardot, 1989

More 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

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.

—Amelia Earhart, 1935

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, 1925

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

—Juvenal, c. 125

Our nature lies in movement; complete calm is death.

—Blaise Pascal, c. 1640

There is nothing worse for mortals than a wandering life.

—Homer, c. 750 BC