The traveler, however virginal and enthusiastic, does not enjoy an unbroken ecstasy. He has periods of gloom, periods when he asks himself the object of all these exertions, and puts the question whether or not he is really experiencing pleasure. At such times he suspects that he is not seeing the right things, that the characteristic, the right aspects of these strange scenes are escaping him. He looks forward dully to the days of his holiday yet to pass, and wonders how he will dispose of them. He is disgusted because his money is not more, his command of the language so slight, and his capacity for enjoyment so limited.
—Arnold Bennett (1867–1931) British Novelist, Playwright, Critic
Does this boat go to Europe, France?
—Anita Loos (1888–1981) American Actor, Novelist, Screenwriter
Though there are some disagreeable things in Venice there is nothing so disagreeable as the visitors.
—Henry James (1843–1916) American-born British Novelist, Writer
Your true traveler finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty—his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure.
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English Humanist, Pacifist, Essayist, Short Story Writer, Satirist
The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.
—Richard Bach (b.1936) American Novelist, Aviator
I would like to spend my whole life traveling, if I could borrow another life to spend at home.
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English Essayist
It would be nice to travel if you knew where you were going and where you would live at the end or do we ever know, do we ever live where we live, we’re always in other places, lost, like sheep.
—Janet Frame (1924–2004) New Zealand Novelist, Short-Story Writer
Traveling is like gambling: it is always connected with winning and losing, and generally where it is least expected we receive, more or less than what we hoped for.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
Traveling, you realize that differences are lost: each city takes to resembling all cities, places exchange their form, order, distances, a shapeless dust cloud invades the continents.
—Italo Calvino (1923–85) Italian Novelist, Essayist, Journalist
We travelers are in very hard circumstances. If we say nothing but what has been said before us, we are dull and have observed nothing. If we tell anything new, we are laughed at as fabulous and romantic.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762) English Aristocrat, Poet, Novelist, Writer
Old men and far travelers may lie with authority.
—Unknown
A route differs from a road not only because it is solely intended for vehicles, but also because it is merely a line that connects one point with another. A route has no meaning in itself; its meaning derives entirely from the two points that it connects. A road is a tribute to space. Every stretch of road has meaning in itself and invites us to stop. A route is the triumphant devaluation of space, which thanks to it has been reduced to a mere obstacle to human movement and a waste of time.
—Milan Kundera (b.1929) Czech Novelist
The life of man is a journey; a journey that must be traveled, however bad the roads or the accommodation.
—Oliver Goldsmith (1730–74) Irish Novelist, Playwright, Poet
Travelling makes a man wiser, but less happy.
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) American Head of State, Lawyer
Using a camera appeases the anxiety which the work-driven feel about not working when they are on vacation and supposed to be having fun. They have something to do that is like a friendly imitation of work: they can take pictures.
—Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American Writer, Philosopher
I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
The average tourist wants to go to places where there are no tourists.
—Sam Ewing (b.1949) American Sportsperson
It is not fit that every man should travel; it makes a wise man better, and a fool worse.
—Owen Feltham (1602–1668) English Essayist
Not so many years ago there was no simpler or more intelligible notion than that of going on a journey. Travel—movement through space—provided the universal metaphor for change. One of the subtle confusions—perhaps one of the secret terrors—of modern life is that we have lost this refuge. No longer do we move through space as we once did.
—Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American Historian, Academic, Attorney, Writer
Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
—John Keats (1795–1821) English Poet
The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist see what he has come to see.
—G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet
If we are always arriving and departing, it is also true that we are eternally anchored. One’s destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.
—Henry Miller (1891–1980) American Novelist
Life on board a pleasure steamer violates every moral and physical condition of healthy life except fresh air. It is a guzzling, lounging, gambling, dog’s life. The only alternative to excitement is irritability.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
He who is only a traveler learns things at second-hand and by the halves, and is poor authority. We are most interested when science reports what those men already know practically or instinctively, for that alone is a true humanity, or account of human experience.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labor.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94) Scottish Novelist
Of journeying the benefits are many: the freshness it bringeth to the heart, the seeing and hearing of marvelous things, the delight of beholding new cities, the meeting of unknown friends, and the learning of high manners.
—Pasquier Quesnel (1634–1719) French Jansenist Theologian
I swims in the Tagus all across at once, and I rides on an ass or a mule, and swears Portuguese, and have got a diarrhea and bites from the mosquitoes. But what of that? Comfort must not be expected by folks that go a pleasuring.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
A man should ever be ready booted to take his journey.
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) French Essayist
Those that say you can’t take it with you never saw a car packed for a vacation trip.
—Unknown
The travel writer seeks the world we have lost—the lost valleys of the imagination.
—Alexander Claud Cockburn (1941–2012) Irish American Political Journalist