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
Modern tourist guides have helped raised tourist expectations. And they have provided the natives—from Kaiser Wilhelm down to the villagers of Chichacestenango—with a detailed and itemized list of what is expected of them and when. These are the up-to-date scripts for actors on the tourists stage.
—Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American Historian, Academic, Attorney, Writer
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
The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.
—G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet
Peregrinations charm our senses with such unspeakable and sweet variety, that some count him unhappy that never travelled—a kind of prisoner, and pity his case, that, from his cradle to his old age, he beholds the same, and still the same.
—Richard Burton (1925–84) Welsh Actor
They change their climate, not their soul, who rush across the sea.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) (65–8 BCE) Roman Poet
Everywhere is nowhere. When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian
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
Without stirring abroad, one can know the whole world; Without looking out of the window one can see the way of heaven. The further one goes the less one knows.
—Laozi (fl.6th Century BCE) Chinese Philosopher, Sage
Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience.
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English Philosopher
Worth seeing? Yes; but not worth going to see.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arriving. A good artist lets his intuition lead him wherever it wants.
—Laozi (fl.6th Century BCE) Chinese Philosopher, Sage
Thanks to the interstate highway system, it is now possible to travel across the country from coast to coast without seeing anything.
—Charles Kuralt (1934–97) American Journalist, TV Personality
The travelled mind is the catholic mind, educated out of exclusiveness and egotism.
—Amos Bronson Alcott (1799–1888) American Teacher, Writer, Philosopher
No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.
—Lin Yutang (1895–1976) Chinese Author, Philologist
One telling Socrates that such an one was nothing improved by his travels, “I very well believe it,” said he, “for he took himself along with him.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) French Essayist
All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost.
—J. R. R. Tolkien (1892–1973) British Scholar, Author
The routines of tourism are even more monotonous than those of daily life.
—Mason Cooley (1927–2002) American Aphorist
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
I am not much an advocate for traveling, and I observe that men run away to other countries because they are not good in their own, and run back to their own because they pass for nothing in the new places. For the most part, only the light characters travel. Who are you that have no task to keep you at home?
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
The more I traveled the more I realized that fear makes strangers of people who should be friends.
—Shirley MacLaine (b.1934) American Actor, Dancer, Author, Activist
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before leading wherever I choose.
—Walt Whitman (1819–92) American Poet, Essayist, Journalist, American, Poet, Essayist, Journalist
I was disappointed in Niagara—most people must be disappointed in Niagara. Every American bride is taken there, and the sight of the stupendous waterfall must be one of the earliest, if not the keenest, disappointments in American married life.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
A man who leaves home to mend himself and others is a philosopher; but he who goes from country to country, guided by the blind impulse of curiosity, is a vagabond.
—Oliver Goldsmith (1730–74) Irish Novelist, Playwright, Poet
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 use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
To see the world is to judge the judges.
—Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French Writer, Moralist
Those that say you can’t take it with you never saw a car packed for a vacation trip.
—Unknown
Travel is the frivolous part of serious lives and the serious part of frivolous lives.
—Sophie Swetchine (1782–1857) Russian Mystic, Writer
To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labor.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94) Scottish Novelist