I’ve always thought a hotel ought to offer optional small animals. I mean a cat to sleep on your bed at night, or a dog of some kind to act pleased when you come in. You ever notice how a hotel room feels so lifeless?
—Anne Tyler (b.1941) American Novelist, Short-Story Writer
No one travelling on a business trip would be missed if he failed to arrive.
—Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929) American Economist, Social Critic
Those that say you can’t take it with you never saw a car packed for a vacation trip.
—Unknown
They change their climate, not their soul, who rush across the sea.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) (65–8 BCE) Roman Poet
A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.
—John Steinbeck (1902–68) American Novelist, Short Story Writer, Journalist
Were’t not affection chains thy tender days
To the sweet glances of thy honored love,
I rather would entreat thy company
To see the wonders of the world abroad
Than, living dully sluggardized at home,
Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
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
I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read on the train.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
There’s a land where the mountains are nameless, And the rivers all run God knows where; There are lives that are erring and aimless, And deaths that just hang by a hair; There are hardships that nobody reckons; There’s a land – oh, it beckons and beckons, And I want to go back – and I will.
—Robert W. Service (1874–1958) Scottish Poet, Author
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
If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay home.
—James A. Michener (1907–97) American Novelist, Short Story Writer, Historian
A good place to visit, but a poor place to stay.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw) (1818–85) American Humorist, Author, Lecturer
Worth seeing? Yes; but not worth going to see.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
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 tourist who moves about to see and hear and open himself to all the influences of the places which condense centuries of human greatness is only a man in search of excellence.
—Max Lerner (1902–92) Russian-born American Journalist
A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.
—George Moore (1852–1933) Irish Writer
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
To be a tourist is to escape accountability. Errors and failings don’t cling to you the way they do back home. You’re able to drift across continents and languages, suspending the operation of sound thought. Tourism is the march of stupidity. You’re expected to be stupid. The entire mechanism of the host country is geared to travelers acting stupidly. You walk around dazed, squinting into fold-out maps. You don’t know how to talk to people, how to get anywhere, what the money means, what time it is, what to eat or how to eat it. Being stupid is the pattern, the level and the norm. You can exist on this level for weeks and months without reprimand or dire consequence. Together with thousands, you are granted immunities and broad freedoms. You are an army of fools, wearing bright polyesters, riding camels, taking pictures of each other, haggard, dysenteric, thirsty. There is nothing to think about but the next shapeless event.
—Don DeLillo (b.1936) American Novelist, Short Story Writer
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
It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94) Scottish Novelist
Usually speaking, the worst bred person in company is a young traveller just returned from abroad.
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Irish Satirist
Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian
My favorite thing is to go where I’ve never been.
—Diane Arbus (1923–71) American Photographer
I am leaving the town to the invaders: increasingly numerous, mediocre, dirty, badly behaved, shameless tourists.
—Brigitte Bardot (b.1934) French Film Star
He who would travel happily must travel light.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900–44) French Novelist, Aviator
When I was very young and the urge to be someplace was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked. In other words, I don’t improve, in further words, once a bum always a bum. I fear the disease is incurable.
—John Steinbeck (1902–68) American Novelist, Short Story Writer, Journalist
All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost.
—J. R. R. Tolkien (1892–1973) British Scholar, Author
One of these days in your travels, a guy is going to come up to you and show you a nice brand-new deck of cards on which the seal is not yet broken, and this guy is going to offer to bet you that he can make the Jack of Spades jump out of the deck and squirt cider in your ear. But, son, do not bet this man, for as sure as you are standing there, you are going to end up with an earful of cider.
—Damon Runyon (1884–1946) American Journalist, Short-Story Writer
One of the difficult things of so much travelling is to say goodbye.
—Michael Palin (b.1943) English Comedian, Actor, Writer, Explorer
I am so convinced of the advantages of looking at mankind instead of reading about them, and of the bitter effects of staying at home with all the narrow prejudices of an Islander, that I think there should be a law amongst us to set our young men abroad for a term among the few allies our wars have left us.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet