Travel and Horizons

Over hill, over dale, Thorough bush, thorough brier, Over park, over pale, Thorough flood, thorough fire.

Bearing their birthrights proudly on their backs, To make a hazard of new fortunes here.

Like one that stands upon a promontory, And spies a far-off shore where he would tread, Wishing his foot were equal with his eye.

This world nys but a thurghfare ful of wo, And we been pilgrymes, passing to and fro. Deeth is an ende of every worldly soore.

I would win my way to the coast, apple-bearing Hesperian coast of which the minstrels sing, where the Lord of the Ocean denies the voyager further sailing, and fixes the solemn limit of Heaven which giant Atlas upholds. There the streams flow with ambrosia by Zeus’s bed of love, and holy Earth, the giver of life, yields to the gods rich blessedness. 6

Stranger in a strange country.

Yvetot [a small town in the north of France] is as good as Constantinople.

It has been said that a Scotchman has not seen the world until he has seen Edinburgh; and I think that I may say that an American has not seen the United States until he has seen Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

One must travel, to learn. Every day, now, old Scriptural phrases that never possessed any significance for me before, take to themselves a meaning.

Broad, wholesome, charitable views .. can not be acquired by vegetating in one's little corner of the earth.

A man accustomed to American food and American domestic cookery would not starve to death suddenly in Europe, but I think he would gradually waste away, and eventually die.

It's lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened.

In religion, India is the only millionaire... the One land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for all the shows of all the rest of the globe combined.

It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it .

Travel is lethal to prejudice.

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.

Books are for people who wish they were somewhere else.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.

Real travel requires a maximum of unscheduled wandering, for there is no other way of discovering surprises and marvels, which, as I see it, is the only good reason for not staying at home.

Those who travel outward seek completeness in things; those who gaze inward find sufficiency in themselves.

Those who become enamored of the art, without having previously applied to the diligent study of the scientific part of it, may be compared to mariners who put to the sea in a ship without rudder or compass and therefore cannot be certain of arriving at the wished for port.

Men standing in opposite hemispheres will converse and deride each other and embrace each other, and understand each other’s language.

What induces you, oh man, to depart from your home in town, to leave parents and friends, and go to the countryside 72 over mountains and valleys, if it is not for the beauty of the world of nature?