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At the end of hours of train-dreaming, we may feel we have been returned to ourselves - that is, brought back into contact with emotions and ideas of ...more

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One wants never to give up this crystalline perspective. One wants to keep counterpositioning home with what one knows of alternative realities, as th...more

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Even if our loved ones have assured us that they will be busy at work, even if they told us they hated us for going traveling in the first place, even...more

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We are humiliated by what is powerful and mean, but awed by what is powerful and noble.

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A danger of travel is that we see things at the wrong time, before we have had a chance to build up the necessary receptivity and when new information...more

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If the world seems unfair or beyond our understanding, sublime places suggest that it is not surprising that things should be thus. We are the playthi...more

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Instead of bringing back 1600 plants, we might return from our journeys with a collection of small unfêted but life-enhancing thoughts.

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The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to.

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A dominant impulse on encountering beauty is to wish to hold on to it, to possess it and give it weight in one’s life. There is an urge to say, ‘I was...more

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If we are inclined to forget how much there is in the world besides that which we anticipate, then works of art are perhaps a little to blame, for in ...more

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Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains.

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The study of maps and the perusal of travel books aroused in me a secret fascination that was at times almost irresistible.

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Why be seduced by something as small as a front door in another country? Why fall in love with a place because it has trams and its people seldom have...more

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Introspective reflections that might otherwise be liable to stall are helped along by the flow of the landscape...

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Humboldt's early biographer, F.A. Schwarzenberg, subtitled his life of Humboldt What May Be Accomplished in a Lifetime. He summarised the areas of his...more