The Art of Travel

The poet accused cities of fostering a family of life-destroying emotions: anxiety about our position in the social hierarchy, envy at the success of others, pride and a desire to shine in the eyes of strangers.

The sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.

A dominant impulse on encountering beauty is the desire to hold on to it: to possess it and give it weight in our lives. There is an urge to say, ‘I was here, I saw this and it mattered to me.’

Ruskin connected the wish to travel fast and far to an inability to derive appropriate pleasure from any one place

that I had inadvertently brought myself with me to the island.

that I had inadvertently brought myself with me to the island.

was spurred on by an uncertain longing to be transported from a boring daily life to a marvellous world.’

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 is therefore as useless and fugitive as necklace beads without a connecting chain.

The body found it hard to sleep, it complained of heat, flies and difficulties digesting hotel meals. The mind meanwhile revealed a commitment to anxiety, boredom, free-floating sadness and financial alarm.