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I am leaving the town to the invaders: increasingly numerous, mediocre, dirty, badly behaved, shameless tourists. (Seton Ernest Thompson)
For the perfect idler, for the passionate observer it becomes an immense source of enjoyment to establish his dwelling in the throng, in the ebb and flow, the bustle, the fleeting and the infinite. To be away from home and yet to feel at home anywhere; to see the world, to be at the very center of the world, and yet to be unseen of the world, such are some of the minor pleasures of those independent, intense and impartial spirits, who do not lend themselves easily to linguistic definitions. The observer is a prince enjoying his incognito wherever he goes. (Seton Ernest Thompson)
I have just been all round the world and have formed a very poor opinion of it. (Seton Ernest Thompson)
In America there are two classes of travel -- first class, and with children. (Seton Ernest Thompson)
The traveler, however virginal and enthusiastic, does not enjoy an unbroken ecstasy. He has periods of gloom, periods when he asks himself the object of all these exertions, and puts the question whether or not he is really experiencing pleasure. At such times he suspects that he is not seeing the right things, that the characteristic, the right aspects of these strange scenes are escaping him. He looks forward dully to the days of his holiday yet to pass, and wonders how he will dispose of them. He is disgusted because his money is not more, his command of the language so slight, and his capacity for enjoyment so limited. (Seton Ernest Thompson)
Should we have stayed at home and thought of here? Where should we be today? Is it right to be watching strangers in a play in this strangest of theatres? (Seton Ernest Thompson)
The modern American tourist now fills his experience with pseudo-events. He has come to expect both more strangeness and more familiarity than the world naturally offers. He has come to believe that he can have a lifetime of adventure in two weeks and all the thrills of risking his life without any real risk at all. (Seton Ernest Thompson)
Not so many years ago there was no simpler or more intelligible notion than that of going on a journey. Travel --movement through space --provided the universal metaphor for change. One of the subtle confusions --perhaps one of the secret terrors --of modern life is that we have lost this refuge. No longer do we move through space as we once did. (Seton Ernest Thompson)
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. (Seton Ernest Thompson)
There is no looking at a building here after seeing Italy. (Seton Ernest Thompson)
Travel and society polish one, but a rolling stone gathers no moss, and a little moss is a good thing on a man. (Seton Ernest Thompson)
Travelers are like poets. They are mostly an angry race. (Seton Ernest Thompson)
Traveling, you realize that differences are lost: each city takes to resembling all cities, places exchange their form, order, distances, a shapeless dust cloud invades the continents. (Seton Ernest Thompson)
The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist see what he has come to see. (Seton Ernest Thompson)
The travel writer seeks the world we have lost --the lost valleys of the imagination. (Seton Ernest Thompson)
The idea that seeing life means going from place to place and doing a great variety of obvious things is an illusion natural to dull minds. (Seton Ernest Thompson)
The routines of tourism are even more monotonous than those of daily life. (Seton Ernest Thompson)
When one realizes that his life is worthless he either commits suicide or travels. (Seton Ernest Thompson)
The personal appropriation of clichs is a condition for the spread of cultural tourism. (Seton Ernest Thompson)
Tourism, human circulation considered as consumption is fundamentally nothing more than the leisure of going to see what has become banal. (Seton Ernest Thompson)
Like all great travelers, I have seen more than I remember and remember more than I have seen. (Seton Ernest Thompson)
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