“[A]nother important difference between tourist and traveler is that the former accepts his own civilization without question; not so the traveler, who compares it with the others, and rejects those elements he finds not to his liking.”

—  Paul Bowles, book The Sheltering Sky

Source: The Sheltering Sky

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "[A]nother important difference between tourist and traveler is that the former accepts his own civilization without que…" by Paul Bowles?
Paul Bowles photo
Paul Bowles22
American composer, writer, translator 1910–1999

Related quotes

Šantidéva photo

“The Spirit of Awakening is known to be of two kinds: the spirit of aspiring for Awakening, and the spirit of venturing toward awakening. Just as one perceives the difference between a person who yearns to travel and a traveler, so do the learned recognize the corresponding difference between these two.”

Šantidéva (685–763) 8th-century Indian Buddhist monk and scholar

§ 1.15
Bodhicaryavatara, A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life

Andrei Codrescu photo

“Unchecked, the tourist will climb over the fence and come right into your house to take pictures of you in your habitat. Cities mindful of tourists have built elaborate “tourist traps” which, luckily, work. Tourists are kept confined to these, and few escape. There is, of course, the type known as the “intrepid tourist.” This one has to be watched carefully or he can become most annoying. Little wonder these are so often the target of terrorists. If there is an aspect of benign terror about the tourist, there is also a great deal of tourist in the terrorist. Terrorists travel with only one thing in mind, just like the tourist, and the specifics of places escape them both. Terrorists travel for the purpose of shooting unsuspecting foreigners, just as tourists travel for the purpose of shooting them with a camera.”

Andrei Codrescu (1946) American writer

“The Tourist,” Raised by Puppets (1990).

Freya Stark photo

“One can only really travel if one lets oneself go and takes what every place brings without trying to turn it into a healthy private pattern of one's own and I suppose that is the difference between travel and tourism.”

Freya Stark (1893–1993) British explorer and writer

Cited in Molly Izzard, A Marvellous Eye, Cornucopia Issue 2. From Wikipedia: Freya Stark. Retrieved 2009-08-25

John of St. Samson photo

“This path is so delightful and delectable that anyone who knows it will lovingly travel it at his own cost and expense. Such happiness is beyond words.”

John of St. Samson (1571–1636)

From The Goad, the Flames, the Arrows and the Mirror of the love of God

Julian Barnes photo

“He didn’t really like travel, of course. He liked the idea of travel, and the memory of travel, but not travel itself.”

Julian Barnes book Flaubert's Parrot

Source: Flaubert's Parrot

Ernst Gombrich photo

“Whether we know it or not, we always approach the past with some preconceived ideas, with a rudimentary theory we wish to test. In this as in many other respects the cultural historian does not differ all that much from his predecessor, the traveller to foreign lands. Not the professional traveller who is only interested in one particular errand, be it the exploration of a country’s kinship system or its hydroelectric schemes, but the broad-minded traveller who wants to understand the culture of the country in which he finds himself.”

Ernst Gombrich (1909–2001) art historian

In Search of Cultural History (1969)

Henry Adams photo

“These questions of taste, of feeling, of inheritance, need no settlement. Every one carries his own inch-rule of taste, and amuses himself by applying it, triumphantly, wherever he travels.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Aldous Huxley photo

“For every traveller who has any taste of his own, the only useful guidebook will be the one which he himself has written.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

Related topics