Travels with Charley Quotes

“There’s a gentility on the road. A direct or personal question is out of bounds. But this is simple good manners anywhere in the world.”

“There is absolutely nothing to take the place of a good man.”

“The great get-together symbol is the cup of coffee. ”

“I find out of long experience that I admire all nations and hate all governments, and nowhere is my natural anarchism more aroused than at national borders”

“I know people who are so immersed in road maps that they never see the countryside they pass through, and others who, having traced a route, are held to it as through held by flanged wheels to rails.”

“Everything in the world must have design or the human mind rejects it. But in addition it must have purpose or the human conscience shies away from it.”

“This journey has been like a full dinner of many courses, set before a starving man. At first he tries to eat all of everything, but as the meal progresses he finds he must forgo some things to keep his appetite and his taste buds functioning. ”

“It is the nature of a man as he grows older, a small bride in time, to protest against change, particularly change for the better.”

“Only through imitation do we develop toward originality.”

“I suppose our capacity for self-delusion is boundless.”

“And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.”

“We value virtue but do not discuss it. The honest bookkeeper, the faithful wife, the earnest scholar get little of our attention compared to the embezzler, the tramp, the cheat.”

“A journey is a person itself; no two are alike.”

“Who has not known a journey to be over and done before the traveler returns? The reverse is also true: many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased.”

“A dog, particularly an exotic like Charley, is a bond between strangers.”

“A sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ.”

“How the myth wipes out the fact.”

“Curious how a place unvisited can take such hold on the mind so that the very name sets up a ringing.”

“When people are engaged in something they are not proud of, they do not welcome witnesses.”

“I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction.”