What gives value to travel is fear. It is the fact that, at a certain moment, when we are so far from our own country we are seized by a vague fear, and an instinctive desire to go back to the protection of old habits this is why we should not say that we travel for pleasure. There is no pleasure in traveling, and I look upon it more as an occasion for spiritual testing Pleasure takes us away from ourselves in the same way as distraction, in Pascals use of the word, takes us away from God. Travel, which is like a greater and a graver science, brings us back to ourselves.
About This Quote
About Albert Camus
Albert Camus was a 20th-century French philosopher and writer. Albert Camus was a French philosopher, novelist, author, dramatist, journalist, world federalist, and political activist. He was the recipient of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the second-youngest recipient in history. Read more on Wikipedia →
Themes
- Fear — Understanding and overcoming the anxieties that hold us back