"The age of independent travel is drawing to an end," said E.M. Forster back in 1920, when it had been increasingly clear for deca...des that the mass production inevitable in the late industrial age had generated its own travel-spawn, tourism, which is to travel as plastic is to wood. If travel is mysterious, even miraculous, and often lonely and frightening, tourism is commonsensical, utilitarian, safe, and social, "that gregarious passion," the traveler Patrick Leigh Fermor calls it, "which destroys the object of its love." Not self-directed but externally enticed, as a tourist you go not where your own curiosity beckons but where the industry decrees you shall go. Tourism soothes, shielding you from the shocks of novelty and menace, confirming your prior view of the world rather than shaking it up. It obliges you not just to behold conventional things but to behold them in the approved conventional way.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A mind always employed is always happy. This is the true secret, the grand recipe for felicity. The idle are the only wretched.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I see now our fireside formed into a groupe, no one member of which has a fibre in their composition which can ever produce any ja...rring or jealousies among us. No irregular passions, no dangerous bias, which may render problematical the future fortunes and happiness of our descendants.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I write to you out of turn, and believe I must adopt the rule of only writing when I am written to, in hopes that may provoke more... frequent letters.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The almighty has never made known to any body at what time he created [the world], nor will he tell any body when he means to put ...an end to it, if ever he means to do it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I know nothing more important to inculcate into the minds of young people than the wisdom, the honor, and the blessed comfort of l...iving within their income.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have now the gloomy prospect of retiring from office loaded with serious debts, which will materially affect the tranquility of ...my retirement.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I feel a sincere wish indeed to see our government brought back to it's republican principles, to see that kind of government firm...ly fixed, to which my whole life has been devoted. I hope we shall now see it so established, as that when I retire, it may be under full security that we are to continue free and happy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time, who never loses any. It is wonderful how... much may be done, if we are always doing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »