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Thoughts about travelling

Carl William Brown — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 14:23:25 +0000

Meditations on travelling

Thoughts about travelling

Nothing can be compared to the new life that the discovery of another country provides for a thoughtful person. Although I am still the same I believe to have changed to the bones.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Italian Journey

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.
Arnold Bennett

This book is nothing more than a pilgrim’s journey towards the sanctuary of stupidity, he is not in good company, which is why he listens to the advice of the wise men of the past and a bit of rebellious and melancholy music. The pitfalls are many, but he is not afraid, he is not a venerator, nor even a flatterer, on the contrary, he is a destroyer.
Carl William Brown

Tourism, a female phenomenon (or of unfeminined males): evasion, but above all digression and dispersion, spreading one’s interests (rather than concentrating them) and therefore being reduced to having no real ones. A tactile-motor stimulus, capable of producing numbness or dizziness that continues even after the occasion has ceased. Another way, perhaps, of “alienating”, of dispossessing oneself.
Guido Morselli

Behold then Septimus Dodge returning to Dodge-town victorious. Not crowned with laurel, it is true, but wreathed in lists of things he has seen and sucked dry. Seen and sucked dry, you know: Venus de Milo, the Rhine or the Coliseum: swallowed like so many clams, and left the shells.
D. H. Lawrence

He who is only a traveler learns things at second-hand and by the halves, and is poor authority. We are most interested when science reports what those men already know practically or instinctively, for that alone is a true humanity, or account of human experience.
Henry David Thoreau

Thoughts about travelling

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.
Daniel J. Boorstin

I am so convinced of the advantages of looking at mankind instead of reading about them, and of the bitter effects of staying at home with all the narrow prejudices of an Islander, that I think there should be a law amongst us to set our young men abroad for a term among the few allies our wars have left us.
Lord Byron

Life, as the most ancient of all metaphors insists, is a journey; and the travel book, in its deceptive simulation of the journey’s fits and starts, rehearses life’s own fragmentation. More even than the novel, it embraces the contingency of things.
Jonathan Raban

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.
Daniel J. Boorstin

It must be said of traveling that it arouses new ideas in those who already have many, but on the contrary it extinguishes the few in those who have few. It serves to awaken the notion of the infinite variety of life, with many living beings, many customs, many places, many sufferings, etc. etc. However, not in travel, but only in the solitude of meditation is it possible to discover the depth of life.
Romano Amerio

Thoughts on travels

Objective truth in politics has a rather labile value and incredibly blurred boundaries. Here’s an example. In the great Russia of the pseudo-communist government, a party hierarch during a conference was praising the magnificent progress of a certain locality in the country, when suddenly a listener from the audience spoke up and stated in amazement: “Truly I have been in the places that you have described, but I don’t seem to have noticed all this great progress!”; to which the official’s prompt response was: “Dear comrade, you travel too much and at the same time read Pravda too little.” Pravda, which in Russian means “truth”, was obviously the official organ of the Russian Communist Party.
Carl William Brown

People commonly travel the world over to see rivers and mountains, new stars, garish birds, freak fish, grotesque breeds of human; they fall into an animal stupor that gapes at existence and they think they have seen something.
Soren Kierkegaard

The important thing about travel in foreign lands is that it breaks the speech habits and makes you blab less, and breaks the habitual space-feeling because of different village plans and different landscapes. It is less important that there are different mores, for you counteract these with your own reaction-formations.
Paul Goodman

The country of the tourist pamphlet always is another country, an embarrassing abstraction of the desirable that, thank God, does not exist on this planet, where there are always ants and bad smells and empty Coca-Cola bottles to keep the grubby finger-print of reality upon the beautiful.
Nadine Gordimer

Of journeying the benefits are many: the freshness it bringeth to the heart, the seeing and hearing of marvelous things, the delight of beholding new cities, the meeting of unknown friends, and the learning of high manners.
Sadi Gulistan

Some end up corrupting themselves through long journeys, losing what little religion they had left; from one day to the next they see a new cult, different customs, different ceremonies. They resemble those who enter shops, undecided about the choice of fabrics they want to buy; the large number of those that are shown to them leaves them even more indeterminate, each of them having its own attraction and its own convenience: they cannot resolve themselves, they leave without having bought anything.
Jean de La Bruyère

Thoughts and reflections about travelling

When you travel you experience the act of Rebirth in a much more concrete way. You find yourself faced with completely new situations, the day passes more slowly and, in most cases, you don’t understand the language that others speak. This is exactly what happens to a baby just born from the mother’s womb.
Paulo Coelho

I am not much an advocate for traveling, and I observe that men run away to other countries because they are not good in their own, and run back to their own because they pass for nothing in the new places. For the most part, only the light characters travel. Who are you that have no task to keep you at home?
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.
Mark Twain

You don’t need to travel long distances to get answers or experience emotions. If we were authentic in our way of thinking, we would not need to travel a long way because it is a journey that follows the uncertain path of a dream that often leads to desolate areas. The true goal of life is to be able to be at peace with ourselves.
Romano Battaglia

Just as the human race, in blaming present things, praises past things, so the majority of travellers, while travelling, are lovers of their native sojourn, and prefer it with a kind of anger to those where they find themselves. Having returned to their native place, with the same anger they postpone it to all the other places where they have been.
Giacomo Leopardi

Nothing is beautiful and interesting if it does not attract tourists. Training the tourist, controlling the tourist, directing the tourist, is a secret and ruthless science. If Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Bernini, Borromini and all the great artists had known that the recipient of their works would be tourists, perhaps they would have given up. If the tourist disappeared, the world economy would stall. The tourist is sacred, new cults and new rites are celebrated for him.
Fausto Gianfranceschi

The pleasure of travelling

After the gods had visited our planet, seeing what it was like, they decided to leave as soon as possible, but in order not to have made the journey in vain, they decided that they could give us a gift, or rather, they decided that they could unload an uncomfortable burden for their Olympus, and so it was that they left us as a memory the most stupid and stubborn goddess, ignorance; now it’s up to man to chase her back to Olympus; but the matter is not at all simple.
Carl William Brown

Traveling for profit is encouraged; travel for survival is condemned, much to the delight of traffickers of “illegal immigrants” and in spite of occasional and ephemeral waves of horror and indignation provoked by the sight of “economic emigrants” who ended up suffocated or drowned in the vain attempt to reach land capable of feed them.
Zygmunt Bauman

Travelers are divided into five degrees: those of the first and lowest degree are those who travel and who are seen traveling – they actually “are travelled” and are, so to speak, blind; the latter are the ones who really see the world; third parties have experiences as a result of seeing; the fourth ones relive the experiences they have had within themselves and take them away with them; finally there are some men of maximum strength who must ultimately also necessarily relive outside of themselves, in actions and works, everything they have seen – after experiencing it and experiencing it internally, as soon as they return home. Similar to these five categories of travelers all men generally go throughout the entire pilgrimage of life, the lowest as mere liabilities, the highest as those who act and die without any unused residue of intimate facts.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Our planet is nothing more than a spaceship groping in the cosmic void of the universe, and it is perhaps precisely for this reason that the most far-sighted are already thinking about the possibility that ultragalactic travel could one day allow us to abandon it without regrets. For the moment, however, the only agency that allows these non-return tours still remains the good old funeral home and the most advanced astronauts still remain, despite ourselves, the atavistic and friendly gravediggers.
Carl William Brown

It is said that Socrates, when someone complained that he had received no benefit from his travels, said to him: «It is natural that it should be so; you traveled in your own company.” Oh, how much it would benefit some people if they could get away from themselves! In reality they are oppressed by themselves, they worry, they damage themselves, they are dismayed. What good is it to cross the seas and go from city to city? If you want to escape the evils that beset you, you must not go to another place; you must be another man.
Lucius Anneus Seneca

We take everything we are with us on the journey. We carry the home of our soul with us, as a turtle does with its shell. In truth, the journey through the countries of the world is a symbolic journey for man. Everywhere he goes it is his own soul that he is looking for. This is why man must be able to travel.
Andrej Tarkovskij

Reflections about travelling

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.
Daniel J. Boorstin

I have not often seen more natural acting than that of these masks. It is such acting as can only be sustained by a remarkably happy talent and long practice. While I am writing this, they are making a tremendous noise on the canal under my window, though it is past midnight. Whether for good or for evil, they are always doing something.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Good literature makes us travel everywhere, dreams and imagination become foresight and memory at the same time, the past becomes present, and the future past, and through the mythical arcana of thought we go away from these murky meanders, leaving the our beloved politicians on this earth to rot with those who have faith in them.
Carl William Brown

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.
Charles Baudelaire

I have spent the day well just looking and looking. It is the same in art as in life. The deeper one penetrates, the broader grows the view.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

To be a tourist is to escape accountability. Errors and failings don’t cling to you the way they do back home. You’re able to drift across continents and languages, suspending the operation of sound thought. Tourism is the march of stupidity. You’re expected to be stupid. The entire mechanism of the host country is geared to travelers acting stupidly. You walk around dazed, squinting into fold-out maps. You don’t know how to talk to people, how to get anywhere, what the money means, what time it is, what to eat or how to eat it. Being stupid is the pattern, the level and the norm. You can exist on this level for weeks and months without reprimand or dire consequence. Together with thousands, you are granted immunities and broad freedoms. You are an army of fools, wearing bright polyesters, riding camels, taking pictures of each other, haggard, dysenteric, thirsty. There is nothing to think about but the next shapeless event.
Don Delillo

The experience of travelling

He that travels in theory has no inconveniences; he has shade and sunshine at his disposal, and wherever he alights finds tables of plenty and looks of gaiety. These ideas are indulged till the day of departure arrives, the chaise is called, and the progress of happiness begins. A few miles teach him the fallacies of imagination. The road is dusty, the air is sultry, the horses are sluggish. He longs for the time of dinner that he may eat and rest. The inn is crowded, his orders are neglected, and nothing remains but that he devour in haste what the cook has spoiled, and drive on in quest of better entertainment. He finds at night a more commodious house, but the best is always worse than he expected.
Samuel Johnson

A route differs from a road not only because it is solely intended for vehicles, but also because it is merely a line that connects one point with another. A route has no meaning in itself; its meaning derives entirely from the two points that it connects. A road is a tribute to space. Every stretch of road has meaning in itself and invites us to stop. A route is the triumphant devaluation of space, which thanks to it has been reduced to a mere obstacle to human movement and a waste of time.
Milan Kundera

When I was very young and the urge to be someplace was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked. In other words, I don’t improve, in further words, once a bum always a bum. I fear the disease is incurable.
John Steinbeck

I feel lost in Berlin. It has no resemblance to the city I had supposed it was. There was once a Berlin which I would have known, from descriptions in books–the Berlin of the last century and the beginning of the present one: a dingy city in a marsh, with rough streets, muddy and lantern-lighted, dividing straight rows of ugly houses all alike, compacted into blocks as square and plain and uniform and monotonous and serious as so many dry-goods boxes. But that Berlin has disappeared. It seems to have disappeared totally, and left no sign. The bulk of the Berlin of today has about it no suggestion of a former period. The site it stands on has traditions and a history, but the city itself has no traditions and no history. It is a new city; the newest I have ever seen. Chicago would seem venerable beside it; for there are many old-looking districts in Chicago, but not many in Berlin. The main mass of the city looks as if it had been built last week, the rest of it has a just perceptibly graver tone, and looks as if it might be six or even eight months old.
Mark Twain

On the same topic you can also read:

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Job tourism in Lombardy

Turismo enogastronomico

Trip Advisor travels

The Lake District

The Scottish Highlands

City guide around London

Dickens literary London

The London Marathon

Christmas Markets in England

Christmas markets in America

Christmas markets in Italy and Germany

Juneteenth or Freedom Day

The post Thoughts about travelling first appeared on The World of English.

Independence Day

Carl William Brown — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 08:03:19 +0000

American Independence Day

Independence Day of the American Nation, History, Celebrations, Curiosities, Quotes and Cultural Traditions. The United States of America is celebrating its 250th birthday on Saturday, July 4th, 2026.

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.
Abraham Lincoln

Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.
Thomas Jefferson

Freedom is never dear at any price. It is the breath of life. What would a man not pay for living?
Mahatma Gandhi

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.
Albert Camus

This Independence Day, remind us that we have the freedom to become more culturally competent and free for business, finance and social human sake.
Carl William Brown

He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from opposition; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself.
Thomas Paine

Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.
Benjamin Franklin

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
George Bernard Shaw

American Declaration of independence

Independence Day is annually celebrated on July 4 and is often known as “the Fourth of July”. It is the anniversary of the publication of the declaration of independence from Great Britain in 1776. Patriotic displays and family events are organized throughout the United States. Independence Day is a patriotic public holiday celebrated by Americans worldwide. It is a day off for the general population, and schools and most businesses are closed.

Independence was claimed on July 4, 1776, from Britain, at which time our Democracy was born. We are the “land of the free and home of the brave”. Independence Day is a day of family celebrations with picnics and barbecues, showing a great deal of emphasis on the American tradition of political freedom. Activities associated with the day include watermelon or hotdog eating competitions and sporting events, such as baseball games, three-legged races, swimming activities and tug-of-war games. We are a diverse nation, made up of a variety of dynamic people.

Americans all over the world are gearing themselves up for huge Independence Day celebrations this week, which are now just a few hours away. This year marks the 243rd celebration of the American national holiday, and the day is typically honoured with parties and firework displays across the USA. Usually, a special event is also held at the White House to mark Independence Day, an occasion which is a huge celebration for many across the country.

Always held on July 4, Independence Day commemorates the signing of the Declaration of Independence of the US in 1776. Since Christopher Columbus led a Spanish expedition to the “New World” in 1492, much of what is modern day America was under European rule. Most of North and South America was divided up between the Spanish, English, French, Portuguese and Dutch governments. In 1606, King James I decided to establish permanent settlements in the Americas and formed the Colony of Virginia the following year.

At around the same time, the Dutch, Swedish, and French also established successful North American colonies – but these eventually came under the English crown. In 1732 the Province of Georgia was established and became the 13th colony ruled by the British Empire. In 1782 the British Parliament finally agreed to end all offensive operations in North America and the following year all parties signed the Treaty of Paris in which Great Britain agreed to recognize the sovereignty of the United States and formally end the war. The last British troops departed New York City on November 25, 1783, marking the end of British rule in the new United States.

American Independence Day Parade

In 1775, people in New England began fighting the British for their independence. On July 2, 1776, the Congress secretly voted for independence from Great Britain. Two days later, on July 4, 1776, the final wording of the Declaration of Independence was approved, and the document was published. The first public reading of the Declaration of Independence was on July 8, 1776. Delegates began to sign the Declaration of Independence on August 2, 1776. In 1870, Independence Day was made an unpaid holiday for federal employees. In 1941, it became a paid holiday for them.

The first description of how Independence Day would be celebrated was in a letter from John Adams to his wife Abigail on July 3, 1776. He described “pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations” throughout the United States. However, the term “Independence Day” was not used until 1791. Interestingly, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, both signers of the Declaration of Independence and presidents of the United States, died on July 4, 1826 – exactly 50 years after the adoption of the declaration. It is also important to note that Native Americans lived in the country and each tribe had its own nation and government prior to the European settlers.

How is Independence Day celebrated?

Many people display the American flag outside their homes or buildings. Many communities arrange fireworks that are often accompanied by patriotic music. The most impressive fireworks are shown on television. Some employees use one or more of their vacation days to create a long weekend so that they can escape the heat at their favorite beach or vacation spot. Independence Day is a patriotic holiday for celebrating the positive aspects of the United States. Many politicians appear at public events to show their support for the history, heritage and people of their country. Above all, people in the United States express and give thanks for the freedom and liberties fought by the first generation of many of today’s Americans. The Statue of Liberty is a national monument that is associated with Independence Day.

In 1938, July 4 became a national paid holiday and Independence Day is therefore a federal holiday. If July 4 is a Saturday, it is observed on Friday, July 3. If July 4 is a Sunday, it is observed on Monday, July 5. Government offices and schools are closed. Some businesses may be closed as well. In some years, many employees use a proportion of their vacation days to create a long weekend. This can cause congestion in some places, particularly towards popular holiday destinations. There are many public events, parades, shows and fireworks displays. This may cause local disruption to traffic. Public transit systems do not usually operate on their regular timetables.

Fourth of July Independence Day

There are many firework displays around the country, accompanied by parties and parades. Some choose to make the most of not being at work to spend it with their families and friends. Trump blimp ‘twin’ set to crash President’s Independence Day rally. Bristol in Rhode Island has the nation’s longest-running Independence Day celebrations, with festivities taking place since 1785. The festivities there start mid June and conclude with a 2.5 miles military parade on July 4, followed by a ball.

The White House stages a large fireworks celebration and Macy’s fireworks in New York are famously screened across the country. This year, Jennifer Hudson is set to perform at the Macy’s show to celebrate the Wizard of Oz turning 80. According to CNN, the National Retail Foundation estimated that Americans spend $5.32 billion on food for cookouts and picnics to celebrate July 4.

Somewhat controversially, Donald Trump has announced plans for an Independence Day rally dubbed “Salute to America”. The festivities include a military parade – featuring tanks and fighter jets – through the streets of Washington DC, fireworks and a free concert at which thousands are expected to attend. The president has also announced he will address the nation from the Lincoln Memorial on the city’s National Mall.

You can also read:

Independence Day Quotes

Here are the major U.S. holidays. In some cases, businesses, government offices, and schools will be closed, and also the International Days list.

New Year’s Eve/New Year’s Day
MLK Jr. Day
President’s Day
Valentine’s Day
St. Patrick’s Day
Easter/Spring Break
Mother’s Day
Memorial Day
Father’s Day
4th of July
Labor Day
Halloween
Thanksgiving
Christmas Eve
Christmas Day
International Days List

Juneteenth or Freedom Day

The post Independence Day first appeared on The World of English.

Independence Day Quotes

Carl William Brown — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 07:33:25 +0000

Independence Day Quotes

Independence Day Quotes, Aphorisms, Ideas and Thoughts by Famous Authors, Writers and Politicians on the American Independence Day holiday and celebrations.

It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance. This is the sentiment embodied in that Declaration of Independence.
Abraham Lincoln

Freedom is never dear at any price. It is the breath of life. What would a man not pay for living?
Mahatma Gandhi

Do not destroy that immortal emblem of humanity, the Declaration of Independence.
Abraham Lincoln

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.
Albert Camus

He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from opposition; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself.
Thomas Paine

Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.
Benjamin Franklin

Freedom is not the right to do what we want, but what we ought. Let us have faith that right makes might and in that faith let us; to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.
Abraham Lincoln

Independence Day Aphorisms

In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free – honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve.
Abraham Lincoln

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty.
Abraham Lincoln

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.
Abraham Lincoln

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
George Bernard Shaw

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
George Orwell

Let freedom reign. The sun never set on so glorious a human achievement.
Nelson Mandela

We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.
William Faulkner

The United States was born in revolution and nurtured by struggle. Throughout our history, the American people have befriended and supported all those who seek independence and a better way of life.
Robert Kennedy

Liberty is maintained by responsible freedom.
Roger W Hancock

Fourth of July Independence Day

Your freedom is brought to you courtesy of the outstanding Men and Women who serve and have served this country with honor, dedication, pride and sacrifice!
Nishan Panwar

Humanity has won its battle. Liberty now has a country.
Marquis de Lafayette

This Independence Day, remind us that we have the freedom to become more culturally competent and free for business, finance and social human sake.
Carl William Brown

Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better.
Albert Camus

In the summer of 1776 our Founding Fathers sought to secure our independence and the liberties that remain the foundation of our nation today.
Doc Hastings

God give us peace without peace we are without freedom.
Ellen J. Barrier

Life without liberty is like a body without spirit.
Khalil Gibran

Those who won our independence believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty.
Louis Brandeis

Liberty, taking the word in its concrete sense, consists in the ability to choose.
Simone Weil

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.
Ronald Reagan

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
John F. Kennedy

American Independence Day Parade

Independence doesn’t mean you decide the way you want.
Stephen Breyer

True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
Franklin D. Roosevelt

It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.
Samuel Adams

Let freedom never perish in your hands.
Joseph Addison

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.
Thomas Paine

The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.
John F. Kennedy

The unity of freedom has never relied on uniformity of opinion.
John F. Kennedy

Freedom is but the possibility of a various and indefinite activity; while government, or the exercise of dominion, is a single, yet real activity. The longing for freedom, therefore, is at first only too frequently suggested by the deep-felt consciousness of its absence.
Karl Wilhelm Von Humboldt

Freedom lies in being bold.
Robert Frost

Better to die fighting for freedom then be a prisoner all the days of your life.
Bob Marley

Freedom is never given; it is won.
A. Philip Randolph

The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object.
Thomas Jefferson

Enjoy the peace your valor won. Let independence be our boast, Ever mindful what it cost; Ever grateful for the prize, Let its altar reach the skies!
Joseph Hopkinson

For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.
Nelson Mandela

Independence means enjoying freedom and empowering others too to let them do so.
Vikrmn

You can also read:

Independence Day

Quotes and ideas on vacation

The post Independence Day Quotes first appeared on The World of English.

Thoughts and reflections on vacation

Carl William Brown — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 07:53:45 +0000

Thoughts and reflections on vacation

Thoughts and reflections on vacation, some meditations on this summer popular topic by different and famous authors, writers and artists to enrich our holidays. What’s more don’t forget to visit pour main page on Tourism and travels. There you can take a tour around the world learning about culture, traditions, curiosities, towns, lakes, mountains, best hotels, magnificent cruises, links, photos and videos by English-culture.com

Holidays are in no sense an alternative to the congestion and bustle of cities and work. Quite the contrary. People look to escape into an intensification of the conditions of ordinary life, into a deliberate aggravation of those conditions: further from nature, nearer to artifice, to abstraction, to total pollution, to well above average levels of stress, pressure, concentration and monotony – this is the ideal of popular entertainment. No one is interested in overcoming alienation; the point is to plunge into it to the point of ecstasy. That is what holidays are for.
Jean Baudrillard

Total physical and mental inertia are highly agreeable, much more so than we allow ourselves to imagine. A beach not only permits such inertia but enforces it, thus neatly eliminating all problems of guilt. It is now the only place in our overly active world that does.
John Kenneth Galbraith

More than just yearly rituals in which we connect with friends and family, vacations are also exercises in self-definition. In affording time away from the demands of everyday life, vacations disclose what people choose to do rather than are required to do.
Cindy Sondik Aron

Sometimes a vacation helps restore peace in families. But you have to find the right method. My brother did this: after a whole year spent sticking together with his wife, he said: «Carme’, this year I want to take a healthy vacation». «Genna’, and how do you take a healthy vacation?» «Say hello to us here, we’ll catch up on the way back!»
Alessandro Siani

Vacations are designed to refresh the outlook of everyone. No matter how tired they may be when they return to work, vacationers have been refreshed emotionally and intellectually. Their effectiveness in their job has probably improved, and they are, generally speaking, better employees for the time off.
Robert J. Fischer

Reflections on vacation

What distinguishes a true samurai from other characters is that the original fighter always walks with death at his side and always trains, with his mind above all, instead of going on vacation, even when it’s a holiday.
Carl William Brown

[My wife and I] argued and butted heads for a while, and finally decided that it would be better to take a vacation or get a divorce. We discussed it calmly, like mature people, and we decided to get a divorce because we could only spend so much. And besides, a vacation in Bermuda lasts two weeks, whereas a divorce lasts a lifetime.
Woody Allen

These young people lack neither character nor good aptitude nor diligence: but they have not been given time to give themselves direction, rather they have been accustomed, from childhood, to receive direction. When they were mature enough to be “sent into the desert”, something else was done instead – they were used, they were alienated from themselves, they were educated to be used daily, they created for them a theory of duties out of all this – and now they cannot do without it and do not want anything else. The fact remains that these poor draft animals cannot be refused “holidays” – as this ideal of idleness of a century exhausted by too much work is called: in which it is permitted for once to abandon oneself to laziness and to become stupid and childish at one’s pleasure.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Every year, at the beginning of summer, we read learned analyses of staggered holidays, “hit and run” vacations, reasonable departures (intelligent, it seems excessive). Then comes Ferragosto and everything is as usual: people, if they can, don’t stay at home. We bite, yes, but only if they don’t let us escape along crowded highways. It’s not clear whether we are forced (closed offices, shops too), or instead we love the collective ritual and its barbaric aspects: crowds, queues, waiting, suffering and complaints.
Beppe Severgnini

I never went on vacation with my father, also because my father spent his vacations, about fifteen days in August, painting the apartment under the watchful, attentive and slightly annoying guidance of my mother. Those were the years of the economic boom in Italy, but in our house there was very little money going around. Later we could also go on vacation, and in fact on some occasions both my mother and I had taken vacations, but my father never, by now he had gotten used to it and didn’t even miss it. Now I don’t remember those August months of so many years ago very well, but one thing I know for sure, they were the best times of my life.
Carl William Brown

When it comes to the summer months most people start to think about where they will be going on vacation. This is the time of year when most individuals take time off of work because the kids are out of school. It is the perfect time for everyone to spend time together and to regroup from the stress that is often experienced with everyday life.
Cindy Crawford

The current Western concept of holidays is as ferocious as the very concept of work, not only because it interferes profoundly with the sense of freedom, but because it transforms and distorts its meaning. During the holidays, millions of people are forced to have fun, just as during the rest of the year they are forced to work tirelessly, to dream of finding a job or to recover from breakdowns and illnesses, caused by forced and daily work activity.
Silvano Agosti

I really love visiting cities of art on vacation. On vacation I go looking for asphalt like a pointer dog looks for a pheasant. What’s better than Madrid in August? Maybe Ibiza in August, but you have to be normal. Instead of a pedal boat, the subway. Instead of a walk by the sea, the queue in front of the museum. Instead of a fresh coconut, a hot orangeade. Then I go home pretty gaunt, but with a brain like that. And double the two bullshit.
Luciana Littizzetto

Different opinions on vacation

Capitalist societies first reduce a lot of people to poverty and then they commission sociologists and statistics professors to do research on poverty and that’s how we discover that the poor generally don’t have much money, they are numerous, they are usually poorly educated, although not always, they generally come from poor areas of the territory and so on, they spend little, they go to the theater little, they don’t go on vacation, they are vulgar, they wash little, and so on and so forth.
Carl William Brown

Luckily, every year, the holidays arrive, right on time. So we can get rid of those tired eyes of a hen struggling to lay an egg, that color of ice cream licked by a child, with all the flavors mixed together. And, with the holidays, comes the time to cast off. Unplug. Find peace. In the summer, all I want to do is sit on a deckchair and stay there. Still. I want the only thing that moves in me to be the dandruff. And if someone asks me: “What are you doing tonight?”, I already have the answer ready: “Nothing. At most I’ll peel the peppers”.
Luciana Littizzetto

On paper, vacations are always great. They’re supposed to save your marriage, get you healthy, promote world peace, make your skin glow again… The truth is, if you do them right, they’re worse than work. They’re like a cruise with diarrhea. You spend a lot of money sleeping in airports, lugging suitcases that weigh twice as much as you do, eating food that’s impossible to identify, and entrusting your safety to people you’ve never met before.
Erma Bombeck

Every “employee” has one. They are evil clouds that hide behind the mountains for up to 12 months, but when they realize that their man is about to go on vacation, they fall on his head, unloading a square of hail on the back of his neck in a meter by meter and accompany him relentlessly.
Paolo Villaggio

Using a camera appeases the anxiety which the work-driven feel about not working when they are on vacation and supposed to be having fun. They have something to do that is like a friendly imitation of work: they can take pictures.
Susan Sontag

I am an absolute libertarian, and I think that every restriction is a limit to the healthy economic progress of humanity, for this reason I would not only prohibit murderers from going to prison, buildings that among other things I would immediately abolish, together with all those sordid characters that animate the world of politics and justice, but I would also give them a nice prize. Maybe a prize vacation in China, why not?
Carl William Brown

Oh, why can’t we break away from all this, just you and I, and lodge with my fleas in the hills? I mean, flee to my lodge in the hills.
S.J. Perelman, Will B. Johnstone, and Arthur Sheekman

If we would only give, just once, the same amount of reflection to what we want to get out of life that we give to the question of what to do with a two weeks’ vacation, we would be startled at our false standards and the aimless procession of our busy days.
Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Various ideas on vacation

If you go on holiday by motorbike, things take on a completely different aspect. In a car you are always in a cockpit; you are used to it and you do not realize that everything you see from that window is nothing but an extra dose of TV. You are a passive observer and the landscape passes by you boringly inside a frame. On a motorbike the frame is no longer there. You have complete contact with everything. You are not a spectator, you are in the scene, and the feeling of presence is overwhelming.
Robert Maynard Pirsig

Some scholars argue that the energy needed for a fortnight’s vacation is equivalent to that consumed in two months of work. On the other hand, what is spent in a fortnight’s vacation corresponds to what is earned in two months of work.
Eros Drusiani

Seeing some of my acquaintances in the mountains during the Christmas holidays, memories of the good old days of university come to mind, when I had to work on holidays, always, while many of my classmates went to have fun, in the summer to the seaside, and in the winter to the snow!
Carl William Brown

Vacations have become somewhat of a status symbol and a measuring device of how well we’re keeping up with the Joneses. This is another path that leads directly into the “Artificial Wealth Trap.” While I am a strong advocate of taking time to travel and experience other locales, you must keep in mind that vacations are not long term investments. The strategy here is simple: Do not use your credit cards to finance your travles. You may be living it up in the lap of luxury and relaxation while on vacation but ask yourself how relaxed you will feel when the bills come in.
J. J. Childers

The death of some workers in a car accident seems almost like a dramatic liberation; that of some rich vacationers in a plane crash seems more pleasantly humorous; finally, the death of some devotees on a pilgrimage to Lourdes turns out to be tragically comic.
Carl William Brown

Vacations are seen as an antidote to work. They are medicine, a remedy for counteracting the effects of labor… Vacations allow us to be away from the job, to change the patterns of our day, to alter our routine, to reconfigure our actions and habits, to rediscover ourselves.
Al Gini

There are people who, once they have a job, identify with the company, spend themselves, do their utmost, are always available, study, observe, learn, invent new solutions. And there is another category of people who, while respecting the contract, only do the minimum required. They use all their holidays, all their maternity or sick leave, they stop working at the exact moment their working hours end and they don’t dedicate a single thought to it. They don’t get involved, they don’t study, they don’t innovate. Both, legally, do their duty. But, from the point of view of social life, there is an unbridgeable difference between them.
Francesco Alberoni

Opinions and ideas on vacation

In this vacation we should try to exercise only one human discipline: the sublime art of avoidance. Avoid people, avoid… There are only two things we do not avoid doing. Reading. Reading a lot. Which is ultimately the most comfortable way to travel. And then paying attention. To what happens to us and what has happened to us during the year. To understand. “In life it is not the signs that are missing. What is missing is the code.” Pennac says so and I believe it”.
Luciana Litizzetto

Vacations are your best chance in the year to get in some real living, to get out of the job-as-life box, off automatic pilot, and rediscover your passions, enthusiasms, friends, family, and the vitality of partaking in the world outside career brainlock. Social scientists have found that leisure experiences increase positive mood, act as a buffer against life’s setbacks, and open the door to the best times of our lives.
John De Graaf

Going on vacation is also stressful. Do you know the lines we have to stand in at the airport? They never end, you stand there for hours and hours. A gentleman, finally arriving at the counter after a long time, was asked by the girl behind the counter: «So, where are you going to go?». «With difficulty, I’ve finished my vacation…»
Alessandro Siani

I do not really like vacations. I much prefer an occasional day off when I do not feel like working. When I am confronted with a whole week in which I have nothing to do but enjoy myself I do not know where to begin. To me, enjoyment comes fleetingly and unheralded; I cannot determinedly enjoy myself for a whole week at a time.
Robertson Davies

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Christmas markets in America

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