Like all other vicious men, the reader and the traveler have a whole armory of justifications with which to defend themselves. Reading and traveling, they say, broaden the mind, stimulate imagination, are a liberal education. And so on. These are specious arguments; but nobody is very much impressed by them. For though it may be quite true that, for certain people, desultory reading and aimless traveling are richly educative, it is not for that reason that most true readers and travellers born indulge their tastes. We read and travel, not that we may broaden and enrich our minds, but that we may pleasantly forget they exist.
- Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
