His places

Guizot preferred people to things, and books rather than travel.

His territorial attachments were the result of circumstances: Nîmes, where he was born, Genève where he was educated, England where he was an ambassador and then lived in exile, his house Val-Richer in the Pays d’Auge in Normandy, where he settled without having really chosen to do so. These, he said, were his four homelands.

Even though he lived for most of his life in Paris, he never felt himself to be a Parisian.

As for travelling for pleasure or out of curiosity, in France or abroad, the idea never seems to have crossed his mind. Wherever François Guizot was, that was the place he wanted to be.