Orts #690
H.D.Thoreau:
If I wished to see a mountain or other scenery under the most favorable auspices, I would go to it in foul weather, so as to be there when it cleared up; we are then in the most suitable mood, and nature is most fresh and inspiring. There is no serenity so fair as that which is just established in a tearful eye.
- The Maine Woods: The Allagash and the East Branch
If a man walk in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. As if a town had no interest in its forests but to cut them down!
- Life Without Principle, an essay published posthumously in The Atlantic Monthly in 1863
If you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them again,-- if you have paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free man, then you are ready for a walk.
- Walking, an essay published posthumously in The Atlantic Monthly, June, 1862