Quotes from "Walking" by Thoreau (Part 2)

Read the whole thing here.

Man and his affairs, church and state and school, trade and commerce, and manufactures and agriculture even politics, the most alarming of them all -- I am pleased to see how little space they occupy in the landscape.

The Latin word vilis and our vile, also villain. This suggests what kind of degeneracy villagers are liable to.

Roads are made for horses and men of business.

But possibly the day will come when it will be partitioned off into so-called pleasure grounds, in which a few will take a narrow and exclusive pleasure only -- when fences shall be multiplied, and man traps and other engines invented to confine men to the PUBLIC road, and walking over the surface of God's earth shall be construed to mean trespassing on some gentleman's grounds. To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exclude yourself from the true enjoyment of it. Let us improve our opportunities, then, before the evil days come.

I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright.

The Atlantic is a Lethean stream, in our passage over which we have had an opportunity to forget the Old World and its institutions.

From the East light; from the West fruit.

For I believe that climate does thus react on man -- as there is something in the mountain air that feeds the spirit and inspires. Will not man grown to greater perfection intellectually as well as physically under these influences?

I trust that we shall be more imaginative, that our thoughts will be clearer, fresher, and more ethereal, as our sky -- our understanding more comprehensive and broader, like our plains -- our intellect generally on a grander scale, like our thunder and lightning, our rivers and mountains and forests and our hearts shall even correspond in breadth and depth and grandeur to our inland seas. Perchance there will appear to the traveler something, he knows not what, of laeta and glabra, of joyous and serene, in our very faces. Else to what end does world go on?

I felt that this was the heroic age itself, though we know it not, for the hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men.

The African hunter Cumming tells us that the skin of the eland, as well as that of most other antelopes just killed, emits the most delicious perfume of trees and grass. I would have every man so much like a wild antelope, so much a part and parcel of nature, that his very person should thus sweetly advertise our senses of his presence, and remind us of those parts of nature which he most haunts.

There are a few ways you can be a hero and support AJ. Free things are: try Audible or AmazonPrime for 30 days, link us to a social network like Twitter, Facebook or Reddit, or download and rate the podcast in iTunes. If you have a little spare money you can send a Paypal donation to ajsnookauthor@gmail.com, buy one of AJ's Kindle eBooks, or buy anything on Amazon by going through the Amazon links on the site. Thanks so much for your support, AJ