Walking

by Henry David Thoreau

You may name it America, but it is not America; neither Americus Vespueius, nor Columbus, nor the rest were the discoverers of it.

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.

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There is a right way; but we are very liable from heedlessness and stupidity to take the wrong one.

Let me live where I will, on this side is the city, on that the wilderness, and ever I am leaving the city more and more, and withdrawing into the wilderness.

Every sunset which I witness inspires me with the desire to go to a West as distant and as fair as that into which the sun goes down. He appears to migrate westward daily, and tempt us to follow him.

My desire for knowledge is intermittent, but my desire to bathe my head in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and constant.