When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and woods: what would become of us, if we walked only in a garden or a mall?

Books are to be distinguished by the grandeur of their topics even more than by the manner in which they are treated.

For what are the classics but the noblest thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old.

Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable but positive hindrances to our progress. Our life is frittered away by detail. I say let your affairs be as two or three, not a hundred or a thousand. And keep your accounts on your thumb nail.

Some do not walk at all; others walk in the highways; a few walk across lots.

I come to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home.

Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.