“Going to Walden is not so easy a thing As a green visit. It is the slow and difficult Trick of living, and finding it where you are.”

“GOING TO WALDENIt isn't very far as highways lie.I might be back by nightfall, having seenThe rough pines, and the stones, and the clear water.Friends argue that I might be wiser for it.They do not hear that far-off Yankee whisper:How dull we grow from hurrying here and there!Many have gone, and think me half a foolTo miss a day away in the cool country.Maybe. But in a book I read and cherish,Going to Walden is not so easy a thingAs a green visit. It is the slow and difficultTrick of living, and finding it where you are.”

“Do you love this world? Do you cherish your humble and silky life? Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?”

“I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.”

“The Poet With His Face In His HandsYou want to cry aloud for your mistakes. But to tell the truth the world doesn’t need anymore of that sound.So if you’re going to do it and can’t stop yourself, if your pretty mouth can’t hold it in, at least go by yourself acrossthe forty fields and the forty dark inclines of rocks and water to the place where the falls are flinging out their white sheetslike crazy, and there is a cave behind all that jubilation and water fun and you can stand there, under it, and roar all youwant and nothing will be disturbed; you can drip with despair all afternoon and still, on a green branch, its wings just lightly touchedby the passing foil of the water, the thrush, puffing out its spotted breast, will sing of the perfect, stone-hard beauty of everything.”

“to live in this worldyou must be ableto do three thingsto love what is mortal;to hold itagainst your bones knowingyour own life depends on it;and, when the time comes to let it go,to let it go”

“Can You Imagine?For example, what the trees donot only in lightening stormsor the watery dark of a summer's nightor under the white nets of winterbut now, and now, and now - wheneverwe're not looking. Surely you can't imaginethey don't dance, from the root up, wishingto travel a little, not cramped so much as wantinga better view, or more sun, or just as avidlymore shade - surely you can't imagine they juststand there loving everyminute of it, the birds or the emptiness, the dark ringsof the years slowly and without a soundthickening, and nothing different unless the wind,and then only in its own mood, comesto visit, surely you can't imaginepatience, and happiness, like that.”