Sierra Nevada, CA 1984
Rock Creek Basin, Mt. Starr (12,870')
The walker in all photos on this webpage is Mike Garofalo
Walking Quotations 1 Walking Quotations 2 Walking Quotations 3 Walking Quotations 4 Walking Quotations 5
Walking Quotations 6 Walking Meditation Ways of Walking Website Cloud Hands Blog
"Walking inspires and promotes conversation
that is grounded in the body, and so it gives the soul a place where it can
thrive. I think I could write an interesting memoir of significant walks I
have taken with others, in which intimacy was not only experienced but set
fondly into the landscape of memory. When I was a child, I used to walk
with my Uncle Tom on his farm, across fields and up and down hills. We
talked of many thing, some informative and some completely outrageous, and quite
a few very tall stories emerged on those bucolic walks. Whatever the
content of the talking, those conversations remain important memories for me of
my attachment to my family, to a remarkable personality, and to nature."
- Thomas Moore, Soul Mates
"What seems to us bitter trials are often
blessings in disguise."
- Oscar Wilde
"Details of the many walks I made along the
crest have blurred, now, into a pleasing tapestry of grass and space and
sunlight."
- Colin Fletcher
"I haven't got any special religion this
morning. My God is the God of Walkers. If you walk hard enough, you probably
don't need any other god."
- Bruce Chatwin, In Patagonia
"We do not go to the green woods and
crystal waters to rough it, we go to smooth it. We get it rough enough at home,
in towns and cities."
- G. W. Sears
"One step at a time is good walking."
- Chinese proverb
"I cannot walk through
the suburbs in the solitude of the night without thinking that the night pleases
us because it suppresses idle details, just as our memory does."
- Jorge Luis Borges
"Walking I am
unbound, and find that precious unity of life and imagination, that silent
outgoing self, which is so easy to loose, but which a high moments seems to
start up again from the deepest rhythms of my own body. How often have I
had this longing for an infinite walk - of going unimpeded, until the movement
of my body as I walk fell into the flight of streets under my feet - until I in
my body and the world in its skin of earth were blended into a single act of
knowing."
- Alfred Kazin, The Open Street
"I dressed and went for a walk - determined
not to return until I took in what Nature had to offer."
- Raymond Carver, This Morning
"I was walking an
average of about two and a half miles a day, which is still more than most
Americans. Most Americans don't even walk that."
- Morgan Spurlock
“If a walker is indeed an
individualist there is nowhere he can't go at dawn and not many places he can't
go at noon. But just as it demeans life to live alongside a great river you can
no longer swim in or drink from, to be crowded into safer areas and hours takes
much of the gloss off walking -- one sport you shouldn't have to reserve a time
and a court for.”
- Edward Hoagland
"If you want to know if your
brain is flabby, feel your legs."
- Bruce Barton
"For you, as well as I, can open fence
doors and walk across America in your own special way. Then we can all
discover who our neighbors are."
- Robert Sweetgall, Fitness Walking
"If you look for the truth outside
yourself,
It gets farther and farther away.
Today walking alone, I meet it everywhere I step.
It is the same as me, yet I am not it.
Only if you understand it in this way
Will you merge with the way things are."
- Tung-Shan
“Common sense and good nature
will do a lot to make the pilgrimage of life not too difficult”
- William Somerset Maugham
"We must walk before we run."
- George Borrow, Lavengro
"The sum of the whole is this: walk and be
happy, walk and be healthy. "The best of all ways to lengthen our days" is not,
as Mr. Thomas Moore has it, "to steal a few hours from night, my love;" but,
with leave be it spoken, to walk steadily and with a purpose. The wandering man
knows of certain ancients, far gone in years, who have staved off infirmities
and dissolution by earnest walking,--hale fellows close upon eighty and ninety,
but brisk as boys."
- Charles Dickens
"I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a
single day without acquiring some rust, and when sometimes I have stolen forth
for a walk at the eleventh hour of four o'clock in the afternoon, too late to
redeem the day, when the shades of night were already beginning to be mingled
with the daylight, have felt as if I had committed some sin to be atoned for."
- Henry David Thoreau
"A man's work is nothing
but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three
great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened."
- Albert Camus
"It’s all still there in heart and soul. The walk, the hills, the sky, the solitary pain and pleasure–they will grow larger, sweeter, lovelier in the days and years to come."
"With beauty before me, may I walk
With beauty behind me, may I walk
With beauty above me, may I walk
With beauty below me, may I walk
With beauty all around me, may I walk
Wandering on the trail of beauty, may I walk"
- Navajo: Walking Meditation
Trek, Trekking: To draw or haul a load, as oxen. To travel, especially by ox wagon; to go from place to place; to migrate. The act of trekking; a drawing or a traveling; a journey; a migration. To migrate, journey, travel.
"Our way is not soft grass,
it's a mountain path with lots of rocks.
But it goes upward, forward, toward the sun."
- Ruth Westheimer
"If you are for a merry jaunt, I will try,
for once, who can foot it farthest."
- John Dryden
"Walking is a man's best medicine."
- Hippocrates
"Climb the mountains and get their
good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like falling leaves."
- John Muir
Sierra Nevada, CA 1984
Rock Creek Basin, Mt. Starr (12,870')
The walker in all photos on this webpage is
Mike Garofalo
"All truly great
thoughts are conceived by walking."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
"We live in a fast-paced society. Walking
slows us down."
- Robert Sweetgall
"Walking is the natural recreation for a
man who desires not absolutely to suppress his intellect but to turn it out to
play for a season."
- Leslie Stephen
"Gardening is a long road, with many
detours and way stations, and here we all are at one point or another. It's not a question of superior or inferior taste,
merely a question of which detour we are on at the moment. Getting there (as they say) is not important; the wandering about in the wilderness or in the olive groves or in the bayous is the whole point."
- Henry Mitchell, Gardening Is a Long Road, 1998
"I'm the walkingest girl around. I like to
work at it - really get my heart pounding."
- Amy Yasbeck
"If you are seeking creative ideas, go
out walking.
Angels whisper to a man when he goes for a walk."
- Raymond Inmon
"The art of walking is at once suggestive
of the dignity of man. Progressive motion alone implies power, but in
almost every other instance it seems a power gained at the expense of
self-possession."
- Henry Theodore Tuckerman
"Above all do not lose your desire to walk.
Everyday I walk myself into
a state of well being and walk away from every illness. I have
walked myself into my best thoughts and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. But by sitting still, and the
more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill ... if one keeps on walking
everything will be alright."
- Soren Kierkegaard.
“Discoveries are often made by not
following instructions, by going off the main road, by trying the untried.”
- Frank Tyger
"It's when you are safe at home that
you're having an adventure.
When you're having an adventure you wish you were safe at home."
- Thorton Wilder
“Never measure the height of a mountain
until you have reached the top. Then you will see how low it was.”
- Dag Hammarskjold
“The big question is whether
you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure.”
- Joseph Campbell
"The Americans never walk. In
winter too cold and in summer too hot."
- J. B. Yeats
"I can only meditate when I
am walking. When I stop, I cease to think; my mind works only with my legs."
- Jean Jacques Rousseau, Confessions
"We shall not cease
from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive at where we started
And know the place for the first time."
- T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding
"Walking is also an ambulation of mind."
- Gertel Ehrlich
"Never have a path for walking on less
than three feet wide."
- Martin Hoyles
"A vagrant is everywhere at home."
- Martial
|
Months and Seasons Quotes, Poems, Sayings, Verses, Lore, Myths, Holidays Celebrations, Folklore, Reading, Links, Quotations Information, Weather, Gardening Chores Compiled by Mike Garofalo |
|||
"Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and
effort which life implies."
- Eric Fromme
"If you pick 'em up, O Lord, I'll put 'em
down."
- "Prayer of the Tired Walker"
"A garden should feel like a walk in
the woods."
- Dan Kiley, American landscape designer
"Walking would teach people
the quality that youngsters find so hard to learn - patience."
- Edward P. Weston
"I like long walks, especially when
they are taken
by people who annoy me."
- Fred Allen
"I only went out for a walk, and finally
concluded to stay out until sundown:
for going out, I found, was really going in."
- John Muir
"Travelers, there is no path, paths
are made by walking."
- Antonio Machado
"You may also want to bring the practice of wogging
into your life. Half slow walking (going uphill) and freely surrendered, speedy jogging (going downhill), it may become your preferred meditation posture or form of dance. The goal of the practice is not to
condition the body aerobically; that happens as a natural byproduct. The goal of the practice is to open to and merge with the breath, letting your natural, surrendered breath determine how fast or slow your body moves, to stay as loose and relaxed as possible, to let every part of the body move as fluidly as possible, to surrender to the sensation and energies of the body as you keep playing with balance, to keep emptying the mind and staying in clear perception of vision and sound.
Full-bodied breath comes easier during a wog than during any other activity. Sensations can be felt through the entire body. Vision
can become very clear, and the mind can stay very empty."
- Will Johnson, Yoga of the Mahamudra
"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth."
- Robert Frost, Two Roads
"Give me the strength to walk the soft
earth, a relative to all that is."
- Black Elk
"Thoughts come clearly while one walks."
- Thomas Mann
"Walking is
one of the most important things in the life. In Japan, the foot is considered
to be the Second Heart. To have a strong heart is to have a strong
mind, so to walk good also develops the mind. Walking is the basic corporal
movement in the Martial arts. In any Martial Art, the crucial factor is the game
of legs, to walk with a perfect balance and grace. When the mastery in the skill
of walking has been achieved, when you walk as a ninja, a silent,
invisible walker, avoiding detection by moving carefully like a
tanguero knife-fighter, a lower class samurai, it feels as if you are
never touching the floor. In Argentine tango, the body energy-center lies lower
than in ballroom tango. A little downwards pressure in the hips, makes the knees
bend more and gives a more centered body axes, a sneaking, gliding way of
walking. This less royal way of moving is related to knife-fighting, which is a
fast, fluid and dangerous affair."
-
Walking Seduction
“As a single footstep will not
make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the
mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep
mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to
dominate our lives.”
- Henry David Thoreau
"Sweet pliability of man's spirit, that can
at once surrender itself to illusions, which cheat expectation and sorrow of
their weary moments! - long - long since had ye numbered out my days, had I not
trod so great a part of them upon this enchanted ground. When my way is
too rough for my feet, or too steep for my strength, I get off it, to some
smooth velvet path which fancy has scattered over with rose-buds of delights;
and have taken a few turns on it, come back strengthened and refreshed ..."
- Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Education
"Happy is the
man who has acquired the love of walking for its own sake!"
- W.J.
Holland
"There is this to be
said for walking: It's the one mode of human locomotion by which a man proceeds on his own two feet, upright, erect, as a man should be, not squatting on his rear haunches like
a frog."
- Edward Abbey
"The rhythm of walking
generates a kind of rhythm of thinking, and
the passage through a landscape echoes or stimulates the passage
through a series of thoughts. The creates an odd consonance between
internal and external passage, one that suggests that the mind is also a landscape of sorts and that walking is one way to traverse it.
A new thought often seems like a feature of the landscape that was
there all along, as though thinking were traveling rather than making."
- Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust:
A History of Walking
"Some people like to make a little
garden out of life and walk down a path."
- Jean Anouilh
"From thought to thought, from mountain
peak to mountain.
Love leads me on; for I can never still
My trouble on the world's well beaten ways."
- Petrarch, Ode 17
"Walking is good for solving problems -
it's like the feet are little psychiatrists."
- Pepper Giardino
"He who limps is still walking."
- Stanislaw J. Lec
"Solvitur ambulando," St. Jerome was
fond of saying. To solve a problem, walk around."
- Gregory McNamee
“The longest journey begins with a single
step, not with a turn of the ignition key. That's the best thing about a
walking, the journey itself. It doesn't much matter whether you get where your
going or not. You'll get there anyway. Every good hike brings you eventually
back home. Right were you started.”
- Edward Abbey
"It is not talking but walking that
will bring us to heaven."
- Matthew Henry
"Hiking is the best workout! ... You can
hike for three hours and not even realize you're working out. And, hiking alone
lets me have some time to myself."
- Jamie Luner
"A walk barefoot on the beach or grass
brings the feet into contact with the earth and energies that flow through it,
and provides a revitalizing, energizing, and natural message."
- Inge Dougans, Reflexology
"If I could not walk far and fast, I think
I should just explode and perish."
- Charles Dickens
"To find new things, take the path you
took yesterday."
- John Burroughs
"The modern world is fast, complex,
competitive, and always concerned with what happens next. There is always more
to do than there is time. The landscape and even the light are mostly
artificial. This can be exciting, but all too often it is frustrating,
stressful, and exhausting. In contrast, hiking for weeks or months at a time in
an unspoiled natural environment is a simple, repetitive activity that leads to
calmness and psychological well-being, a feeling of wholeness, of being a
complete person. Each day follows the same pattern, linking in with natural
rhythms–walk in the light, sleep in the dark, eat when hungry, take shelter from
storms. Only the details are different. I get a great pleasure from this
simplicity, from the basic pattern of walk and camp, walk and camp. It is good
to escape the rush of the modern world and for a period of time to live a
quieter, more basic life. Problems and worries subside as the days go by; they
are put into perspective by the elemental activity of putting one foot in front
of the other hour after hour, day after day. And on returning from the wilds,
restored and revitalized by the experience, I find civilization can be much
easier to deal with; indeed, aspects of it can seem very desirable."
- Chris Towsend, The Advanced Backpacker
“A pedestrian is a man in
danger of his life. A walker is a man in possession of his soul.”
- David McCord
"Once I dreamt of a form of poetry created
by the sound of feet walking in the grass."
- Cecilia Vicuna
"I like to walk about
among the beautiful things that adorn the world; but private wealth I should
decline, or any sort of personal possessions, because they would take away my
liberty."
- George Santayana
"Like one that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turned round walks on,
And turns no more his head,
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
"Walking is the natural recreation for a man who desires not absolutely to suppress his intellect but to turn it out to play for a season."
- Leslie Stephen
"As you sit on the
hillside, or lie prone under the trees of the forest, or sprawl wet-legged by a mountain stream, the great door, that does not look like a door, opens."
- Stephen Graham, The Gentle Art of Tramping
"If a walker is indeed an
individualist there is nowhere he can't go
at dawn and not
many places he can't go at noon. But just as it demeans life to live
alongside
a great river you can no longer swim in or drink from, to be crowded into safer
areas and hours takes much of the gloss off walking - one sport you shouldn't
have to reserve a time and a court for."
- Edward Hoagland
"Perhaps the truth depends on a walk
around the lake."
- Wallace Stevens
"A sound mind in a sound body, is a short but full
description of a happy state in this world."
- John Locke
“Don't walk in front of me; I may not
follow. Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Just walk beside me and be my
friend.”
- Albert Camus
"After dinner sit awhile, after supper walk
a mile."
- English Proverb
"There are countless physical activities out there, but walking has the lowest dropout rate of them all! It's the simplest positive change you can make to effectively improve your heart health.
Research has shown that the benefits of walking and moderate physical activity for at least 30 minutes a day can help you:
American Heart Association, The Benefits of Walking
"Walking is one of the simplest and easiest ways to get
the exercise you need in order to be healthy—and almost anyone can do it.
Walking can strengthen bones, tune up the cardiovascular system, and clear a
cluttered mind. This uncomplicated but important activity continues to attract
researchers, reports the March 2011 issue of the Harvard Health Letter.
Recent research indicates that: Later in life, walking becomes as much an
indicator of health as a promoter of it. After age 65, how fast you
walk may predict how long you have to live. Walking, or gait, has long been
recognized as a proxy for overall health and has been measured in many studies.
Researchers have found a remarkably consistent association between faster
walking speed and longer life."
- Harvard Medical School,
Research Points to Even More Health Benefits of Walking
"The Peripatetic school was a school of philosophy in
Ancient Greece. Its teachings derived from its founder, the Greek
philosopher,
Aristotle, and Peripatetic is a name given to his followers. The school
originally derived its name Peripatos from the peripatoi (περίπατοι
"colonnades") of the
Lyceum in Athens where the members met. A similar Greek word peripatetikos
(Greek: περιπατητικός) refers to the act of walking, and
as an adjective, "peripatetic" is often used to mean itinerant, wandering,
meandering, or walking about. After Aristotle's death, a legend arose that he
was a "peripatetic" lecturer – that he walked about as he taught – and the
designation Peripatetikos came to replace the original Peripatos. The term
"Peripatetic" is a transliteration of the ancient Greek word περιπατητικός
peripatêtikos, which means "of walking" or "given to walking about".
The Peripatetic school was actually known simply as the Peripatos.
Aristotle's school came to be so named because of the peripatoi
("colonnades" or "covered walkways") of the Lyceum where the members met.
The legend that the name came from Aristotle's alleged habit of walking while
lecturing may have started with Hermippus of Smyrna. Unlike Plato,
Aristotle was not a citizen of Athens and so could not own property; he and his
colleagues therefore used the grounds of the Lyceum as a gathering place, just
as it had been used by earlier philosophers such as Socrates."
- Peripatetic
School, Wikipedia Article
"The silence of landscape conceals vast
presence. Place is not simply location. A place is a profound individuality.
With complete attention, landscape celebrates the liturgy of the seasons, giving
itself unreservedly to the passion of the goddess. The shape of a landscape is
an ancient and silent form of consciousness. Mountains are huge contemplatives.
Rivers and streams offer voice; they are the tears of the earth's joy and
despair. The earth is full of soul ….. Civilization has tamed place. Left to
itself, the curvature of the landscape invites presence and the loyalty of
stillness."
- John O'Donohue, Anam Cara
"Peregrination charms our senses with such
unspeakable and sweet variety that some count him that never traveled--a kind of
prisoner, and pity his case: that, from his cradle to his old age, he beholds
the same still, still, - still, the same, the same."
- Robert Burton
“Few people know how to take a
walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for
nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too
much.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The place where you lose the trail is
not necessarily the place where it ends."
- Tom Brown, Jr.
"In a world of constant change and flux
where being in the moment seems increasingly harder to attain, there is also
something about the notion of traveling along a pathway–under our own power–that
reconnects us, and indeed binds together all humanity…"
- Robert Searns
"How can you explain that you need to know
that the trees are still there, and the hills and the sky? Anyone knows they
are. How can you say it is time your pulse responded to another rhythm, the
rhythm of the day and the season instead of the hour and the minute? No, you
cannot explain. So you walk."
- Source Unknown
"My father considered a walk among the
mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing."
- Aldous Huxley
“The soul that sees beauty may
sometimes walk alone.”
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
- William Shakespeare, MacBeth
“If a walker is indeed an individualist there
is nowhere he can't go at dawn and not many places he can't go at noon. But just
as it demeans life to live alongside a great river you can no longer swim in or
drink from, to be crowded into safer areas and hours takes much of the gloss off
walking - one sport you shouldn't have to reserve a time and a court for.”
- Edward Hoagland
"Allow walking to occupy a place of stature
equal with all the other important activities in your life. As
difficult as that might seem, here's how to do it. Make it a practice.
That's right. Turn your walking into a vehicle for personal growth as well
as for fitness. This will add a higher level of integrity and intention to
your approach because you will find that it is a way to deepen and upgrade your
relationship to your body. Instead of merely giving your legs and a good
workout, you'll be practicing to relax more, to breathe better, to expand your
vision, to open up your range of motion, to increase your energy, to feel and
sense your body. The list is exciting - and endless. With all of
this to look forward to, your walking program will take its place alongside
everything in your life you value most, and you'll be amazed at how easy it is
to schedule time for something you really love to do."
- Katherine Dreyer, Chi Walking
"You need special shoes for hiking - and a
bit of a special soul as well."
- Emme Woodhull-Bache
"Backpacking forces one, by necessity, to
walk the balance line, the edge of the sword, between disciplined deprivation
and hedonistic gratification: a tiring, sweat-soaking day ends with a plunge
into a cool stream; an arduous, lung-bursting climb is followed by a magnificent
panoramic sweeping view; and there is the continuous contrast between life on
the trail and civilized pleasures–a warm meal, a hot shower, clean dry clothes.
It is by walking this line between sacrifice and satisfaction that one finds
fulfillment."
- Robert Browne, The Appalachian Trail
"The central
role of walking in Wordsworth's life suggests a number of interesting questions,
but I will focus here only on those related to the theme of this conference,
work and leisure. Obviously, much of Wordsworth's walking
could be classed as leisure-time activity.
There was probably no compelling reason for Wordsworth and Dorothy to
walk twice to the Black Swan or for Wordsworth and Mary to circumambulate the
lakes. Indeed, the reasons given for some of the
walks--mousetrap buying and letter fetching--seem a bit contrived, as if almost
any excuse would do for the sake of a good walk. Yet at the
same time, Wordsworth was a poet adept at picking up poetic materials from those
walks--a beggar, a leech gatherer, a field of flowers.
Moreover, Wordsworth used walking as a compositional device, as he composed and
revised his verses. In other words, for Wordsworth, walking
was also a form of work, both a process for extracting raw materials from the
world and a manufacturing method for shaping or refining those materials."
- Malcolm Hayward
"Once in a lifetime, perhaps, one escapes
the actual confines of the flesh. Once in a lifetime, if one is lucky, one so
merges with sunlight and air and running water that whole eons, the eons that
mountains and deserts know, might pass in a single afternoon without
discomfort."
- Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey
“A little garden in which to walk, and immensity in which to dream.”
“It isn’t the mountain ahead that wears you
out; it’s the grain of sand in your shoe.”
- Robert W. Service
"Every walk is a sort of crusade, preached
by some Peter the Hermit in us."
- Henry David Thoreau
"If you are walking to seek, ye shall
find."
- Sommeil Liberosensa
"It has been said that there are
landscapes one can
walk through, landscapes which can be gazed upon,
landscapes in which one may dwell ... Those fit for
walking through or being gazed upon are not equal
to those in which one may dwell or ramble."
- Kuo Hsi
“I learned that the richness of
life is found in adventure. . . . It develops self-reliance and independence.
Life then teems with excitement. There is stagnation only in security.”
- William Orville Douglas
“Live with intention. Walk to
the edge. Listen hard. Practice wellness. Play with abandon. Laugh. Choose with
no regret. Appreciate your friends. Continue to learn. Do what you love. Live as
if this is all there is.”
- Mary Anne Radmacher
"Your possessions should set you free like a
boat or a pair of hiking boots. If you work for your possessions and they
don't set you free, what are you working for?"
- Billy Harris
"You have to go through
the falling down in order to learn to walk. It helps to know that you can
survive it. That's an education in itself."
- Carol Burnett
"I have met with but
one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking,
that is, of taking walks - who had the genius, so to speak, for sauntering:
which word is beautifully derived "from idle people who roved about the country,
in the Middle Ages, and asked for charity, under the pretense of going à la
Sainte Terre,' to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, "There goes a
Sainte-Terrer," a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander."
- Henry David Thoreau, Walking
"To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter; to be
thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird’s nest or a
wildflower in spring — these are some of the rewards of the simple life."
– John
Burroughs
"The contented person enjoys the
scenery of a detour."
"Don't let people drive you crazy when you
know it's in walking distance."
– Authors Unknown
"As a nation we are dedicated to keeping
physically fit - and parking as close to the stadium as possible."
- Bill Vaughan
"A person's heart and mind are in chaos.
Concentration on one thing makes the mind pure.
If one aspires to reach the Tao,
one should practice walking in a circle."
- Taoist Canon
"Me thinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow."
- Henry David Thoreau
"It's always fun to walk
down the street with or behind a really beautiful woman, for no reason other
than to see how the world reacts to them."
- Jonathan Carroll
“The traveler was active; he
went strenuously in search of people, of adventure, of experience. The tourist
is passive; he expects interesting things to happen to him. He goes
"sight-seeing."
- Daniel J. Boorstin
“Before you criticize someone,
you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you
are a mile away from them and you have their shoes.”
- Jack Handey
"Slow down and enjoy life. It's
not only the scenery you miss by going to
fast - you also miss the sense of where you are going and why."
- Eddie Cantor
Seasons
Quotes for Gardeners and
Lovers of the Green Way
“It is impossible to walk
rapidly and be unhappy.”
- Mother Theresa
"I was the world in
which I walked."
- Wallace Stevens, Tea at the Palaz of Hoon
Caloric Expenditures for Different Bodyweights for One Hour of Walking at Various Speeds
Caloric Expenditures Per Mile for Different Bodyweights by Walking at Various Speeds
"Do not go where the path may lead, go
instead where there is no path and leave a trail."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Walking is the
exercise that needs no gym. It is the prescription without medicine, the weight
control without diet, the cosmetic that is sold in no drugstore. It is the
tranquilizer without a pill, the therapy without a psychoanalyst, the fountain
of youth that is no legend. A walk is the vacation that does not cost a cent."
- Aaron Sussman & Ruth Goode, The Magic of Walking
"If you want to forget all your other troubles, wear shoes
that are too tight."
- The Houghton Line, November 1965
"The English literary movement at the end of the 18th
century was obviously due in great part, if not mainly, to the renewed practice
of walking."
- Leslie Stephen, The Art of Walking
"It's amazing how much time one can
spend in a garden doing nothing at all. I sometimes think, in fact, that the nicest part of gardening is walking around in a daze, idly deadheading the odd dahlia, wondering where on earth to squeeze in yet another impulse buy, debating whether to move the recalcitrant artemisia one more time, or daydreaming about where to put the pergola."
- Jane Garmey, A Writer in the Garden
"You need special shoes for hiking - and a
bit of a special soul as well."
- Emme Woodhull-Bäche
“It is not the mountain we conquer but
ourselves.”
- Sir Edmund Hillary
Here is my walking path. It is a .35 mile, asphalt paved, cul-de-sac, Kilkenny Lane, in Red Bluff, California. Kilkenny Lane moves in an east-west direction from the front of my home to Highway 99 West. I practice Tai Chi Chuan and Qigong in the circular area in front of my house shown the foreground of this picture. I rarely encounter a car on Kilkenny Lane. Six laps back and forth provide me with 3.6 miles of walking.
"People travel to wonder at the height of
the mountains, at the huge waves of the seas, at the long course of the rivers,
at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars, and yet
they pass by themselves without wondering."
- St. Augustine
“If you can find a path with no obstacles,
it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.”
- Frank A. Clark
"And I have been able to
give freedom and life which was acknowledged in the ecstasy of walking hand in
hand across the most beautiful bridge of the world, the cables enclosing us and
pulling us upward in such a dance as I have never walked and never can walk with
another."
- Hart Crane
"A fact bobbed up from my memory, that
the ancient Egyptians
prescribed walking through a garden as a cure for the mad.
It was a mind-altering drug we took daily."
- Paul Fleischman, Seedfolks
"Congratulations!
Today is your day.
You're off to Great Places!
You're off and away!
You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose.
You're on your own.
And you know what you know.
And YOU are the guy who'll decide where to go.
You'll look up and down streets. Look 'em over with care.
About some you will say, "I don't choose to go there."
With your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet,
Your're too smart to go down on not-so-good street.
And you may not find any
you'll want to go down.
In that case, of course,
you'll head straight out of town.
It's opener there
in the wide open air.
Out there things can happen
and frequently do
to people as brainy
and footsy as you.
And when things start to happen,
don't worry, Don't stew.
Just go right along.
You'll start happening too.
You'll be on your way up!
You'll be seeing great sights!
You'll join the high fliers.
who soar to high heights.
You won't lag behind, because you'll have the speed.
You'll pass the whole gang and you'll soon take the lead.
Whenever you fly, you'll be best of the best.
Wherever you go, you will top all the rest.
Except when you don't.
Because, sometimes, you won't.
I'm sorry to say so
but, sadly, it's true
that Bang-ups
and Hang-ups
can happen to you.
You can get all hung up.
in a prickle-ly perch.
And your gang will fly on.
You'll be left in a Lurch.
You'll come down from the Lerch
with an unpleasant bump."
– Dr. Seuss, Oh, The Places You Will Go
"The night walked down the sky with the
moon in her hand."
- Frederick L. Knowles
“There are two kinds of climbers, those who
climb because their heart sings when they’re in the mountains, and all the
rest.”
- Alex Lowe
"My yesterdays walk with
me. They keep step, they are gray faces that peer over my shoulder."
- William Golding
"The journey of a
thousand miles begins with a single step."
- Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching
"Some do not walk at all; others walk in the
highways; a few walk across lots."
- Henry David Thoreau, Walking
"Walking is the great
adventure, the first meditation, a practice of heartiness and soul primary to humankind.
Walking is the exact balance between spirit and humility."
- Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild
"I represent what is left of a vanishing
race, and that is the pedestrian. That I am still able to be here, I owe to a
keen eye and a nimble pair of legs. But I know they'll get me someday."
- Will Rogers
"People usually consider walking on water
or in thin air a miracle.
But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child -- our own two eyes.
All is a miracle."
- Thich Nhat Hanh
"You cannot travel the path until you have
become the path itself."
- Buddha
"What is there that confers the noblest delight? What is that which swells a man's breast with pride above that which any other experience can bring to him? Discovery! To know that you are walking where none others have walked."
- Mark Twain
“.… the brisk exercise imparts elasticity to the muscles, fresh and healthy blood circulates through the brain, the mind works well, the eye is clear, the step is firm, and a day's exertion always makes the evening's repose thoroughly enjoyable.”
- David Livingstone
"In my afternoon walk I would fain
forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society."
- Henry David Thoreau
"Every morning, like clockwork, he [Wallace
Stevens] used to walk down Terry Road about nine o’clock, just about the time I
was standing by my kitchen sink. I’d always get a thrill. I the afternoon, he’d
walk back, this very slow stride of his. Usually, if it was summer or good
weather, I’d be outdoors with some of the neighbors’ children. I’d make
them stop and look at him, and I’d say, "I want you to remember this is a great
poet."
- Florence Berkman
"Now shall I walk
or shall I ride?
"Ride," Pleasure said:
"Walk," Joy replied.
- W.H. Davies
“There
is no orthodoxy in walking. It is a land of many paths and no-paths, where every
one goes his own and is right.”
- G. M. Trevelyan
“Our wretched species is so
made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those
who are showing a new road”
- Voltaire
"The best remedy for a short temper is a
long walk."
- Jacqueline Schiff
"Walks: The body advances, while the mind
flutters around it like a bird."
- Jules Renard
"Our true home is in the present
moment. To live in the present moment is a miracle. The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green Earth in the present moment…"
- Thich Nhat Hanh
The Complete Guide to Walking, New and Revised: For Health, Weight Loss, and Fitness
Wanderlust: A History of Walking
by Casey Meyers
The Spirited Walker: Fitness Walking For Clarity, Balance, and Spiritual Connection
"The trail has taught me much. I know now
the varied voices of the coyote – the wizard of the mesa. I know the solemn call
of herons and the mocking cry of the loon. I remember a hundred lovely lakes,
and recall the fragrant breath of pine and fir and cedar and poplar trees.
The trail has strung upon it, as upon a thread of silk, opalescent dawns and
saffron sunsets. It has given me blessed release from care and worry and
the troubled thinking of our modern day. It has been a return to the
primitive and the peaceful. Whenever the pressure of our complex city life thins
my blood and benumbs my brain, I seek relief in the trail; and when I hear a
coyote wailing to the yellow dawn, my cares fall from me – I am happy."
- Hamlin Garland, 1899
"Thus, that one can find
no place to walk through the breadth of the earth is not because the earth is
not tranquil but because the danger to every step of the traveler lies generally
with words."
- Xun Zi
“To cultivate a garden is to
walk with God”
- Christian Nevell Bovee
"Let no one be deluded that a
knowledge of the path can substitute for putting one foot in front of the other."
- M. C. Richards
"We souls on foot, with foot-folk meet:
For we that cannot hope to ride
For ease or pride, have fellowship."
- William Barnes, Fellowship
“The heights charm us, but the
steps do not; with the mountain in our view we love to walk the plains.”
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"I have two doctors, my left leg and
my right."
- G. M. Trevelyan
"All walking is discovery. On
foot we take the time to see things whole."
- Hal Borland
"There’s all sorts of walking—from heading out across
the desert in a straight line to a sinuous weaving through undergrowth.
Descending rocky ridges and talus slopes is a specialty in itself. It is an
irregular dancing—always shifting—step of walk on slabs and scree. The breath
and eye are always following this uneven rhythm. It is never paced or clocklike,
but flexing—little jumps—sidestep—going for the well-seen place to put a foot on
a rock, hit flat, move on—zigzagging along and all deliberate. The alert eye
looking ahead, picking the footholds to come, while never missing the step of
the moment. The body-mind is so at one with this rough world that it makes these
moves effortlessly once it has had a bit of practice. The mountain keeps up with
the mountain … The landscape can become both ritual and meditation."
- Gary Snyder
"It is good to collect things; it
is better to take walks."
- Anatole France
Spirituality
Quotes for Gardeners
and Lovers of the Green Way
"Before supper take a little
walk, after supper do the same.
- Erasmus
"It is good to have an end to journey
towards; but it is the journey that matters in the end."
- Ursula K. LeGui
"An early morning walk is a blessing for the whole day."
"Why are there trees I never walk under
but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?"
- Walt Whitman
“One does not sell the earth
upon which the people walk.”
- Crazy Horse
"Walking gets the feet moving, the blood
moving, the mind moving. And movement is life."
- Carrie Latet
"When one walks, one is
brought into touch first of all with the essential
relations between one's physical powers and the character of the country; one is compelled
to see it as its natives do. Then every man one meets is an individual."
- Aleister Crowley
"It is solved by
walking."
- A Latin proverb
"It takes days
of practice to learn the art of sauntering. Commonly we stride through the out-of-doors too swiftly to see more than the most obvious and prominent things.
For observing nature, the best pace is a snail’s pace."
- Edwin Way
Teale, Circle of the Seasons
"The best treatment for feet encased in
shoes all day is to go barefoot. One-fifth of the world’s population never wears
shoes – ever! But when people who usually go barefoot usually wear shoes, their
feet begin to suffer. As often as possible, walk barefoot on the beach, in your
yard, or at least around the house. Walking in the grass or sand massages your
feet, strengthens your muscles and feels very relaxing…If you can cut back on
wearing shoes by 30 percent, you will save wear and tear on your feet and extend
the life of your shoes."
- Stephanie Tourles, Natural Foot Care
"I stroll along serenely, with my eyes, my
shoes,
my rage, forgetting everything."
- Pablo Neruda
"In a city where you
walk around, it's impossible to plan your day and your life as accidents will
happen, you'll overhear things, bump into people, and take unexpected turns."
- Jason Schwartzman
"The world
belongs to the energetic."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"I can remember walking as a child. It was not customary to say you were fatigued. It was customary to complete the goal of the expedition."
- Katherine Hepburn
"Walking - the most ancient exercise and
still the best modern exercise."
- Carrie Latet
“The only Zen you find on the tops of
mountains is the Zen you bring up."
- Robert Persig
"Take a two-mile walk every morning before
breakfast."
- Harry Truman
"Make the
commitment to gradually improve both your exercise performance and your eating habits. Take your time, what's the
hurry? View it as a journey to improve yourself. Although this
is difficult, focus on the journey, not the end result."
- Bob Greene
"In the inhalation and
exhalation there is an energy and a lively divine spirit, since He, through his
spirit supports the breath of life, giving courage to the people who are in the
earth and spirit to those who walk on it."
- Michael Servetus
"As you sit on the hillside, or lie prone
under the trees of the forest, or sprawl wet-legged by a mountain stream, the
great door, that does not look like a door, opens."
- Stephen Graham, The Gentle Art of Tramping
"What is it that makes it so hard sometimes
to determine whither we will walk? I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in
Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright. It is not
indifferent to us which way we walk. There is a right way; but we are very
liable from heedlessness and stupidity to take the wrong one. We would fain take
that walk, never yet taken by us through this actual world, which is perfectly
symbolical of the path which we love to travel in the interior and ideal world;
and sometimes, no doubt, we find it difficult to choose our direction, because
it does not yet exist distinctly in our idea."
- Henry David Thoreau
"One thing that you find out when you have
been practicing mindfulness for a while is that nothing is quite as simple as it appears. This is as
true for walking as it is for anything else. For one thing, we carry our
mind around with us when we walk, so we are usually absorbed in our own thoughts to one extent or another. We are hardly ever just
walking, even
when we are just going out for a walk. Walking meditation
involves intentionally attending to the experience of walking itself. This
brings your attention to the actual experience of walking as you are doing it, focusing on the sensations in your feet and legs, feeling your whole body moving. You can also integrate awareness of your breathing with the experience.
- John Kabat-Zinn
"Walking takes longer than any other known
form of locomotion except crawling. Thus it stretches time and prolongs life.
Life is already too short to waste on speed."
- Edward Abbey, Walking
"Once you find you can't
walk as far and as fast as you were able, life becomes more complicated."
- Robert Sheckley
"When Sir Edmund Hillary made the first
conquest of Mt. Everest in 1953, his Sherpa bearers were almost all barefooted,
even well above the snow line."
- Richard Frazine, The Barefoot Hiker
"The true charm of pedestrianism does not lie in the walking, or in the scenery, but in the talking. The walking is good to time the movement of the tongue by, and to keep the blood and the brain stirred up and active; the scenery and the woodsy smells are good to bear in upon a man an unconscious and unobtrusive charm and solace to eye and soul and sense; but the supreme pleasure comes from the talk.
- Mark Twain
"The mere thought of walking outdoors on a
brilliant golden-blue day causes fire-works of delight to go off in most people’s psyche. It
gives one an instant feeling of happiness and that is meditation! We are
not
only in touch, at that moment, with the physical splendour of nature, but also with the beauty of merging our own spiritual nature with it."
- Karen
Zebroff
North Dome, Yosemite National Park, CA, 2006
“May you always walk in
sunshine.
May you never want for more.
May Irish angels rest their wings right beside your door.”
- Irish Blessing
"We should go forth on the shortest walk,
perchance in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return - sending back our
embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate kingdoms."
- Henry David Thoreau
“The place where you lose the trail is not
necessarily the place where it ends.”
- Tom Brown Jr.
"The tendency nowadays to wander in
wilderness is delightful to see. Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken,
over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is
going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and
reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers,
but as fountains of life.
- John Muir, Our National Parks
"I can walk down the
street all day and people look at me, but they don't talk to me or stop me."
- Scott Speedman
"Walking is the number one exercise for
your feet as well as your body. Barefoot walking is the ideal."
- Stephanie Tourles, Natural Foot Care
"Long distance hiking is not a vacation,
it’s too long for that. It’s not recreation, too much toil and pain involved. It
is, we decide, a way of life, a very simplified Spartan way of living … life on
the move … heavy packs, sweating brow; they make you appreciate warm sunshine,
companionship, cool water. The best way to appreciate these things that are
precious and important in life it is take them away."
- Cindy Ross, Journey on the Crest
"Part of the challenge in
taking up Zen training is appreciating that formal study is focused and
dedicated, but also in a certain sense contrived. Each step in kinhin is a
wondrous linking of breath and mind and sangha and self, and is obviously also
walking in circles really slowly in a cramped room. It’s a device, and it’s
mysteriously right. It’s very ordinary, and it’s as extraordinary as the
universe itself."
- Bonnie Myotai Treace,
Moonlit
Window
“I was the world in which I walked.”
- Wallace Stevens
"'Walking' [by H.D. Thoreau] is a lyrical,
meandering essay on the
value of sauntering and on the preservation of what is wild in the world. It is
an amazing, impassioned work, especially considering it was published well
before the automobile came to define the limits of our experience of place. It
is a call to participation in the world, for living among that which is
untamed."
- Zane Parker
"No problem is so
formidable that you can't walk away from it."
Charles M. Schulz
"A pessimist only sees the dark side of the clouds, and mopes;
a philosopher sees both sides and shrugs;
an optimist doesn't see the clouds at all -
he's walking on them."
- Leonard L. Levinson
"The American people
never carry an umbrella. They prepare to walk in eternal sunshine."
- Alfred E. Smith
"People are different on a path. On a town
sidewalk strangers may make eye contact, but that’s all. On a path like this
they smile, say hello, and pet one another’s dogs. I think every community in
American should have a greenway."
- Anne Lusk
"What really helps motivate me to walk are
my dogs, who are my best pals. They keep you honest about walking because when
it's time to go, you can't disappoint those little faces."
- Wendie Malick
"Remember that on average, every minute you
are walking can extend your life by 1.5 to 2 minutes!"
- Deborah Crawford
"Many of the Anglican meditation manuals
used by Druids in the early years of the Revival gave special instructions for
meditating while walking in a garden or some other quiet area. To meditate
while walking, choose a route over level ground where you won't have to bend,
climb stairs, duck around trees, or do anything else that will interrupt your
thoughts. A paved or gravel path in a garden is ideal. It should lead in a
circle, so that you can keep walking as long as necessary. Walk slowly and
smoothly, taking relatively small steps at a steady rhythm. As with the seated
posture, you spine should be straight without being stiff, the crown of your
head level, and your eyes lowered. Let your arms move easily and naturally at
your sides."
- John Michael Greer, The Druidry Handbook: Spiritual Practice Rooted in
the Living Earth
“On the path that leads to Nowhere I have
sometimes found my soul!”
- Corine Roosevelt Robinson
“Go outside and walk a bit, long enough to
take in and record new surroundings. Enjoy the best-kept secret around - the
ordinary, everyday landscape that touches any explorer with magic.”
- John R. Stilgoe
"Still round the corner there may wait
A new road or a secret gate,
And though I've often passed them by,
A day will come at last when I
Shall take the hidden paths that run
West of the Moon, East of the Sun."
- J. R. R. Tolkien
A Brief Biography of Michael P. Garofalo
Red Bluff, Tehama County, North Sacramento Valley, California
Red Bluff, Tehama County,
North Sacramento Valley, Northern Central California, U.S.A.
Cities in the area: Oroville, Paradise, Durham, Chico, Hamilton City, Orland,
Willows,
Corning,
Rancho Tehama, Los Molinos, Tehama, Proberta, Gerber, Manton, Cottonwood,
Anderson, Shasta Lake, Palo Cedro, and Redding, CA, California.
Walking - The Ways of Walking - Homepage
Paths to Fitness and Well Being
Cloud Hands: Taijiquan, Bagua, Xing Yi, Swordsmanship
© Green Way Research, Red Bluff, California, 2008-2012
Many of the quotes on this webpage were first
distributed on the Internet WWW in 2000.
This webpage was last modified or updated on November 16, 2013.
The Ways of Walking
TAGS, Index Cloud, Subject Search Terms
Walking, Walks, Walkabouts,
Walker, Hiker,
Sauntering, Meandering, Strolling, Wander, Wandering, Saunter
Promenade, Ambulate, Shuffle, Fast Walking, Competitive Walking
Gait, Stride, Pace, March, Quick Step, Browse, Window Shopping, Sight Seeing
Walking Meditation, Contemplative Walks, Kinhin, Pilgrimages, Stroll,
Labyrinths, Sacred Circles,
Marching, Parading, Circumnavigation
Path, Pathway, Trail, Sidewalk, Road,
Quotations, Quotes, Sayings, Poems, Aphorisms, Quips, Epigrams, Cliches
Bibliography, Links, Resources, Guides, Commentary, Notes, Journal
Ba Gua Zhang, Pa Kua Chang, Circle Walking, Walking Martial Arts
Hiking, Trekking, Mountaineering
Promenade, Marche, Flânez, Flânerie, Hausse, Alpinisme
Wandern, Wanderung, Weg, Gehen, Schlendern Sie, Saunter, Bergsteigen
Caminata, El Caminar, Alza, El Ir de Excursion, Mountaineering
Camminata, Camminare, Aumento, Passeggi,
Прогулка, Гулять, Погуляйте,
Quotations, Quotes, Sayings, Poems, Aphorisms, Quips, Epigrams, Cliches
Bibliography, Links, Resources, Guides, Commentary, Notes, Journal