I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.
When the sun is shining I can do anything; no mountain is too high, no trouble too difficult to overcome.
It isn’t the mountain ahead that wears you out; it’s the grain of sand in your shoe.
In my case Pilgrim’s Progress consisted in my having to climb down a thousand ladders until I could reach out my hand to the little clod of earth that I am.
Hiking the PCT was the maddening effort of knitting that sweater and unraveling it over and over again. As if everything gained was inevitably lost.
I would walk along the quais when I had finished work or when I was trying to think something out. It was easier to think if I was walking and doing something or seeing people doing something that they understood.
If it had been possible to build the Tower of Babel without climbing it, it would have been permitted.
There are some cases in which the sense of injury breeds not the will to inflict injuries and climb over them as a ladder, but a hatred of all injury.
We’ve climbed the mighty mountain. I see the valley below, and it’s a valley of peace.
The greatest adventure is what lies ahead.
When you part from your friend, you grieve not; For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.
The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.
Were we, also, hiking along some cosmic journal page? Were the events about us all part of a message we could understand, if only we found the right perspective from which to read them? Somehow, with our long series of miracles, I thought so.
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.
Freedom – to walk free and own no superior.
I never weary of great churches. It is my favorite kind of mountain scenery. Mankind was never so happily inspired as when it made a cathedral.
My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step, they are gray faces that peer over my shoulder.