Walk

“ If your natural walk is heavy, there is spirit in the tackle to give it life, and if it is buoyant it will be more buoyant under the buoyant burden—the yielding check—than ever before. An unharnessed walk must begin to seem to you a sorry incident of insignificant liberty. It is easier than towing? So is the drawing of water in a sieve easier to the arms than drawing in a bucket, but not to the heart. ”

“ HOW TO WALK
Observe the vigorous man as he walks: the stride is long and free; the feet come surely and firmly to the ground, without twist or jar, toes pointed straight ahead; the pelvis, swaying easily, carries an erect body; the arms swing in alternate rhythm with the legs; the head is borne free over all; breathing is deep and long ”

“ When paths are smooth, so prone my feet
To wander off in by-ways sweet,
Where beauty hides the poison vine,
Or loosened stones, for feet like mine.
Walk with me, Lord, and counsel give.
Teach me to love, to help, to live. ”

“ The fresh air, with the exercise of walking, produced that racy and dancing stir of the blood, which all action, whether evil or noble in its nature, raises in our veins. The full moon now rose in all the splendor of its matchless beauty, and bathed in silvery light the gorgeous piles of snow-white clouds that calmly reposed on the surface of the dark blue sky. The walk was too pleasant to be of long duration, and before it seemed a moment had elapsed, I found myself on the marble steps of the house to which I had been directing my course. ”

“ To any person who has all his senses about him, a quiet walk, over not more than ten or twelve miles of road a day, is the most amusing of all travelling; and all travelling becomes dull in exact proportion to its rapidity. ”

“ And how delightful is a walk when the frozen ground rings beneath our swinging tread—when our blood tingles in the rare keen air, and the sheep-dogs' distant bark and children's laughter peals faintly clear like Alpine bells across the open hills! ”

“ AMPERSAND “It is not the walking merely, it is keeping yourself in tune for a walk, in the spiritual and bodily condition in which you can find entertainment and exhilaration in so simple and natural a pastime. You are eligible to any good fortune when you are in a condition to enjoy a walk. When the air and water taste sweet to you, how much else will taste sweet! ”

“ A rare strong, hearty, healthy walk—four statute miles an hour—preferable to that rumbling, tumbling, jolting, shaking, scraping, creaking, villainous old gig? Why, the two things will not admit of comparison. It is an insult to the walk to set them side by side. Where is an instance of a gig having ever circulated a man’s blood, unless when, putting him in danger of his neck, it awakened in his veins and in his ears, and all along his spine, a tingling heat much more peculiar than agreeable? ”

“ It was a long, hot walk, that climb, in spite of the good breeze and the white umbrella’s shade, and we stopped a number of times on the way up to cool ourselves, and, incidentally, to envy the carriage of the brisk and leathery old women, who came striding past us up the hill, with great water-cans on their heads and water-jugs in their hands, stolidly indifferent to the hot sun and the heavy burdens they were carrying. ”

“ His desires should be no more fixed upon the end of the walk than the desire of a child upon the end of a sugarstick. The walk should be a work of art, the real colour and value of which do not appear until it is completed. ”

“ Walking gives movement to every portion of the body, and ensures vigorous circulation of the blood; for, when we walk fast, fresh air is inhaled into the lungs. Then there is the inestimable joy that natural objects give us, the joy that comes from a contemplation of the beauties of nature. ”

“ The first essential to a healthful walk is a pleasurable object. Beautiful scenery, rambles in meadows rich with fragrant grasses, or along the flowery banks of water-courses, affords an agreeable stimulus, which sends the blood through the vital channels with unwonted force, and imparts to the cheeks the ruddy glow of health. Our poets acknowledge the silent influence of nature. ”

“ Again I say it, therefore—walk, and be merry; walk, and be healthy; walk, and be your own master!—walk, to enjoy, to observe, to improve, as no riders can!—walk, and you are the best peripatetic impersonation of holiday enjoyment that is to be met with on the surface of this work-a-day world! ”

“ If we feel unwearied and ready for miles and miles ahead of us, who shall say that the walk has been ten miles long, when we are conscious in our energetic limbs that it has only been two delightful miles? ”

“ He has four: a short walk, like the rolling of a small boat in a chopping sea; a long walk, which dislocates every bone in your body; a trot that reduces you to imbecility; and a gallop that is sudden death. ”

“ You can walk quickly or slowly, or look over your shoulder as you walk, or shoot fairly accurately as you walk; you can saunter, you can force your pace, you can turn which way you will. You certainly did not teach yourself to accomplish this marvel, nor did your nurse. There was a spirit within you that taught you and that brought you out; and as it is with walking, so it is with speech, and so at last with humour and with irony, and with affection, and with the sense of colour and of form, and even with honour, and at last with prayer. ”

“ The dear, artificial things that had made the winter lovely were gone, and the pastoral delights of the summer were still to come, yet Nature called us forth to a muddy, unfinished world. Then was the season of the official walk, a dreary traffic on nice, clean pavements, that placed everything in the world worth walking to out of bounds. ”

“ I find that it is an excellent walk for variety and novelty and wildness, to keep round the edge of the meadow,—the ice not being strong enough to bear and transparent as water,—on the bare ground or snow, just between the highest water mark and the present water line,—a narrow, meandering walk, rich in unexpected 154 views and objects. ”

“ How astonishing it is to find oneself cheerfully, even ardently, assenting to what would once have been regarded as the hideous proposal to "Walk round the garden!" Such a walk has ceased to be a penance ”

“ I seldom walk less than four miles, sometimes six, eight, ten, or more, never beyond my own limits; or, if it rains, I walk as much through the house, up and down stairs: and if it were not for this cruel deafness, I would ride through the kingdom, and half through England ”

“ Ten minutes' walk led on to comparatively rural roads, and within half an hour you could find yourself beginning to climb the fells, with a long stretch of heather for a prospect, and the pure moorland air filling your lungs. ”

“ In such a case walking degenerates from a fine art to a mechanic art; we walk merely; to get over the ground becomes the one serious and engrossing thought; whereas success in walking is not to let your right foot know what your left foot doeth. Your heart must furnish such music that in keeping time to it your feet will carry you around the globe without knowing it. The walker I would describe takes no note of distance; his walk is a sally, a bon mot, an unspoken jeu d'esprit; the ground is his butt, his provocation ”

“ When you get into the road, though far from the town, and feel the sand under your feet, it is as if you had reached your own gravel walk. You no longer 240 hear the whip-poor-will, nor regard your shadow, for here you expect a fellow-traveller. You catch yourself walking merely. ”

“ As I am so quiet and care not to go to walk, I will talk about taking walks--a thing which so often occurs in my work--and not without keenness. A man of understanding and logic would, in my opinion, distribute all walkers, like the East Indians, into four castes. ”

“ To shield his fearless eyes?
“‘Rise from this life! lift upon new-spread pinions
Heart free and great as his!
The eagle seeks no shadow, nor the wise
Greater or lesser bliss!’”
We are unwilling walkers. We are not innocent and simple-hearted enough to enjoy a walk. We have fallen from that state of grace which capacity to enjoy a walk implies. ”

“ As long as we feel fresh still for the journey, as long as every step is a pleasure, what difference if the walk has been five miles long or fifteen? We judge of the strain by the effect it has had on us. ”

“ Fall to work and cut the edges with the spade; clear away the weeds and grass that have overspread the walk, also with the spade. In a little time you will feel the fascination of the sharp outline of the walk against the grass on each side. And I repeat, that to the average human being there is something inexpressibly pleasing in that sharp outline. By the time the ten yards of walk are cut, you will find that you have discovered a new pleasure and a new sensation; and from that day will date a love of tidy walks and grass;—and what more is needed to make a pretty churchyard? ”

“ It is the best exercise I know of because you do not overdo your strength.
Walking is beneficial because when you walk alone you give your brain a rest. You cannot read the papers, you cannot talk, and your mental apparatus gets complete rest.
As stated in PEP I walk from my home to my office, something less than four miles, and it takes me about an hour to make the trip. I walk through a beautiful park and every morning I see something new and interesting in bird and animal life, in the vegetation and in the geological formations through which I pass. ”

“ Thus the walk seems notably easy and graceful, while the walker carries an air of alertness and reserve power, as if able to stop short at any point of a pace or to bolt forward or backward or sidewise with equal facility; he simulates the “collected” animal whose feet tap the ground lightly and swiftly while his body appears to yield freely to voluntary impulse. ”

“ Don’t let us take our walk as if in a rush, but slowly and gently. Please let us make the circuit of the city walls twice or three times so that we may contemplate so splendid a view the more peacefully and freely. ”

“ The Daily Walk. Walking is to be commended, not as a holiday pastime, merely, but as part of the routine of life, in season and out. Particularly to city-dwellers, to men whose occupations are sedentary, is walking to be commended as recreation. Will a man assert himself too busy?—his neighbor plays a game of golf a week ”

“ Instead, when she walked every movement seemed to flow in graceful ripples from feet to shoulders, beginning without abruptness and dying gradually away like the wavelets on the surface of a disturbed pond. ”

“ You may walk by night or by day, in summer or in winter, in fair weather or in foul, in calm or in a gale, and in every case you are doing something native to yourself and going the best way you could go. All men have felt this.
Walking, also from this same natural quality which it has, introduces particular sights to you in their right proportion. A man gets into his motor car, or more likely into somebody else's, and covers a great many miles in a very few hours. ”

“ But in every walk with Nature one receives far more than he seeks. ”

“ Walking is an exercise which in our days might replace, more commonly than it does, the rude out-door recreations of former times; and if but a few of the many hundreds who put on their Sunday clothes to lounge the hours away at the corner of a street, would but take a ten miles’ walk out to the country lanes or breezy moorlands, they would find benefit alike to their manhood and morals. ”

“ Walking, which has for its aim some pleasing pursuit, and, therefore, animates the mind, is efficacious to the majority. Gardening, which is a modification of walking, offers many advantages both to the delicate and the strong, and it is a species of exercise which we can adjust to our powers. In a continued walk you must go on—you must return; there is no appeal, even if you have gone too far, and would willingly give up any further exertion. ”

“ Your walk will have taken you over between 300 and 400 miles, comprising more than a dozen Passes of one kind or another; and you will have seen much of nature and of man to awaken thought, and to interest you. Every day will have been worth living, and not least so the last. ”

“ Sometimes we got out to stretch our limbs with a good walk up the hills, turning as we reached the top to take in the landscape behind us, which spread out broader and broader, as we rose higher and higher. ”

“ What a treat too, sometimes, to get away from the multi-coursed dinner and to bite downright audibly into simple food in the fresh air, and to lap water noisily from the brook! Well, walking, perhaps, is the primal instinct, ancient as Eden, where the Lord God walked in the garden in the cool of the day. And, if my theory is correct, walking will persist till in recovered Paradise man walks with his Maker again. No mechanical contrivance for locomotion will extirpate the tribe of tramps, of those who walk from love of walking. ”

“ Walking rivals angling in demanding and engendering quiet. "To make a walk successful," says another dear old gentleman, writing at the same time of life but in modern times, "mind and body should be free of burthen." [15] The true and abiding joy of walking is in calm. "The mood," says John Burroughs, "in which you set out on a spring or autumn ramble or a sturdy winter walk ... is the mood in which your best thoughts and impulses come to you.... Life is sweet in such moods, the Universe is complete, and there is no failure or imperfection anywhere." ”

“ The objects of a walk are often disappointing, but the accidents are magnificent. The true adventurer does not walk so much in the hope of finding cities or mountains as in the hope of discovering by the end of his journey why he came out. ”