The Closest Thing to Doing Nothing is Walking

“To walk is to lack a place.  It is the indefinite process of being absent and in search of a proper.”
-  Michel de Certeau 

“I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit.”
-  Henry David Thoreau 

“Thinking is generally thought of as doing nothing in a production-oriented culture, and doing nothing is hard to do. It's best done by disguising it as doing something, and the something closest to doing nothing is walking.”
-  Rebecca Solnit  

“Walks. The body advances, while the mind flutters around it like a bird.”
-  Jules Renard  

"Walking is the perfect way of moving if you want to see into the life of things.  It is the one way of freedom.  If you go to a place on anything but your own feet you are taken there too fast, and miss a thousand delicate joys that were waiting for you by the wayside.”
-  Elizabeth von Arnim  

“I find more pleasure in wandering the fields than in musing among my silent neighbors who are insensible to everything but toiling and talking of it and that to no purpose.”
-  John Clare 

"Walking and talking are two very great pleasures, but it is a mistake to combine them.  Our own noise blots out the sounds and silences of the outdoor world; and talking leads almost inevitably to smoking, and then farewell to nature as far as one of our senses is concerned.  The only friend to walk with is one... who so exactly shares your taste for each mood of the countryside that a glance, a halt, or at most a nudge, is enough to assure us that the pleasure is shared.”
-  C. S. Lewis

“After a day's walk everything has twice its usual value.”
-  George Macauley Trevelyan

Walking: Quotations, Poems, Sayings, Lore, Information