Henry David Thoreau Track Quotations

The Fitchburg Railroad touches the pond about a hundred rods south of where I dwell. I usually go to the village along its causeway, and am, as it were, related to society by this link. The men on the freight trains, who go over the whole length of the road, bow to me as to an old acquaintance, they pass me so often, and apparently they take me for an employee; and so I am. I too would fain be a track-repairer somewhere in the orbit of the earth.

What is the use of going right over the old track again? There is an adder in the path which your own feet have worn. You must make tracks into the Unknown.

He who rides and keeps the beaten track studies the fences chiefly.

Let a slight snow come and cover the earth, and the tracks of men will show how little the woods and fields are frequented.

It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves.

The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us.

Perhaps of all our untamed quadrupeds, the fox has obtained the widest and most familiar reputation.... His recent tracks still give variety to a winter's walk. I tread in the steps of the fox that has gone before me by some hours, or which perhaps I have started, with such a tip-toe of expectation as if I were on the trail of the Spirit itself which resides in the wood, and expected soon to catch it in its lair.

Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito's wing that falls on the rails.

Every path but your own is the path of fate. Keep on your own track, then.