Henry David Thoreau - In the streets and in society I am almost invariably<br/>cheap...

In the streets and in society I am almost invariably<br/>cheap and dissipated, my life is unspeakably mean.<br/>No amount of gold or respectability would in the least<br/>redeem it,-- dining with the Governor or a member of Congress!<br/>But alone in the distant woods or fields,<br/>in unpretending sprout-lands or pastures tracked by rabbits,<br/>even in a bleak and, to most, cheerless day, like this,<br/>when a villager would be thinking of his inn,<br/>I come to myself, I once more feel myself grandly related,<br/>and that cold and solitude are friends of mine.<br/>I suppose that this value, in my case, is equivalent<br/>to what others get by churchgoing and prayer.<br/>I come home to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home.<br/>I thus dispose of the superfluous and see things as they are,<br/>grand and beautiful. I have told many that I walk every day<br/>about half the daylight, but I think they do not believe it.<br/>I wish to get the Concord, the Massachusetts, the America,<br/>out of my head and be sane a part of every day.