All our Concord waters have two colors at least; one when viewed at a distance, and another, more proper, close at hand.—Walden
Deliver me from a city built on the site of a more ancient city, whose materials are ruins, whose gardens cemeteries.—Walden
Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps.—"Walking"
I can forego the seeming advantages of cities without misgiving.—Journal, 8 August 1851
It is folly to attempt to educate children within a city. The first step must be to remove them out of it.—Journal,  25 July 1851
This is a common experience in my traveling. I plod along, thinking what a miserable world this is and what miserable fellows we that inhabit it, wondering what it is tempts men to live in it; but anon I leave the towns behind and am lost in some boundless heath, and life becomes gradually more tolerable, if not even glorious.—Journal, 17 June 1857
Though the city is no more attractive to me than ever yet I see less difference between a city & and some dismallest swamp than formerly. It is a swamp too dismal & dreary even for me.—Journal, 29 July 1850
What is the great attraction in cities? It is universally admitted that human beings invariably degenerate there and do not propagate their kind. Yet the prevailing tendency is to the city life, whether we move to Boston or stay in Concord.—Journal, 1845-1846
When I was four years old, as well I remember, I was brought from Boston to this my native town, through these very woods and this field, to the pond. It is one of the oldest scenes stamped in my memory. And now to-night my flute has waked the echoes over that very water.—Walden
When you are starting away, leaving your more familiar fields, for a little adventure like a walk, you look at every object with a traveler's, or at least with historical, eyes; you pause on the first bridge, where an ordinary walk hardly commences, and begin to observe and moralize like a traveler. It is worth the while to see your native village thus sometimes, as if you were a traveler passing through it, commenting on your neighbors as strangers.—Journal, 4 September 1851
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