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Rebecca Solnit

Rebecca Solnit Quotes

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Famous Rebecca Solnit Quotes

“The language of commerce has been engineered to describe the overt purpose of a thing, but cannot encompass fringe benefits or peripheral pleasures. It weighs the obvious against what in its terms are incomprehensible. When I drive from here to there, speed, privacy, control, and safety are easy to claim. When I walk, what happens is more vague, more ambiguous-and in many circumstances much richer. I am out in the world. It's exercise, though not so quantifiably as on a treadmill in a gym with a digital readout.”

WorldHas BeensHappensPurposeLanguageEasyTermWalksPleasureCircumstancesExerciseBenefitsClaimsSafetyEnvironmentalObviousSpeedPrivacyDigitalGymSustainabilityCommerceVagueFringeAmbiguousTreadmills
Author:Rebecca Solnit
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“For [Jane Austen and the readers of Pride and Prejudice], as for Mr. Darcy, [Elizabeth Bennett's] solitary walks express the independence that literally takes the heroine out of the social sphere of the houses and their inhabitants, into a larger, lonelier world where she is free to think: walking articulates both physical and mental freedom.”

ThinkingWorldHouseSocialWalksJourneyPrideReaderWalkingPrejudiceIndependenceWanderSpheresHikingSolitaryJaneTrekkingStrollingHeroinesSaunteringAustenDarcy
Author:Rebecca Solnit
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“The famous Zen parable about the master for whom, before his studies, mountains were only mountains, but during his studies mountains were no longer mountains, and afterward mountains were again mountains could be interpreted as an alleory about [the perpetual paradox that when one is closest to a destination one is also the farthest).”

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Author:Rebecca Solnit
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“Perhaps walking is best imagined as an 'indicator species,' to use an ecologist's term. An indicator species signifies the health of an ecosystem, and its endangerment or diminishment can be an early warning sign of systemic trouble. Walking is an indicator species for various kinds of freedom and pleasures: free time, free and alluring space, and unhindered bodies.”

KindUseBodyTermNatureSpaceWalksPleasureTroubleJourneyWalkingSpeciesVariousWanderWarningHikingTrekkingStrollingEcosystemsSaunteringFree TimeIndicatorsAlluringWarning SignsEndangerment
Book:Wanderlust: A History of Walking
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“The fight for free space-for wilderness and for public space-must be accompanied by a fight for free time to spend wandering in that space. Otherwise the individual imagination will be bulldozed over for the chain-store outlets of consumer appetite, true-crime titillations, and celebrity crises.”

FightingIndividualImaginationSpaceWalksJourneyCrimeWalkingCrisisStoresWanderChainsConsumersWildernessAppetiteHikingOutletsTrekkingStrollingSaunteringAdvocacyFree Time
Author:Rebecca Solnit
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“The rhythm of walking generates a kind of rhythm of thinking, and the passage through a landscape echoes or stimulates the passage through a series of thoughts. The creates an odd consonance between internal and external passage, one that suggests that the mind is also a landscape of sorts and that walking is one way to traverse it. A new thought often seems like a feature of the landscape that was there all along, as though thinking were traveling rather than making.”

ThinkingWayMindKindSeemsWalksJourneyWalkingSeriesRhythmWanderOne WayLandscapeOddFeaturesInternalsPassagesHikingEchoesNew ThoughtTrekkingStrollingSaunteringTraverseWalking MeditationConsonance
Book:Wanderlust: A History of Walking
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“The subject of walking is, in some sense, about how we invest universal acts with particular meanings. Like eating or breathing, it can be invested with wildly different cultural meanings, from the erotic to the spiritual, from the revolutionary to the artistic.”

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Book:Wanderlust: A History of Walking
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