“I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to another.”

Walden was asked if he ever gets lonely. He launches into a a speech about the the virtue of solitude and physical labour,

"This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the two most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments? Why should I feel lonely? Is not our planet in the Milky Way? This which you put seems to me not to be the most important question. What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary? I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another."