One of the "golden lines" from "Walden" could be: "<span>Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe, through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, through church and state, through poetry, philosophy and religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call </span><span>reality."
This line illustrates the romantic idea of nature as a source of spiritual nourishment. More precisely, nature is here represented as a complete opposite of the civilized and urbanized world, with all of its cultural phenomena. According to Thoreau, we shouldn't be wary of the mud in nature. We should be wary of the real, sticky, burdening mud of civilization, which is so difficult to get rid of. It is the mud of prejudice, opinion, tradition, delusion - everything that the civilized people cling to so ardently.</span>
The answer to this blank is "are stolen'' because there are a lot of things which are stolen
Answer: Hyperbole
Explanation: A hyperbole is an extreme exaggeration. What this sentence really means is that he said it a lot, he did not actually say ”I don’t like it here.” 100 times.
