It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route and make a beaten path for ourselves.

I had not lived there a week, before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct.

The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!

Henry David Thoreau, Walden