That is all the National Parks are about. Use, but do no harm.
Wallace StegnerRead
Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of life amount not to wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the inevitability of pain and the lessons learned through life's hardships.
Wallace Stegner's quote emphasizes that while we may gather experiences and lessons throughout our lives, they often come at the cost of emotional pain. As we face challenges, we may find that rather than pure wisdom, we acquire emotional resilience, symbolized by scar tissue and calluses that remind us of past wounds and the growth that stems from them.
Themes
PainLessonsGrowthResilienceLife Experiences
In practice
Example use cases
During a motivational speech about overcoming adversity.
More from Wallace Stegner
All quotes βTouch. It is touch that is the deadliest enemy of chastity, loyalty, monogamy, gentility with its codes and conventions and restraints. By touch we are betrayed and betray others ... an accidental brushing of shoulders or touching of hands ... hands laid on shoulders in a gesture of comfort that lies like a thief, that takes, not gives, that wants, not offers, that awakes, not pacifies. When one flesh is waiting, there is electricity in the merest contact.
Wallace StegnerRead
Hope was always out ahead of fact, possibility obscured the outlines of reality.
Wallace StegnerRead
Young writers should be encouraged to write, and discouraged from thinking they are writers.
Wallace StegnerRead
I was shaped by the west and have lived most of my life in it, and nothing would gratify me more than to see it in all its subregions and subcultures both prosperous and environmentally healthy, with a civilization to match its scenery.
Wallace StegnerRead
No place is a place until things that have happened in it are remembered in history, ballads, yarns, legends, or monuments. Fictions serve as well as facts.
Wallace StegnerRead
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