Quotes on Wilderness

To a dull mind all of nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light.

Now I see the secret of making the best person: it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.

Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling.

In wildness is the preservation of the world.

We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend.

Truth alone will endure, all the rest will be swept away before the tide of time. I must continue to bear testimony to truth even if I am forsaken by all. Mine may today be a voice in the wilderness, but it will be heard when all other voices are silenced, if it is the voice of Truth.

I think probably one of the important things that happened to me was growing up in Idaho in the mountains, in the woods, and having a very strong presence of the wilderness around me. That never felt like emptiness. It always felt like presence.

Returning from the wilderness a man becomes a restorer of order, a preserver. He sees the truth, recognizes his true heir, honors his forbears and his heritage, and gives his blessing to his successors. He embodies the passing of human time, living and dying within the human limits of grief and joy.

Has there ever been anything filthier on earth than the saints in the wilderness? Around them was not only the devil loose around them- but also the swine.

The wilderness does not make you forget your normal life so much as it removes the distractions for proper remembering.

Many, and some of the most pressing, of our terrestrial problems can be solved only by going into space. Long before it was a vanishing commodity, the wilderness as the preservation of the world was proclaimed by Thoreau. In the new wilderness of the Solar System may lie the future preservation of mankind.

Today, we must realize that nature is revealed in the simplest meadow, wood lot, marsh, stream, or tidepool, as well as in the remote grandeur of our parks and wilderness areas.

I shall go on some last wilderness trip, to a place I have known and loved. I shall not return.

There is a wolf in me... - I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go.

There is no freeway to the future, no paved highway from here to there. There is only wilderness, uncertain terrain. There are no roadmaps, no signposts. So pioneering leaders rely upon a compass and a dream

Men and women of the world, never again plan war! With this atomic bomb, war can only mean suicide for the human race. From this atomic waste the people of Nagasaki confront the world and cry out: No more war! Let us follow the commandment of love and work together. The people of Nagasaki prostrate themselves before God and pray: Grant that Nagasaki may be the last atomic wilderness in the history of the world.

Africa is less a wilderness than a repository of primary and fundamental values, and less a barbaric land than an unfamiliar voice

Only when there is a wilderness can man harmonize his inner being with the wavelengths of the earth. When the earth, its products, its creatures, become his concern, man is caught up in a cause greater than his own life and more meaningful. Only when man loses himself in an endeavor of that magnitude does he walk and live with humanity and reverence.

In building a path through the self to the far shore of awareness, we have to carefully pick our way through our own wilderness. If we can put our minds into a place of surrender, we will have an easier time feeling the contours of the land. We do not have to break our way through as much as we have to find our way around the major obstacles. We do not have to cure every neurosis, we just have to learn how not to be caught by them.

Of all the things I’d been skeptical about, I didn’t feel skeptical about this: the wilderness had a clarity that included me.

The wanting was a wilderness and I had to find my own way out of the woods.