Wilderness Quotes

Plants are the young of the world. Vessels of health and vigor; but they grope ever upward towards consciousness; the trees are imperfect man, and seem to bemoan their imprisonment, rooted in the ground.

The creation of the mental domain of phantasm has a complete counterpart in the establishment of "reservations" and "nature-parks."... The "reservation" is to maintain the old condition of things which has been regretfully sacrificed to necessity everywhere else; there everything make grow and spread as it pleases, including what is it useless and even what is harmful. The mental realm of phantasm is also such a reservation reclaimed from the encroachment of the reality-principle.

Here are your waters and your watering place. Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.
Robert Frost†

Acceptance is the art of making the obstacle the path. Therefore, embrace the enemy. This is the lesson of the river guide: face the danger, move toward it, that's where the current is the strongest, and it will carry you around the obstacle. Use it.
China Galland†

In the point of rest at the center of our being, we encounter a world where all things are at rest in the same way. Then a tree becomes a mystery, a cloud a revelation, each man a cosmos of whose riches we can only catch glimpses. The life of its simplicity is simple, but it opens to us a book in which we never get beyond the first syllable.

We must not only protect the country side and save it from destruction, we must resort what has been destroyed and salvage the beauty and charm of our cities... Once our natural splendor is destroyed, it can never be recaptured. And once man can no longer walk with beauty or wonder at nature, his spirit will wither and his sustenance be wasted.

Each day comes to me with both hands full of possibilities, and in its brief course I discern all the verities and realities of my existence; the bliss of growth, the glory of action, the spirit of beauty.

The supreme reality of our time is... the vulnerability of our planet.

National parks and reserves are an integral aspect of intelligent use of natural resources. It is the course of wisdom to set aside an ample portion of our natural resources as national parks and reserves, thus ensuring that future generations may know the majesty of the earth as we know it today.

The wilderness and the idea of wilderness is one of the permanent homes of the human spirit.

Wilderness is the raw material out of which man has hammered the artifact called civilization.

Wilderness is a resource which can shrink but not grow... the creation of new wilderness in the full sense of the word is impossible.

Man always kills the things he loves, and so we the pioneers have killed our wilderness. Some say we had to. Be that as it may, I am glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in. Of what avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?

A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise

Having to squeeze the last drop of utility out of the land has the same desperate finality as having to chop up the furniture to keep warm.

Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land.

Ability to see the cultural value of wilderness boils down, in the last analysis, to a question of intellectual humility. The shallow-minded modern who has lost his rootage in the land assumes that he has already discovered what is important.

Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in part, with the pretty. It expands through successive stages of the beautiful to values as yet uncaptured by language. The quality of cranes lies, I think, in this higher gamut, as yet beyond the reach of words.

There is yet no social stigma in the possession of a gullied form, a wrecked forest or a polluted stream, provided the dividends suffice to send the youngsters to college. What ever ails the land, the government will fix it.

The art of land doctoring is being practiced with vigor, but the science of land health is yet to be born.

One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. And ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.

In wilderness I sense the miracle of life, and behind it our scientific accomplishments fade to trivia.
Charles A. Lindbergh

The good news is that Americans will, in increasing numbers, begin to value and protect the vast American landscape. The bad news is that they may love it to death.
Charles E. Little†



3
People viewed this also viewed
Animals Quotes
Earth Quotes
Hunting Quotes
Nature Quotes
Wife Quotes
Wildlife Quotes
Aldo Leopold Quotes
Chinese Proverb Quotes
Gary Snyder Quotes
John Muir Quotes
Margaret (Mardy) Murie Quotes
Sigurd F. Olson Quotes
Interesting Reads
Books About Wilderness
Related Quotes
Quotes with Keyword Wilderness