Wilderness Quotes - Page 13

• The wilderness within us is actually the best part of us.

  Stephen Marche

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• Only perhaps in the United States, which alone of countries can do without governing,every man being at least able to live, and move off into the wilderness, let Congress jargon as it will,can such a form of so-called Government continue for any length of time to torment men with the semblance, when the indispensable substance is not there.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Country, Moving, Men

  Thomas Carlyle (2014). “The Selected Works of Thomas Carlyle”, p.638, Lulu.com

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• The people turn in allegiance to Humanity, as surely as water flows downward or as a wild animal takes cover in the wilderness.

  Mencius

  Animal, People, Water

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• Those who try to lead the people can only do so by following the mob. It is through the voice of one crying in the wilderness that the ways of the gods must be prepared.

  Oscar Wilde

  Leadership, Voice, People

  Oscar Wilde (2000). “Oscar Wilde - The Major Works”, p.279, OUP Oxford

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• The ocean is a wilderness reaching round the globe, wilder than a Bengal jungle, and fuller of monsters, washing the very wharves of our cities and the gardens of our sea-side residences.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Ocean, Garden, Sea

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.826, Delphi Classics

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• Wilderness without wildlife is just scenery.

  Lois Crisler

  Wildlife, Scenery

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• By seeing the otherness in that which is most unfamiliar, we can learn to see it too in that which at first seemed merely ordinary. If wilderness can do this - if it can help us perceive and respect a nature we had forgotten to recognize as natural - then it will become part of the solution to our environmental dilemmas rather than part of the problem.

  William Cronon

  Environmental, Firsts, Ordinary

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• Nature has many scenes to exhibit, and constantly draws a curtain over this part or that. She is constantly repainting the landscape and all surfaces, dressing up some scene for our entertainment. Lately we had a leafy wilderness; now bare twigs begin to prevail, and soon she will surprise us with a mantle of snow. Some green she thinks so good for our eyes that, like blue, she never banishes it entirely from our eyes, but has created evergreens.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Eye, Winter, Thinking

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.2799, Delphi Classics

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• True wilderness is where you keep it, and real wilderness experience cannot be a sedentary one; you have to seek it out not seated, but afoot.

  David R. Brower

  Nature, Real, Sedentary

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• They [the Founding Fathers] were intent upon establishing a Christian commonwealth in accordance with the principle of self-government. They were an inspired body of men. It has been said that God sifted the nations that He might send choice grain into the wilderness ... Who can fail to see it in the hand of Destiny? Who can doubt that it has been guided by a Divine Providence?

  Calvin Coolidge

  Christian, Father, Destiny

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• Many of the men who had come to the wilderness to practice religion appeared to have forgotten its true nature.

  Ellen Glasgow

  Men, Practice, Religion

  Ellen Glasgow (1935). “Vein of Iron”

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• I should be glad if all the meadows on the earth were left in a wild state, if that were the consequence of men's beginning to redeem themselves.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Nature, Men, Earth

  Henry David Thoreau, Joseph O. Valentine, Thoreau Society (2001). “Thoreau on Land: Nature's Canvas”, p.84, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• There is an enormous amount to be learned about the sea; like most wildernesses, it has great potential.

  Sylvia Earle

  Ocean, Sea, Enormous

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• I think that most creative fiction involves the transformational process, whether it is Dickens or Dostoyevsky and the writer in some sense is expressing their own journey through such a wilderness.

  William P. Young

  Journey, Thinking, Creative

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• Hunting after happiness is like hunting after a lost sheep in the wilderness--when you find it, the chances are that it is a skeleton.

  Josh Billings

  Happiness, Hunting, Skeletons

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• Labor, with its coarse raiment and its bare right arm, has gone forth in the earth, achieving the truest conquests and rearing the most durable monuments. It has opened the domain of matter and the empire of the mind. The wild beast has fled before it, and the wilderness has fallen back.... its triumphal march is the progress of civilization.

  Edwin Hubbel Chapin

  Civilization, Mind, Progress

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• Wilderness areas are first of all a series of sanctuaries for the primitive arts of wilderness travel, especially canoeing and packing.

  Aldo Leopold

  Art, Sanctuary, Firsts

  Aldo Leopold (2013). “Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)”, p.228, Library of America

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• ...in the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in the streets or villages...in the woods we return to reason and faith.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Village, Woods, Return

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1982). “Emerson: Selected Essays”, p.30, Penguin

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• Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Village Life, Forests, Meadows

  Henry David Thoreau, Laura Ross (2009). “Walden, Or, Life in the Woods: Bold-faced Ideas for Living a Truly Transcendent Life”, p.414, Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.

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• Every tree sends its fibres forth in search of the Wild. The cities import it at any price. Men plow and sail for it. From the forest and wilderness come the tonics and barks which brace mankind.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Cities, Tree

  Henry David Thoreau (2011). “The Natural History Essays”, p.112, Gibbs Smith

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• The most primitive places left with us are the swamps, where the spruce still grows shaggy with usnea.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Swamps, Primitive, Grows

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “The Maine Woods: The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, Volume III (of 20)”, p.87, Trajectory Inc

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• The most domestic cat, which has lain on a rug all her days, appears quite at home in the woods, and, by her sly and stealthy behavior, proves herself more native there than the regular inhabitants.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Home, Cat, Woods

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.141, Graphic Arts Books

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• My spirits infallibly rise in proportion to the outward dreariness. Give me the ocean, the desert, or the wilderness!

  Henry David Thoreau

  Ocean, Giving, Desert

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.355, Simon and Schuster

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• As for me, I delight in the every day Way Among mist-wrapped vines and rocky caves Here in the wilderness I am completely free With my friends, the white clouds, idling forever There are roads, but they do not reach the world Since I am mindless, who can rouse my thoughts On a bed of stone I sit, alone in the night While a round moon climbs up Cold Mountain

  Hanshan

  Moon, Night, Clouds

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• Earth's a howling wilderness,
  Truculent with fraud and force.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Suffering, Earth, Force

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1854). “Poems”, p.41

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