Quote collection
322 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"I am often asked if I am not lonely on my solitary excursions. It seems so self-evident that one cannot be lonesome where everything is wild and beautiful and busy and steeped with God that the question is hard to answer."
"Man has injured every animal he has touched."
"In every country the mountains are fountains, not only of rivers but of men. Therefore we all are born mountaineers, the offspring of rock and sunshine."
"To the sane and free it will hardly seem necessary to cross the continent in search of wild beauty, however easy the way, for they find it in abundance wherever they chance to be."
"Men use care in purchasing a horse, and are neglectful in choosing friends."
"I was a few miles south of Louisville when I planned my journey. I spread out my map under a tree and made up my mind to go through Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia to Florida, thence to Cuba, thence to some part of South America; but it will be only a hasty walk. I am thankful, however, for so much."
"Perhaps the profession of doing good may be full, but every body should be kind at least to himself. Take a course of good water and air, and in the eternal youth of Nature you may renew your own. Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you. Some have strange, morbid fears as soon as they find themselves with Nature, even in the kindest and wildest of her solitudes, like very sick children afraid of their mother-as if God were dead and the devil were king."
"All the world was before me and every day was a holiday, so it did not seem important to which one of the world's wildernesses I first should wander."
"Going to the woods is going home, for I suppose we came from the woods originally."
"The wrongs done to trees, wrongs of every sort, are done in the darkness of ignorance and unbelief, for when the light comes, the heart of the people is always right."
"But to gain a perfect view, one must go yet further, over a curving brow to a slight shelf on the extreme brink."
"There is no estimating the wit and wisdom concealed and latent in our lower fellow mortals until made manifest by profound experiences; for it is through suffering that dogs as well as saints are developed and made perfect."
"Tell me what you will of the benefactions of city civilization, of the sweet security of streets-all as part of the natural upgrowth of man towards the high destiny we hear so much of. I know that our bodies were made to thrive only in pure air, and the scenes in which pure air is found. If the death exhalations that brood the broad towns in which we so fondly compact ourselves were made visible, we should flee as from a plague. All are more or less sick; there is not a perfectly sane man in San Francisco."
"Some people miss flesh as a drunkard misses his dram."
"A little pure wildness is the one great present want, both of men and sheep."
"Most people who travel look only at what they are directed to look at. Great is the power of the guidebook maker, however ignorant."
"He had gone to the higher Sierras... [about Ralph Waldo Emerson's death]"
"I've had a great time in South America and South Africa. Indeed it now seems that on this pair of wild hot continents I've enjoyed the most fruitful year of my life."
"Yet how hard most people work for mere dust and ashes and care, taking no thought of growing in knowledge and grace, never having time to get in sight of their own ignorance."
"I always enjoyed the hearty society of a snowstorm."