I … am always glad to touch the living rock again and dip my hand in the high mountain air.
—John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American Naturalist
If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
Here are your waters and your watering place. Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.
—Robert Frost (1874–1963) American Poet
Thank God, they cannot cut down the clouds!
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
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.
—Walt Whitman (1819–92) American Poet, Essayist, Journalist
There is a delight in the hardy life of the open. There are no words that can tell the hidden spirit of the wilderness that can reveal its mystery, its melancholy and its charm. The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased and not impaired in value. Conservation means development as much as it does protection.
—Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American Historian, Political Leader, Explorer
There’s been progress toward seeing that nature and culture are not opposing terms, and that wilderness is not the only kind of landscape for environmentalists to concern themselves with.
—Michael Pollan (b.1955) American Food Writer, Campaigner
When I would recreate myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and the most interminable, and to the citizen, most dismal swamp. I enter the swamp as a sacred place—a sanctum sanctorum; there is the strength, the marrow of Nature.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
The old Lakota was wise, He knew that man’s heart, away from nature, becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans too.
—Luther Standing Bear (1868–1939) Lakota Chief, Actor
So rests the sky against the earth. The dark still tarn in the lap of the forest. As a husband embraces his wife’s body in faithful tenderness, so the bare ground and trees are embraced by this still, high, light of the morning. I feel an ache of longing to share in this embrace, to be united and absorbed. A longing like carnal desire, but directed towards earth, water, sky, and returned by the whispers of the trees, the fragrance of the soil, the caresses of the wind, the embrace of water and light. Content? No, no, no—but refreshed, rested—while waiting.
—Dag Hammarskjold (1905–61) Swedish Statesman, UN Diplomat
The richest values of wilderness lie not in the days of Daniel Boone, nor even in the present, but rather in the future.
—Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) American Ecologist, Conservationist
Wilderness is a necessity … They will see what I meant in time. There must be places for human beings to satisfy their souls. Food and drink is not all. There is the spiritual. In some it is only a germ, of course, but the germ will grow.
—John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American Naturalist
If we were required to know the position of the fruit dots or the character of the indusium’s, nothing could be easier to ascertain, but if it is required that you be affected by ferns, that they amount to anything, signify anything to you, that they be another sacred scripture and revelation to you, help to redeem your life, this end is not so easily accomplished.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
In God’s wildness lies the hope of the world—the great fresh, unblighted, unredeemed wilderness.
—John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American Naturalist
Wilderness areas are first of all a series of sanctuaries for the primitive arts of wilderness travel, especially canoeing and packing.
—Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) American Ecologist, Conservationist
The thoughts of the earth are my thoughts.The voice of the earth is my voice.All that belongs to the earth belongs to me.All that surrounds the earth surrounds me.It is lovely indeed, it is lovely indeed.
—Common Proverb
Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren land; long heath, broth furze, any thing.
—J. R. R. Tolkien (1892–1973) British Scholar, Author
When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe… The whole wilderness is unity and interrelationship is alive and familiar.
—John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American Naturalist
Every well-written book is a light for me. When you write, you use other writers and their books as guides in the wilderness.
—Kate DiCamillo (b.1964) American Children’s Book Author
I am in love with this world. I have nestled lovingly in it. I have climbed its mountains, roamed its forests, sailed its waters, crossed its deserts, felt the sting of its frosts, the oppression of its heats, the drench of its rains, the fury of its winds, and always have beauty and joy waited upon my goings and comings.
—John Burroughs (1837–1921) American Naturalist, Writer
Natural species are the library from which genetic engineers can work.
—Thomas Lovejoy (1941–2021) American Conservation Biologist
You can only go halfway into the darkest forest; then you are coming out the other side.
—Chinese Proverb
The forests of America, however slighted by man, must have been a great delight to God; for they were the best He ever planted.
—John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American Naturalist
We need the tonic of wildness, to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, not the trees.
—The Holy Bible Scripture in the Christian Faith
To preserve wild animals implies generally the creation of a forest for them to dwell in or resort to.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
He who has known how to love the land has loved eternity.
—Stefan Zeromski (1864–1925) Polish Novelist
The good life on any river may… depend on the perception of its music, and the preservation of some music to perceive.
—Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) American Ecologist, Conservationist
Come forth into the light of things. Let Nature be your teacher.
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Poet
I care to live only to entice people to look at nature’s loveliness. My only special self is nothing (I want to be) like a flake of glass through which light passes.
—John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American Naturalist
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