Wilderness Quotes

“I should need to be a herd of elephants, I thought, and a wilderness of spiders, desperately referring to the animals that are reputed longest lived and most multitudinously eyed, to cope with all of this.”

“Every sacred soul must walk and keep the way of God in the wilderness for years, to begin the sacred writings.”

“There is language going on out there- the language of the wild. Roars, snorts, trumpets, squeals, whoops, and chirps all have meaning derived over eons of expression... We have yet to become fluent in the language -and music- of the wild.”

“I have never considered myself anything other than an environmentalist. I have spent the better part of my life either in the wilderness, or trying desperately to get there.”

“Jesus took care of himself. He ate healthy food. He rested when he was weary. He sought time alone when he needed to recharge. He laughed with his friends. He wept when he was sad. He walked long distances and climbed hills and moved. From barren wilderness to unpredictable waters, he spent the majority of his time outside in nature. He loved wholeheartedly. He served others. He cooked. He studied and learned and grew in wisdom. Jesus cared for himself physically, mentally and spiritually. To be aligned with him, we must do no less.”

“Wherever forests have not been mowed down, wherever the animal is recessed in their quiet protection, wherever the earth is not bereft of four-footed life - that to the white man is an 'unbroken wilderness.' But for us there was no wilderness, nature was not dangerous but hospitable, not forbidding but friendly. Our faith sought the harmony of man with his surroundings; the other sought the dominance of surroundings.For us, the world was full of beauty; for the other, it was a place to be endured until he went to another world.But we were wise. We knew that man's heart, away from nature, becomes hard.”

“The wilderness is a test, whether we will walk in the ways of God.”

“If the enemy could only know that Marcus Garvey is but a John the Baptist in the wilderness, that a greater and more dangerous Marcus Garvey is yet to appear, the Garvey with whom you will have to reckon for the injustice of the present generation.”

“I write - though perhaps it sounds pretentious to say so - to make a clearing in the wilderness, to find out what I care about and what exactly to make of it.”

“When the late Bishop was appointed, about thirty-two years ago, to diffuse the light of the Gospel through this extensive portion of His Majesty's dominions, it was even a greater spiritual, than a natural wilderness.”

“Refuse the old means of measurement.Rely instead on the thrumming wilderness of self. Listen.-From "Out West”

“To be in the woods is a special thing. And also just the concept of wilderness as a necessary opposite in a kind of global dialectic. I want there to be wilderness where there are no humans in a world like this. So nature is super important.”

“In the same way that the picturesque designers were always careful to include some reminder of our mortality in their gardens -- a ruin, sometimes even a dead tree -- the act of leaving parts of the garden untended, and calling attention to its margins, seems to undermine any pretense to perfect power or wisdom on the part of the gardener. The margins of our gardens can be tropes too, but figures of irony rather than transcendence -- antidotes, in fact, to our hubris. It may be in the margins of our gardens that we can discover fresh ways to bring our aesthetics and our ethics about the land into some meaningful alignment.”

“Like music and art, love of nature is a common language that can transcend political or social boundaries.”

“The undisturbed coastal plain is home to a wide variety of plants and animals and is the only wilderness sanctuary in North America that protects a complete range of the arctic ecosystem.”

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

“Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed ... We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in.”

“We did not think of the great open plains, the beautiful rolling hills and the winding streams with tangled growth, as 'wild'. Only to the white man was nature a 'wilderness' and only to him was the land 'infested' with 'wild' animals and 'savage' people. To us it was home. Earth was beautiful and we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery." - Chief Standing River of the Lakota”

“Ensuring that our home planet is healthy and life sustaining is an overwhelming priority that undercuts all other human activities. The ship must first float. Our failure to grasp these fundamental tenants of existence will be our undoing. And one thing is for certain. No calvary is going to come charging to our rescue. We are going to have to rescue ourselves or die trying. Workable solutions are urgently needed. Saving seals and tigers or fighting yet another oil pipeline through a wilderness area, while laudable, is merely shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic. The real issue is our elementary accord with Earth and the plant and animal kingdoms has to be revitalized and re-understood.The burning question is, How?”

“Bad as was being shot by some of our own troops in the battle of the Wilderness, - that was an honest mistake, one of the accidents of war, - being shot at, since the war, by many officers, was worse.”