Quotes & Sayings About Outdoors

Outdoors, we knew, was the real terror of life. The threat of being outdoors surfaced frequently in those days. Every possibility of excess was curtailed with it. If somebody ate too much, he could end up outdoors. If somebody used too much coal, he could end up outdoors. People could gamble themselves outdoors, drink themselves outdoors. Sometimes mothers put their sons outdoors, and when that happened, regardless of what the son had done, all sympathy was with him. He was outdoors, and his own flesh had done it. To be put outdoors by a landlord was one thing - unfortunate, but an aspect of life over which you had no control, since you could not control your income. But to be slack enough to put oneself outdoors, or heartless enough to put one's own kin outdoors - that was criminal. — Toni Morrison

Fishing is much less about the fishing, and much more about the time alone with your kid, away from the hustle and bustle of the everyday. — Dan Pearce

Many models do yoga, but I find it boring. I'd rather be outdoors having fun. — Constance Jablonski

It was cold out there, bitter, biting, cutting, piercing, hyperborean, marmoreal cold, and there were all these Minnesotans running around outdoors, happy as lambs in the spring. — Charles Kuralt

It must be nice to work outdoors in solitude, I thought. Problems start when you have to deal with people. — Amy M. Reade

A western buckaroo, I share his scorn for people who go camping by the book, relying on the authority of some half-assed assistant scoutmaster whose total experience outdoors probably consists of two overnight hikes and a weekend in the Catskills. But we have just had that confrontation. The one who goes by Pritchard's book is Sid's wife, and I am wary. It is not my expedition. I am a guest here. — Wallace Stegner

Scholars, I plead with you, Where are your dictionaries of the wind, the grasses? — Norman MacCaig

Diana? Isn't she the goddess who hated men?'
He considered. 'I think of her as the goddess who tempted men by bathing outdoors, and turned them into animal life if they succumbed to the lure of bare flesh. — Eloisa James

When I'm at home, I just run all the time, you know; I get up, and I go pretty much four days a week outdoors. I go in the canyons around L.A., Malibu - just around L.A. there's a lot of different spots. — Flea

And we were taught to play golf. Golf epitomizes the tame world. On a golf course nature is neutered. The grass is clean, a lawn laundry that wipes away the mud, the insect, the bramble, nettle and thistle, an Eezy-wipe lawn where nothing of life, dirty and glorious, remains. Golf turns outdoors into indoors, a prefab mat of stultified grass, processed, pesticided, herbicided, the pseudo-green of formica sterility. Here, the grass is not singing. The wind cannot blow through it. Dumb expression, greenery made stupid, it hums a bland monotone in the key of the mono-minded. No word is emptier than a golf tee. No roots, it has no known etymology, it is verbal nail polish. Worldwide, golf is an arch act of enclosure, a commons fenced and subdued for the wealthy, trampling serf and seedling. The enemy of wildness, it is a demonstration of the absolute dominion of man over wild nature. — Jay Griffiths

He sat in the other chair, taking advantage of the opportunity to take another good look at her. Her fawn-colored hair was sun-streaked from long days spent outdoors. Now it was done up copperhead style, the multiple braids decorated with beads and feathers. One braid per kill - wasn't that the rule? — Cinda Williams Chima

Brass bands are all very well in their place - outdoors and several miles away. — Thomas Beecham

For outdoors, he wears a mantle fastened at the shoulder with a clasp or chain; although buttons are sometimes used for decoration, the buttonhole has not been invented. — Joseph Gies

I love being outdoors and try to work out outside when I can. I spent most of my childhood outdoors. — Miranda Kerr

I love the action that I'm able to do. I grew up in Maine, outdoors and playing with the boys and shooting skeet. I have my girly side, too. But, I do like playing the strong female roles, especially now with something as simple as Twitter, where you've got young women following you. — Rachel Nichols

By thinking through the grilling process while still in the kitchen, you can easily gather all of the items that you might need and conveniently carry them to the outdoors area. — Barton Seaver

I don't believe in the inner journey. Real life is lived outdoors. — Marty Rubin

I want my grandkids to grow up in the great outdoors. The last thing I want is for them to grow up to be nerds. — Phil Robertson

4x4 is 75% ability, and 25% equipment. — Jury Nel

Laughter. It connects me to the moment, the people around me, nothing like a good belly laugh to feel alive. And having sex outdoors, of course. — Danielle Cormack

Then eventually Westwood arrived. He looked nothing like Reacher expected, but the reality fit the bill just as well as the preconceptions had. He was an outdoors type, not a lab rat, and sturdy rather than pencil-necked. He looked like a naturalist or an explorer. He had short but unruly hair, fair going gray, and a beard of the same length and color. He was red in the face from sunburn and had squint lines around his eyes. He was forty-five, maybe. He was wearing clothing put together from high-tech fabrics and many zippers, but it was all old and creased. He had hiking boots on his feet, with speckled laces like miniature mountain-climbing ropes. He was toting a canvas bag about as big as a mail carrier's. — Lee Child

Savannah, darlin'?" "Yes, Mama. Come in." Her mother opened the door a crack, then slipped into the room, carrying the largest, most extravagant bouquet of wildflowers Savannah had ever seen. Wildflowers that smelled of lilac and honeysuckle and the outdoors. She breathed deeply and sighed, looking at her mother in question. "Asher Lee," she said, "is downstairs." Savannah felt her mouth tilt up into an involuntary smile and her eyes flood with tears. Her mother set the bouquet on her vanity and put her arm around Savannah. "Whatever he did, he's awful sorry, button." "He yelled at me and made me cry." "Guessing he didn't mean whatever it is he said." "He thinks I want him to change." "Well, of course you do," said her mother matter-of-factly, swiping at Savannah's tears with the corner of her sunflower apron. "We all want to change the men we love. Leave our mark on them." "Oh, I don't lov - " "Of course you don't. I was just makin' conversation. — Katy Regnery

I hate the outdoors. To me the outdoors is where the car is. — Will Durst

It went on for a month. Those who had taken it for a cosmic sign cringed beneath the sky each nightfall, imagining ever more extravagant disasters. Others, for whom orange did not seem an appropriately apocalyptic shade, sat outdoors on public benches, reading calmly, growing used to the curious pallor. As nights went on and nothing happened and the phenomenon slowly faded to the accustomed deeper violets again, most had difficulty remembering the earlier rise of heart, the sense of overture and possibility and went back once again to seeking only orgasm, hallucination, stupor, sleep, to fetch them through the night and prepare them against the day. — Thomas Pynchon

I found the brightness of the outdoors, rectangled through large glass panels. — Alexandra Kleeman

It is one of those big-smelling days, when people bring the outdoors in with them, the scent of rain on their sleeves, in their hair. — Gillian Flynn

In the photographs themselves there's a definite contrast between the figures and the location - I like that kind of California backyard look; clapboard houses, staircases outdoors. — Helmut Newton

Hiking is great because it's a lifelong sport and you're outdoors, active, so whether you call that a sport or a hobby or a recreation, I think the wording - it's a great way to get exercise, and it can be as challenging as you want to make it. — Jennifer Pharr Davis

The earth is our origin and destination. The ancient rhythms of the earth have insinuated themselves into the rhythms of the human heart. The earth is not outside us; it is within: the clay from where the tree of the body grows. When we emerge from our offices, rooms and houses, we enter our natural element. We are children of the earth: people to whom the outdoors is home. Nothing can separate us from the vigour and vibrancy of this inheritance. In contrast to our frenetic, saturated lives, the earth offers a calming stillness. Movement and growth in nature takes time. The patience of nature enjoys the ease of trust and hope. There is something in our clay nature that needs to continually experience this ancient, outer ease of the world. It helps us remember who we are and why we are here. — John O'Donohue

Air pollution is my biggest concern right now. Maybe because I live in Beijing, and in this city we have such severe challenges due to bad air quality. It has affected our daily lives and health. I do not go outdoors because of it. I desperately hope that we can improve the current situation. — Li Bingbing

I'd been doing projects outdoors for the public. I made pigeons eat geometry by putting bread out in rhomboids and triangles. I don't know if this activity made sense, but the work was available. — Jenny Holzer

We all love being outdoors. Grandma was in her garden or fishing; Mama loves to fish and I love to be outside. We all love the Lord. — Reba McEntire

There are many paths leading to a garden and many experiences awaiting those who venture in. No matter what your motive - whether to grow healthy, delicious food; spend time outdoors feeling more alive than your desk job allows; help save the planet; find relaxation, solace, or healing; meet your neighbors; get your hands in the sweet earth; or discover for yourself just how abundant and generous nature can be - a garden rarely disappoints. It's a magnet for life in all its quirky, beautiful forms. — Jane Shellenberger

I found it idiotically distressing that a sharp finger whistle could no longer summon them outdoors into a playful twilight. An ancient discovery was now mine to make: to leave is to make nothing less than a mortal action. The suspicion came to me for the fist time that they were figures of my dreaming, like the loved dead: my mother and all these vanished boys. And after Mama's cremation I could not rid myself of the notion that she had been placed in the furnace of memory even when alive and, by extension, that one's dealings with others, ostensibly vital, at a certain point become dealings with the dead. — Joseph O'Neill

I am no fashion diva - I grew up on the beaches in South Africa and am a nature girl that spends a lot of time outdoors. Fashion speaks to me through an occasion. — Tanit Phoenix

As I look back on my fondness for the outdoors, and specifically the elements in nature that I find visually stimulating, I am surprised at how often the theme of dead trees arise. I guess it's that each one seems to have a story of its own, representing many years of living through everything that nature could throw at them. — Cory Trepanier

My tent doesn't look like much but, as an estate agent might say, "It is air-conditioned and has exceptional location. — Fennel Hudson

A golf course is nothing but a pool room moved outdoors. — Frank Butler

The neo-hippie-dips, the sentimentality-crazed iguana anthropomorphizers, the Chicken Littles, the three-bong-hit William Blakes- thank God these people don't actually go outdoors much, or the environment would be even worse than it is already. — P. J. O'Rourke

Eating outdoors makes for good health and long life and good temper, everyone knows that. — Elsie De Wolfe

The Order of the Arrow is a thing of the outdoors rather than the indoors. It was born in an island wilderness. It needs the sun and rain, the woods and the plains, the waters and the starlit sky. — E. Urner Goodman

Along with rock climbing, I hike and I like to go to the beach, anything outdoors and anything that takes me out of the everyday. — Christa B. Allen

I am unboreable in the great outdoors. — P. J. O'Rourke

He decided to go over a couple of blocks to Michael's Tavern for something cold, and as he walked beside the road he felt his anger burning up in the heat of noon, and saw himself, as he often did when he was outdoors on hot days, being forged in enormous fires for some purpose beyond his imagining. He was only walking down a street toward a barroom, and yet in his own mind he took his part in the eternity of this place. It seemed to him - it was not the first time - that he belonged in Hell, and would always find himself joyful in its midst. It seemed to him that to touch James Houston was to touch one iota of the vast grit that made the desert and hid the fires at the centre of the earth. — Denis Johnson

When going for a run, I pick fresh air, openness, and scenery of the outdoors over a treadmill every time. — Robert Cheeke

Running outdoors is to be in a sort of magical kingdom under whose spell I feel happiest. — Robin Harvie

Of course, spending time with family is always good. I love the outdoors, so if I get a chance to go out and hike or bike around, that's always great. If I don't have time to leave, just listening to some music that I love reenergizes me and gives me that break I need to go back to whatever it is I'm doing. — Anousheh Ansari

There!" she said, as she spread the tablecloth and put the sandwiches in a neat pile upon it. "Don't they look tempting? I always think that food tastes better outdoors."
With that remark," remarked Kismine, "Jasmine enters the Middle class. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Seeped into his bones from decades of sitting outdoors in — Kamila Shamsie

Even the sick should try these so-called dangerous passes, because for every unfortunate they kill, they cure a thousand. — John Muir

We made love outdoors
Without a roof, I like most,
Without stove, to make love, assuming the weather be fair and balmy, and the earth beneath be clean. Our souls intertwined and gushing of dew. — Roman Payne

after all these programs and scholarships, after all the work done by organized athletics at all levels, the number of boys actually playing baseball or football is far lower than before: no one is outdoors playing. — Anthony M. Esolen

I'm likely to stay here, pen in hand, until dusk comes and my writing melts into the twilight. — Fennel Hudson

And if you don't spend every second outdoors, people think there's someting wrong with you. — Jeff Kinney

I grew up in a wood cabin on Puget Sound in Manchester, Wash. My family taught me to appreciate the arts and the outdoors, and I still yearn for the absolute silence I experienced there when I was young. — Steven Holl

I live in a beautiful part of the world - western New Hampshire along the Baker River - and my family and I spend a lot of time outdoors. — Joseph Monninger

As readers can probably tell from my books, I love the outdoors. — Sharon Creech

I want to get people to connect to the outdoors. — Sally Jewell

A pony who lives outdoors usually has healthy skin and hair and does not need to be groomed daily, except to get him clean for riding and for special occasions. He should be checked over and have his feet picked out every day, whether he is ridden or not, and his eyes, nose and dock should be cleaned. In some parts of
the country, he should be checked for ticks, especially in his mane and tail. Besides that, he will only need currying and brushing with the dandy brush to make his coat smooth. The body brush will not do much good on a pony that rolls every day, and you do not want to remove the natural grease and scurf from his coat, as it protects him from getting wet and cold. After riding, sweat marks should be brushed out or rubbed out with a towel.
Controlling — Susan E. Harris

That's not true, Gran." Meg had to stand up for herself if no one else was going to. "I love the outdoors." Not, but there was no way she was going to sound like a wuss. "Why, remember that time your parents took you camping when you were ten? You went potty in the woods and accidentally sat on a wasps' nest. — Miranda Liasson

Why do farmers farm, given their economic adversities on top of the many frustrations and difficulties normal to farming? And always the answer is: "Love. They must do it for love." Farmers farm for the love of farming. They love to watch and nurture the growth of plants. They love to live in the presence of animals. They love to work outdoors. They love the weather, maybe even when it is making them miserable. They love to live where they work and to work where they live. If the scale of their farming is small enough, they like to work in the company of their children and with the help of their children. They love the measure of independence that farm life can still provide. I have an idea that a lot of farmers have gone to a lot of trouble merely to be self-employed to live at least a part of their lives without a boss. — Wendell Berry

Cycling is a great way to learn about your city. I love being outdoors, especially in good weather, but I'm not a fair weather cyclist. I'm happy to get a red nose in the cold. — Erin O'Connor

I have a studio in the country - in the woods - but my paintings look more real to me than what is outdoors. You walk outside; the rocks are inert; even the clouds are inert. It makes me feel a little better. But I do have a faith that it is possible to make a living thing, not a diagram of what I have been thinking: to posit with paint something living, something that changes each day. — Philip Guston

Living in New York after 14 years, I'm such an outdoors kind of person. I love gardening and building things. I like restoring old furniture. — Paige Butcher

If you work outdoors be passive, go with the weather. This may mean two hours sheltering from a downpour, followed by a wonderful burst of sunlight and a rainbow. — John Newbery

In this ever changing world, there are few things that have remained constant for me. The chance of hooking a nice trout still excites and thrills me to this day ... just as it did when I was a kid. I like that! — M.A. Bookout

I love the life of an actor because you spend brief amounts of time with other people and then you just leave. I need to be alone a lot, and I need the outdoors. — Madeleine Stowe

No Geologist worth anything is permanently bound to a desk or laboratory, but the charming notion that true science can only be based on unbiased observation of nature in the raw is mythology. Creative work, in geology and anywhere else, is interaction and synthesis: half-baked ideas from a bar room, rocks in the field, chains of thought from lonely walks, numbers squeezed from rocks in a laboratory, numbers from a calculator riveted to a desk, fancy equipment usually malfunctioning on expensive ships, cheap equipment in the human cranium, arguments before a road cut. — Stephen Jay Gould

I've always liked adventure television. Pre-'Survivor,' I did a series on cable called 'Eco-Challenge,' an adventure race with experts mainly, and here we have 'Expedition Impossible.' I like the outdoors and I like doing something fresh for television you haven't seen before. — Mark Burnett

The supreme contemporary example of such an inability to feel evil is of course Walt Whitman. "His favorite occupation," writes his disciple, Dr. Bucke "seemed to be strolling or sauntering about outdoors by himself, looking at the grass, the trees, the flowers, the vistas of light, the varying aspects of the sky, and listening to the birds, the crickets, the tree frogs, and all the hundreds of natural sounds. — William James

She inhaled the complex odors, from vegetation, water vapor, industrial waste gases. Barrayar permitted an amazing amount of air dumping, as if . . . well, air was free, here. Nobody measured it; there were no air processing and filtration fees. Did these people even realize how rich they were? All the air they could breathe, just by stepping outdoors, taken for granted as casually as they took frozen water falling from the sky. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Three weeks after he climbed out the kitchen window, the boy was outdoors with his cousins - teenagers like him - laying a picnic for dinner beneath the stars. It was then he would have heard the drones approaching, followed by the whiz of the missiles. It was a direct hit. The boy and his cousins were blown to pieces. All that remained of the boy was the back of his head, his flowing hair still clinging to it. The boy had turned sixteen years old a few weeks earlier and now he had been killed by his own government. He was the third US citizen to be killed in operations authorized by the president in two weeks. The first was his father — Jeremy Scahill

The pieces I've written for 'Outside' magazine are definitely my best work, and they're virtually all about the outdoors. — Jon Krakauer

Just her and the great outdoors. Gwendolyn Margaret Passmore and a million blades of grass. — Julia Quinn

Sometimes a man stands up during supper
and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,
because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.
And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.
And another man, who remains inside his own house,
stays there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,
so that his children have to go far out into the world
toward that same church, which he forgot. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Why do they call it the Department of Interior when they are in charge of everything outdoors? — Steven Wright

I do not go outdoors ... As far as I'm concerned, the whole point of living in New York City is indoors. You want greenery? Order the spinach. — David Rakoff

The outdoors, the beautiful environment, both in fresh and salt water. And the thing that concerns me is the amount of kids that stand on street corners, or go into pinball parlours, and call it recreation. — Rex Hunt

I wonder if it's because I haven't been able to poke my nose outdoors for so long that I've grown so crazy about everything to do with Nature? — Anne Frank

I really do love being outdoors - I mean, you'd never think it in my high heels and pencil skirt! But I really do miss the smell of hay and farms, and I like milking a cow. — Christina Hendricks

I grew up like Huck Finn, always outdoors, exploring, collecting frogs - there was space everywhere. I want my kids to experience that too. I love being outside. — Josh Duhamel

Something else was different when we were young: our parents were outdoors. I'm not saying they were joining health clubs and things of that sort, but they were out of the house, out on the porch, talking to neighbors. As far as physical fitness goes, today's kids are the sorriest generation in the history of the United States. Their parents may be out jogging, but the kids just aren't outside. — Richard Louv

Play with your kids. Limit their TV time. Get outdoors and chase them around. Wrestle with them. Walk the dog. Go bike riding. The reality is that your kids are not stupid, and they know when they are overweight Start walking the dog after dinner instead of watching TV. You don't want them going on the Web to find ways to lose weight. That's when you'll find them eating tissue paper because they read that a supermodel did it. — Jillian Michaels

I love being outdoors - hiking, biking, and swimming. — Lea Michele

I love anything that involves the ocean. Swimming, snorkelling or surfing are all fun, which distracts from your mind that you are actually doing a workout. Being outdoors in the sun and the salt water is great for freeing your mind and feeling alive. — Samantha Stosur

Vic just laughed at that, didn't bother to tell him she had pulled his cell phone apart and shoved it in the garbage the day before. He took her in his arms, held her in his bearish embrace. He was a big man, glum about being overweight, but he smelled better than any guy she had ever met. His chest smelled of cedar and motor oil and the outdoors. He smelled like responsibility. For a moment, being held by him, she remembered what it had been like to be happy. — Joe Hill

When I returned to camp, they walked behind me on the trail, and we spoke not a word about getting skunked today, but rather talked about the days we returned with a stringer full of fish, and how we filleted them and the left the guts out for bears and eagles, and how those fish tasted fresh when we fried them over a fire. — Daniel J. Rice

Nana always said the rain was Nature's way of adding sparkle to the outdoors. — Evangeline Duran Fuentes

The rain ... falls upon the just and the unjust alike; a thing which would not happen if I were superintending the rain's affairs. No, I would rain softly and sweetly on the just, but if I caught a sample of the unjust outdoors, I would drown him. — Mark Twain

Grant me the ability to be alone, May it be my custom to go outdoors each day among the trees and grasses among all growing things and there may I be alone, and enter into prayer to talk with the one that I belong to. — Nachman Of Breslov

The urge to transform one's appearance, to dance outdoors, to mock the powerful and embrace perfect strangers is not easy to suppress.
Barbara Ehrenreich, Dancing in the Streets, 260. — Barbara Ehrenreich

I spent my childhood outdoors on my grandparents' farm. I learned to ride a motorbike when I was about six, a little PeeWee 50. I'd climb trees - there was a big weeping willow. — Miranda Kerr

I love to work out and really enjoy the outdoors. I like to immerse myself with sport-related activities and spending quality time with people. I find people to be very inspiring, and I get a lot of motivation from listening and interacting with them, sharing stories and similarities - and differences - in our lives, and learning from each other. — Apolo Ohno

No, don't learn at karate schools. They overcharge you for karate uniforms. They make you pay, like, fifty or seventy-five bucks just for a karate uniform, and you don't wear a uniform in everyday life, so why train in one? Most fights take place outdoors, not inside with perfect lighting and mats. — Judah Friedlander

I'm not a gamer. I've never played any games. I was more a books and games outdoors kind of a person, so I was extremely daunted when I got this job knowing the size of the fan base and the commitment of the fans to 'Halo.' — Anna Popplewell

Maybe now that we have the same sponsor in Remington we can spend some time together outdoors. — Dale Earnhardt

Christ has meant everything to our marriage. It was my commitment to Christ and the words from my grandmother that made me stick with Phil [Robertson] when there wasn't much to hold on to. Phil's love for the outdoors, his pioneer spirit, and his quest for adventure has not changed. But his heart has been turned inside out. He's a new man in every way that involves relationships. — Kay Robertson

I spent a lot of time outdoors as a kid. — Joel Edgerton

The writer loves the fog as it pours in; he loves the sun when the fog pours out. The rest of California is Beach Boys country, but San Francisco has that moody thing going on, those blues notes wrapped in moisture, an atmosphere that tempers California dreaming and makes life more real. The fog brings reality, but it is still a California reality, one spent outdoors the whole year round. — Eric Maisel