Quotes & Sayings About State Parks

We take too much of our heritage for granted. Harriman State Park is not Mt. Vernon. Nor is it Yosemite. But heritage cannot be measured on a scale... — Mary E. Reed

Twenty years from now, I can look at this medal and say, 'I was the best quarter-miler in the world on that day.' If you don't think that's important, you don't know what's inside an athlete's soul. — Vincent Matthews

Do we allow unlimited visitation, or do we restrict numbers to protect a delicate ecosystem? Do we heavily advertise the park, enticing paying visitors, generating needed money for Idaho's park department, or do we sacrifice financial benefits to better preserve natural ones? Do we log diseased trees, interfering with nature, or do we allow trees to rot and fall, possibly endangering lives? Do we inexpensively repair historic structures, or do we meticulously restore them? Do we maintain this park as closely as possible to the condition in which Idaho received it, or do we develop it for multiple uses; allow overnight visitors; permit all-terrain vehicles; provide paths for those unable to navigate unpaved trails? — Mary E. Reed

I had married an environmentalist and didn't know it.
I knew without having to look that there was no tree hugging indemnity clause even in the fine print of our marriage certificate. But we'd been manacled together in the Catholic Church. I wondered if I could get some leverage with the religious institution if I pinned my wife with the label of nature-worshipping Wiccan or possibly even Druid. — Michael Gurnow

Despite its convict history, the Australian state of Tasmania is no longer associated only with austerity and privation. Nowadays it's a sybarite's nirvana surrounded by some of the most untouched nature on the planet. "Mainland Tassie," as the Tasmanians who live on the outer islands call it, covers 35,000 square miles, and 45% of that is preserved in bio-reserves, national parks or World Heritage sites. On the other 55%, there are just 515,000 people. — Anonymous

Get out there and see your state. Go to museums and parks and historic sites. Get yourselves some culture so that when you do leave you can take it. — Jennifer Niven

Living in four parks in the state of Assam. A hundred years ago, in Africa, the population of black rhinos approached a million; it has since been reduced to around five thousand animals. — Elizabeth Kolbert

A favored bit from "A Legend of Good Men"

"My mother and I each had our routines. She taught high school, took long hikes in the state parks near our house, read mystery novels, and sometimes disappeared with explanations as thin as, "I just need a few days," or "I'm going to visit a friend."
"Which friend?" I would ask.
"That's right," she would say. — David Vann

I had not been prepared for my employer's approach to vehicular navigation, which was a simple case of being unable to tell the difference between a very large, multi-windowed van that could accommodate a mobile disco and a Formula One racer. — Michael Gurnow

No neuroprogrammer is stupid enough to make a computer capable of conceptualizing deceit. — Amie Kaufman

I'm a believer in things happening for a reason. — Fleur East

the weeks following the war's end, Truman announced a redesign of the presidential flag - the first since the Wilson years. Chief among the changes was the shifting of the eagle's head away from the arrows of war instead toward the olive branch of peace, reflecting the nation's desire for a universal peace. — Garrett M. Graff

Everyone's God is One. — Sai Baba

There are systems that use failure as fuel for improvement, where the cost of failure is small. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

**Did you realize how much a kiss says, Philip???** Oh My Angel I doooo ... A KISS is the beginning of, middle to, and end of most things I love about life ... — Philip Sidney

If we ever have free time, my partner and I are fond of going on walks through the local state forests and parks. — Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

Some find the overt anti-Semitism of Holocaust deniers the ranting of idiots who are best ignored. Others take these comments quite seriously and see a dire and existential threat to Jewish well-being. They see a Holocaust-denying president of a large country, one that is poised to have nuclear weapons, occupying the podium of a world forum that was founded in the wake of the Final Solution with a mandate to stop genocide. They hear him deny the Final Solution and threaten the existence of the Jewish state.

The Eichmann Trial, page XXVII — Deborah E. Lipstadt

I'd somehow managed to get an executive stuck in a tree. Instead of a saucer of milk and 'Here kitty, kitty, kitty,' someone might want to bring a hedge fund and a recording of George Bush promising 'No new taxes. — Michael Gurnow

My wife simply quoted, 'For better or worse.' It was only then that I realized the phrase was not multiple-choice. — Michael Gurnow

As soon as the first piece of foliage came within blade's reach, my student started frantically swinging the machete like he was defending his virtue from a trove of drunken, handsy woodland elves. 'I feel like I'm in the movie Predator,' he said as he decapitated a flower. — Michael Gurnow

Marre was thrilled in the morning when she lifted her pillow to see George Washington frowning up at her. However, when she returned from school that afternoon, she was devastated. What had happened? Through her tears Marre choked out, "The Tooth Fairy hates my tooth! Why did Nellie get twenty dollars for her tooth!?" Because Nellie's parents didn't have change, that's why. — Jim Gaffigan

What are you doing?"
"Kneeling before a goddess."
"I'm not a goddess."
"You are. A goddess, a princess, a queen. As a soldier, I pledge myself to your service. As a prince, I grant you any boon within my power. As a man, I ask to sit at your feet and worship you. Ask me to do anything for you and I will do it. — Colleen Houck

The Florida State League was considered the top A-league back then. You played in the spring training parks of major league teams, traveled throughout some great cities in Florida, and the pay was the best in A-ball. — Jim Evans

I say to my colleague from New York that if someone who has a concealed carry permit ... in the State of South Dakota that goes to New York and is in Central Park
Central Park is a much safer place. — John Thune

This is the price we pay, that the only way to take our life is death. — Stebby Julionatan

In the course of all of the compass-spinning twists, roller coaster hills, and sphincter-contracting turns, I hadn't noticed that we had stopped at the top of a very large ridge. The beginning of the trail was not pleasant, inviting, or even remotely civil; it was recreational molestation at its best. — Michael Gurnow

At least Ozymandias had a statue erected in his name. If I were to have died at that moment, the only thing I had managed to erect in my honor was a shrine to China's manufacturing capabilities. — Michael Gurnow

We must not have any reason to love someone, because where there is reason love dies with the change of that reason. — Debolina

We are too busy listening to our thoughts that we don't hear the wonderful sounds surrounding us ... — Alina Radoi

My wife also contributed to my poison ivy education. She taught me women have an aversion to 'red, bumpy men' and are not the least bit aroused by any part of the male anatomy which happens to be infected. However, this was not a problem. My infestation was so severe, the act of scratching produced orgasmic waves of delight that made me consider scheduling weekly au naturel pilgrimages through lush, rolling fields of the devil vine. — Michael Gurnow

As to the reserved and withdrawn areas, excluding and excepting only the national parks, it is manifest that justice, equality, and dignity for these States require that ultimately all should be ceded to the States wherein they lie. The theory that the Western States can not intelligently and wisely administer these areas, for example, the forest reserves, is based on the delinquencies and wastefulness of the States to the eastward which had their resources and their opportunity, and in some cases, as States, misused and abused their rights. This constitutes no reason as to why the same right which they enjoyed should be denied to the Western states. — Charles Edwin Winter

Few things in this world evoke scrotum-shriveling fear in a man like a group of frowning women, enraged to the point of atypical silence, ambling toward him with an obvious agenda. — Michael Gurnow

If owning frivolous articles of excess were indeed the trappings of malevolence, my home was ready to play host to the Axis powers. — Michael Gurnow

While other state governments stiff their vendors, close parks, delay tax refunds, and ignore unacceptably poor service levels, Indiana state employees are setting national standards for efficiency. — Mitch McConnell

April is the cruelest month.' So begins T.S. Eliot's 1922 masterpiece, a 434-line poem titled 'The Waste Land.' Until my employment as a trail maintenance worker, this had simply been a line on a page, albeit a line fraught with metaphorical import and potential. Now I saw it for what it was - a big fat lie - because Eliot grew up in St. Louis and no one forgets what a Missouri summer is like. If the Nobel laureate had been truthful with himself, the opening verse would start out, 'June's a bitch. — Michael Gurnow

I have spent over half my life teaching love and brotherhood, and I feel that it is better to continue to try to teach or live equality and love than it would be to have hatred or prejudice. Everyone living together in peace and harmony and love - that's the goal that we seek, and I think that the more people there are who reach that state of mind, the better we will all be. — Rosa Parks

On the day the park opened, half the state must have turned up. California weddings that June were small in attendance, the bride, groom, and guests quitting the ceremony for their cars after the second "I do"; especially hasty couples did away with the festivities altogether and simply took their vows en route to the park. — Pam Jones

I am conscious of a soul-sense that lifts me above the narrow, cramping circumstances of my life. My physical limitations are forgotten- my world lies upward, the length and the breadth and the sweep of the heavens are mine! — Helen Keller