Wilderness Nature Quotes & Sayings

Once you fall, Septimus repeated to himself, human nature is on you. Holmes and Bradshaw are on you. They scour the desert. They fly screaming into the wilderness. The rack and the thumbscrew are applied. Human nature is remorseless. — Virginia Woolf

Nature has many scenes to exhibit, and constantly draws a curtain over this part or that. She is constantly repainting the landscape and all surfaces, dressing up some scene for our entertainment. Lately we had a leafy wilderness; now bare twigs begin to prevail, and soon she will surprise us with a mantle of snow. Some green she thinks so good for our eyes that, like blue, she never banishes it entirely from our eyes, but has created evergreens. — Henry David Thoreau

The wilderness holds answers to questions man has not yet learned to ask. — Nancy Newhall

Few things in nature can compare to the long, mournful wail of a loon echoing across water and through the forest. It's an evocative sound that will stick with you for the rest of your life and make you nostalgic for things that never even happened to you. Eerie, yet beautiful, the sound will conjure up images of solitude near mountain lakes and ponds, shrouded in fog during the early morning or late dusk, surrounded by the silhouettes of pine trees. It's a sound that relaxes and submerges you into the tranquility of nature. I don't think there is another sound in the world that reminds me of the wilderness more so than the wail of a loon. — Kyle Rohrig

The trees were friendly, they gave me rest and shadowed refuge. Slipping through them, I felt safe and competent. My whole body was occupied. I had little energy to think or worry. — Aspen Matis

True wilderness is where you keep it, and real wilderness experience cannot be a sedentary one; you have to seek it out not seated, but afoot. — David R. Brower

He stood there a moment, listened to the creek, and let the mountain air blow against his face. Even with all this heartache, it was beautiful here. — Eowyn Ivey

The old school of thought would have you believe that you'd be a fool to take on nature without arming yourself with every conceivable measure of safety and comfort under the sun. But that isn't what being in nature is all about. Rather, it's about feeling free, unbounded, shedding the distractions and barriers of our civilization - not bringing them with us. — Ryel Kestenbaum

Away, away, from men and towns, To the wild wood and the downs - To the silent wilderness Where the soul need not repress Its music lest it should not find An echo in another's mind. — John Updike

If you reconnect with nature and the wilderness you will not only find the meaning of life, but you will experience what it means to be truly alive. — Sylvia Dolson

...we do not own these woods. They own us. — Timothy Goodwin

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

As dreams are the healing songs from the wilderness of our unconscious - So wild animals, wild plants, wild landscapes are the healing dreams from the deep singing mind of the earth. — Dale Pendell

Wilderness holds an original presence giving expression to that which we lack, the losses we long to recover, the absences we seek to fill. Wilderness revives the memory of unity. Through its protection we can find faith in our humanity. — Terry Tempest Williams

When capitalists are thwarted, deflected, or dispossessed, the generals and politicians, ... and socialist intellectuals, are always amazed at how quickly the great physical means of production - the contested tokens of wealth and resources of nature - dissolve into so much scrap, ruined concrete, snarled wire, and wilderness. — George Gilder

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

I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is a thorough process, this war with the wilderness - breaking nature, taming the soil. feeding it on oats. The civilized man regards the pine tree as his enemy. He will fell it and let in the light, grub it up and raise wheat or rye there. It is no better than a fungus to him. — Henry David Thoreau

Get drunk by drinking the magical beauty and tranquil tonic of nature; get lost in the wilderness. — Debasish Mridha

If Earth is considered a closed system, there will be less for all forever. The frontier is closed, the wilderness is gone, nature is being destroyed by human consumers, while billions are starving. The future indeed looks grim, and there are, ultimately, no really long-range, positive solutions, nor motivation for making the sacrifices and doing the hard work needed now, unless we understand that we are evolving from an Earth-only toward an Earth-space or universal species. — Barbara Marx Hubbard

Raindrops blossom brilliantly in the rainbow, and change to flowers in the sod, but snow comes in full flower direct from the dark, frozen sky. — John Muir

There is a love of wild nature in everybody, an ancient mother-love showing itself whether recognized or no, and however covered by cares and duties — John Muir

I plunged eagerly and passionately into the wilderness, as if in the hope of thus penetrating into the very heart of this Nature, powerful and maternal, there to blend with her living elements. — Paul Gauguin

I had some terrific experiences in the wilderness since I wrote you last - overpowering, overwhelming," he gushed to his friend Cornel Tengel. "But since then I am always being overwhelmed. I require it to sustain life.
Everett Ruess — Jon Krakauer

The love of wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyong reach; it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth, the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only paradise we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need, if only we had the eyes to see. — Edward Abbey

To those devoid of imagination a blank place on the map is a useless waste; to others, the most valuable part. — Aldo Leopold

Then as to churches, they are good, I suppose, else wouldn't good men uphold' em. But they are not altogether necessary. They call 'em the temples of the Lord; but, Judith, the whole 'arth is a temple of the Lord to such as have the right mind. Neither forts nor churches make people happier of themselves. Moreover, all is contradiction in the settlements, while all is concord in the woods. Forts and churches almost always go together, and yet they're downright contradictions; churches being for peace, and forts for war. No, no
give me the strong places of the wilderness, which is the trees, and the churches, too, which are arbors raised by the hand of nature. — James Fenimore Cooper

If I can't sing, then let me listen to the songs of the wilderness and let me watch the dance of a lonely leaf. — Debasish Mridha

The trails are a reminder of our insignificance. We come and go, but nature is forever. It puts us in our place, underscoring that we are not lords of the universe but components of it ... So when the world seems to be falling apart, when we humans seem to be creating messes everywhere we turn, maybe it's time to rejuvenate in the cathedral of the wilderness - and there, away from humanity, rediscover our own humanity. — Nicholas D. Kristof

Today I am an unemployed writer living as a recluse in the great Northwoods. — Daniel J. Rice

I don't like formal gardens. I like wild nature. It's just the wilderness instinct in me, I guess. — Walt Disney

Since well before the Kung's engine noise first penetrated the forest, a conversation of sorts has been unfolding in this lonesome hollow. It is not a language like Russian or Chinese but it is a language nonetheless, and it is older than the forest. The crows speak it; the dog speaks it; the tiger speaks it, and so do the men
some more fluently than others. — John Vaillant

Columbus and his successors were not coming into an empty wilderness, but into a world which in some places was as densely populated as Europe itself, where the culture was complex, where human relations were more egalitarian than in Europe, and where the relations among men, women, children, and nature were more beautifully worked out than perhaps any place in the world. They were people without a written language, but with their own laws, their poetry, their history kept in memory and passed on, in an oral vocabulary more complex than Europe's, accompanied by song, dance, and ceremonial drama. They paid careful attention to the development of personality, intensity of will, independence and flexibility, passion and potency, to their partnership with one another and with nature. — Howard Zinn

But I weren't no quitter No wolf nor bear just gives up when they get beat or hungry. You ever seen a bear jump off a cliff 'cause life handed him a few rough draws? No, you haven't. The wild keeps going till it don't have strength in its muscles and bones. The wild doesn't give up; it's forever, and so was I. — Beth Lewis

The Old Testament contains in many places, but especially in the book of Job, one of the most far-reaching defenses ever written of wilderness, of nature free from the hand of man. The argument gets at the heart of what the loss of nature will mean to us ... God seems to be insisting that we are not the center of the universe, that he is quite happy if it rains where there are no people - that God is quite happy with places where there are no people, a radical departure from our most ingrained notions. — Bill McKibben

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. — Michael Pollan

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. — Chief Luther Standing Bear

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

If we allow ourselves contemplative time in nature-whether it's gardening, going for a walk with the dog, or being in the heart of the southern Utah wilderness-then we can hear the voice of our conscience. If we listen to that voice, it asks us to be conscious. And if we become conscious we choose to live lives of consequence. — Terry Tempest Williams

When D's cabin caught fire, D was out of the country. Half the town-Christians and drinkers alike-came out to fight the fire and loot the cabin. There were individual piles of loot, and fights over the piles. "That's my pile." "The hell it is, it's mine. — John McPhee

As the saturating colors of sun-life fade from sight, the ominous moon reaches out its long arm and applies the dark dyes of night. — Daniel J. Rice

Back home, Huxley drew from this experience to compose a series of audacious attacks against the Romantic love of wilderness. The worship of nature, he wrote, is "a modern, artificial, and somewhat precarious invention of refined minds." Byron and Wordsworth could only rhapsodize about their love of nature because the English countryside had already been "enslaved to man." In the tropics, he observed, where forests dripped with venom and vines, Romantic poets were notably absent. Tropical peoples knew something Englishmen didn't. "Nature," Huxley wrote, "is always alien and inhuman, and occasionally diabolic." And he meant always: Even in the gentle woods of Westermain, the Romantics were naive in assuming that the environment was humane, that it would not callously snuff out their lives with a bolt of lightning or a sudden cold snap. After three days amid the Tuckamore, I was inclined to agree. — Robert Moor

The dusk rapidly deepened; the glades grew dark; the crackling of the fire and the wash of little waves along the rocky lake shore were the only sounds audible. The wind had dropped with the sun, and in all that vast world of branches nothing stirred. Any moment, it seemed, the woodland gods, who are to be worshipped in silence and loneliness, might stretch their mighty and terrific outlines among the trees. — Algernon Blackwood

It is one of the perils of our so-called civilized age that we do not yet acknowledge enough, or cherish enough, this connection between soul and landscape - between our own best possibilities, and the view from our own windows. We need the world as much as it needs us, and we need it in privacy, intimacy, and surety. We need the field from which the lark rises - bird that is more than itself, that is the voice of the universe: vigorous, godly job. Without the physical world such hope it: hacked off. Is: dried up. Without wilderness no fish could leap and flash, no deer could bound soft as eternal waters over the field; no bird could open its wings and become buoyant, adventurous, valorous beyond even the plan of nature. Nor could we. — Mary Oliver

For though the quiet of deep solitude reigned in that vast and nearly boundless forest, nature was speaking with her thousand tongues in the eloquent language of night in a wilderness. The air sighed through ten thousand trees, the water ripped, and at places even roared along the shores; and now and then was heard the creaking of a branch or a trunk, as it rubbed against some object similar to itself, under the vibrations of a nicely balanced body. — James Fenimore Cooper

It is a shedding of all else and an acknowledgement of the wilderness we are part of. And as the exhilaration slowly subsides, it often slips into a more indistinct yet cerebral, even hallowed realm."
- DAVID ATCHESON
The Liberty Project, Enjoying the spirit and protecting the nature of the Alaskan wilderness — Dave Atcheson

To the Finnish, being outdoors in nature isn't about paying homage to nature or to ourselves, the way it tends to be for Americans. We fetishize are life lists, catalog peaks bagged and capture pristine scenes of grand wilderness It is largely an individual experience. For the Finnish, though, nature is about expressing a close-knit identity. Nature is where they can exult in their nationalistic obsessions of berry-picking, mushrooming, fishing, lake swimming and Nordic skiing. — Florence Williams

How great are the advantages of solitude! How sublime is the silence of nature's ever-active energies! There is something in the very name of wilderness, which charms the ear, and soothes the spirit of man. There is religion in it. — Estwick Evans

There's a land - oh, it beckons and beckons,
And I want to go back - and I will. — Robert Service

Thomson sought the wilderness, never seeking to tame it, but only to draw from it, its magic of tangle and season. — Arthur Lismer

I walked slowly to enjoy this freedom, and when I came out of the mountains, I saw the sky over the prairie, and I thought that if heaven was real, I hoped it was a place I never had to go, for this earth was greater than any paradise. — Daniel J. Rice

The disciples are drawn to the high altars with magnetic certainty, knowing that a great Presence hovers over the ranges ... You were within the portals of the temple ... to enter the wilderness and seek, in the primal patterns of nature, a magical union with beauty. — Ansel Adams

The healing of our relationship with place begins with the preservation of the natural environment. We cannot go to the wild for renewal if no wilderness is left. — Starhawk

There's a silent voice in the wilderness that we hear only when no one else is around. When you go far, far beyond, out across the netherlands of the Known, the din of human static slowly fades away, over and out. — Rob Schultheis

Unlike the majority of people, he did not hate or fear the wilderness; as harsh as the empty lands were, they possessed a grace and a beauty that no artifice could compete with and that he found restorative. — Christopher Paolini

Too many land users and too many conservationists seem to have accepted the doctrine that the availability of goods is determined by the availability of cash, or credit, and by the market. In other words, they have accepted the idea always implicit in the arguments of the land-exploiting corporations: that there can be, and that there is, a safe disconnection between economy and ecology, between human domesticity and the wild world. Industrializing farmers have too readily assumed that the nature of their land could safely be subordinated to the capability of their technology, and that conservation could safely be left to conservationists. Conservationists have too readily assumed that the integrity of the natural world could be preserved mainly by preserving tracts of wilderness, and that the nature and nurture of the economic landscapes could safely be left to agribusiness, the timber industry, debt-ridden farmers and ranchers, and migrant laborers. To — Wendell Berry

My hands are flowing like sunlight. The shapes and colors are astounding. I don't understand these images that are empowering me. My brush touches the canvas like photons to the earth, and a new world develops, free from my control, yet intrinsically dependent upon me. I am sweating with elation. I have no idea what I am doing, or what it is my hands are trying to see. There is so much strength in this clarity I am overpowered by the independence of it. — Daniel J. Rice

Our incredible bewilderment (wilderness separation) blinds us from seeing that our many personal and global problems primarily result from our assault of and separation from the natural creation process within and around us. Our estrangement from nature leaves us wanting,and when we want there is never enough. Our insatiable wanting is called greed. It is a major source of our destructive dependencies and violence. — Michael J. Cohen

The question haunted me, and the real answer came, as answers often do, not in the canyon but at an unlikely time and in an unexpected place, flying over the canyon at thirty thousand feet on my way to be a grandmother. My mind on other things, intending only to glance out, the exquisite smallness and delicacy of the river took me completely by surprise. In the hazy light of early morning, the canyon lay shrouded, the river flecked with glints of silver, reduced to a thin line of memory, blurred by a sudden realization that clouded my vision. The astonishing sense of connection with that river and canyon caught me completely unaware, and in a breath I understood the intense, protective loyalty so many people feel for the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. It has to do with truth and beauty and love of this earth, the artifacts of a lifetime and the descant of a canyon wren at dawn. — Ann Zwinger

Sometimes falling rain
carries memories of betrayal
there in the woods
where she was not meant to be
too young she believes
in her right to be free
in her body
free from harm
believing nature
a wilderness she can enter
be solaced
believing the power
that there be sacred place
that there can be atonement now
she returns with no fear
facing the past
ready to risk
knowing these woods now
hold beauty and danger — Bell Hooks

Wildness is the preservation of the World. — Henry David Thoreau

In America, alas, beauty has become something you drive to, and nature an either/or proposition
either you ruthlessly subjugate it, as at Tocks Dam and a million other places, or you deify it, treat it as something holy and remote, a thing apart, as along the Appalachian Trail. Seldom would it occur to anyone on either side that people and nature could coexist to their mutual benefit
that, say, a more graceful bridge across the Delaware River might actually set off the grandeur around it, or that the AT might be more interesting and rewarding if it wasn't all wilderness, if from time to time it purposely took you past grazing cows and till fields. — Bill Bryson

first settlers were emigrants from different European nations, and of diversified professions of religion, retiring from the governmental persecutions of the old world, and meeting in the new, not as enemies, but as brothers. The wants which necessarily accompany the cultivation of a wilderness produced among them a state of society, which countries long harassed by the quarrels and intrigues of governments, had neglected to cherish. In such a situation man becomes what he ought. He sees his species, not with the inhuman idea of a natural enemy, but as kindred; and the example shows to the artificial world, that man must go back to nature for information. — Thomas Paine

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. — Wallace Stegner

Simpson, the student of divinity, it was who arranged his conclusions probably with the best, though not most scientific, appearance of order. Out there, in the heart of unreclaimed wilderness, they had surely witnessed something crudely and essentially primitive. Something that had survived somehow the advance of humanity had emerged terrifically, betraying a scale of life monstrous and immature. He envisaged it rather as a glimpse into prehistoric ages, when superstitions, gigantic and uncouth, still oppressed the hearts of men: when the forces of nature were still untamed, the Powers that may have haunted a primeval universe not yet withdrawn. To this day he thinks of what he termed years later in a sermon 'savage and formidable Potencies lurking behind the souls of men, not evil perhaps in themselves, yet instinctively hostile to humanity as it exists.'
("The Wendigo") — Algernon Blackwood

The world of nature, at once a vision of exquisite beauty and an arena of brutal savagery, is a dynamic system of delicate balances. — S. Bradley Stoner

Wilderness, to me, is a spiritual necessity. The mysterious spiritual experience of being close to natural restored my soul [after the death of his son]. My experience reinforced by dedication to use the art of photography as an inspiration for others to work together to save nature's places of spiritual sanctuary for future generations. — Clyde Butcher

Wild animals are only wild to save their existence...for their survival; but human animals are wild to do harm to their own species — Munia Khan

...there is something which impresses the mind with awe in the shade and silence of these vast forests. In the deep solitude, alone with nature, we converse with God. — Thaddeus Mason Harris

If we are to have broad-thinking men and women of high mentality, of good physique and with a true perspective on life, we must allow our populace a communion with nature in areas of more or less wilderness condition. — Arthur Carhart

The knowledge that refuge is available, when and if needed, makes the silent inferno of the desert more easily bearable. Mountains complement desert as desert complements city, as wilderness complements and completes civilization. — Edward Abbey

Returning to nature has been a dream present in the minds of every generation since mankind first left nature. — Daniel J. Rice

There seems to be no way to save wildness from human intrusion without establishing and enforcing rules and regulations that are themselves intrusions on what, by definition, are meant to be areas outside humanity's control. — J. Meredith Neil

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

As Rockwell Kent said in his Alaskan journal, 'The wonder of wilderness was its tranquility.' I wish I had said that first. It grasps the salient point: not just tranquility, but wonder at tranquility. Wilderness is a surprise. We were raised on nature films that converted nature into thrilling entertainment; we still expect to find predators lurking everywhere in the wildness, and danger and excitement. But instead we find tranquility. And wonder at it.

Interesting word, "wonder." From Old English wundrain: 'to be affected with astonishment.' Its antonyms name the most pervasive symptoms of modern life: indifference, boredom, ennui. The dictionary strains to explain wonder, mentioning awe, astonishment, marvel, miracle, wizardry, bewilderment (note the 'wild' in 'bewilderment'). Finally it offers this: 'Far superior to anything formerly recognized or foreseen.'

Indeed. — Jack Turner

Thus we behold Kentucky, lately an howling wilderness, the habitation of savages and wild beasts, become a fruitful field; this region, so favourably distinguished by nature, now become the habitation of civilization, at a period unparalleled in history, in the midst of a raging war, and under all the disadvantages of emigration to a country so remote from the inhabited parts of the continent. — Daniel Boone

That summer, in the wilderness of crumbling bricks and mortar, white roses had appeared in those derelict suburbs. Gramps said that if man was mad enough to destroy itself, at least the rats and cockroaches would have front-row seats, be able to enjoy the sight of Mother Nature reclaiming the earth. Outside — Sally Gardner

Keep calm. You have the forest in your blood. — Nenia Campbell

To this day, I enjoy nature, the luxury of undisturbed wilderness, forests, mountains, lakes, rivers and deserts and their wildlife. But I also know that the greatest danger to their perpetuity is the pressure of human population. — Norman Borlaug

Hiking's not for everyone. Notice the wilderness is mostly empty. — Sonja Yoerg

We need wilderness because we are wild animals. Everyone needs a place where he can go to go crazy in peace. For the terror, freedom, and delirium. Because we need brutality and raw adventure, because men and women first learned to love in, under, and all around trees, because we need for every pair of feet and legs about ten leagues of naked nature, crags to leap from, mountains to measure by, deserts to finally die in when the heart fails. — Edward Abbey

There are for starters, grandeur and silence, pure water and clean air. There is also the gift of distance ... the chance to stand away from relationships and daily ritual ... and the gift of energy. Wilderness infuses us with its own special brand of energy. — Linn Thomas

If I were entering adulthood now instead of in the environment of fifty years ago, I would choose a career that kept me in touch with nature more than science ... Too few natural areas remain; both by intent and by indifference we have insulated ourselves from the wilderness that produced us. — Charles Lindbergh

The world is so tremendously spectacular that every visual, sense, and sparked connection swells my unrestrained passion for life. I find I feel this the most when I am immersed in nature and sliding into the bloodstream of the wilderness. — Ian Somerhalder

The American woods have been unnerving people for 300 years. The inestimably priggish and tiresome Henry David Thoreau thought nature was splendid, splendid indeed, so long as he could stroll to town for cakes and barley wine, but when he experienced real wilderness, on a vist to Katahdin in 1846, he was unnerved to the cored. This wasn't the tame world of overgrown orchards and sun-dappled paths that passed for wilderness in suburban Concord, Massachusetts, but a forbiggind, oppressive, primeval country that was "grim and wild ... savage and dreary," fit only for "men nearer of kin to the rocks and wild animals than we." The experience left him, in the words of one biographer, "near hysterical. — Bill Bryson

There is nothing wrong with technology. It's a gift! I don't think we should keep our kids away from the modern conveniences of our time, but I do believe it's time to regain some balance. Children can benefit from technology, but they need nature. Let them have their video games and Internet, but make sure they are getting equal amounts of mud, dirt, sticks, puddles, free play and imagination. — Brooke Hampton

The writer Richard Manning has argued that 'the most destructive force in the American West is its commanding views, because they foster the illusion that we command. — Phillip Connors

I watched the surrounding landscape with great curiosity, and I wanted to discover the words that could describe all its unspoiled beauty. — Daniel J. Rice

If I had my wilderness, nature could be my lover. What can I do in the paved streets for my thirsty roots? I waste time. I encourage fools. I slip the vital hours into penny slot machines
to pass time, to start my stuck wheels only love can oil. — Elizabeth Smart

There are places which exist in this world beyond the reach of imagination. — Daniel J. Rice

There's an elegiac quality in watching [American wilderness] go, because it's our own myth, the American frontier, that's deteriorating before our eyes. I feel a deep sorrow that my kids will never get to see what I've seen, and their kids will see nothing; there's a deep sadness whenever I look at nature now. — Peter Matthiessen

Ye accepted Yang's proposal mainly out of gratitude. If he hadn't brought her into this safe haven in her most perilous moment, she would probably no longer be alive. Yang was a talented man, cultured and with good taste. She didn't find him unpleasant, but her heart was like ashes from which the flame of love could no longer be lit. As she pondered human nature, Ye was faced with an ultimate loss of purpose and sank into another spiritual crisis. She had once been an idealist who needed to give all her talent to a great goal, but now she realized that all that she had done was meaningless, and the future could not have any meaningful pursuits, either. As this mental state persisted, she gradually felt more and more alienated from the world. She didn't belong. The sense of wandering in the spiritual wilderness tormented her. After she made a home with Yang, her soul became homeless. One — Liu Cixin

Most of the time I am sunk in thought, but at some point on each walk there comes a moment when I look up and notice, with a kind of first-time astonishment, the amazing complex delicacy of the words, the casual ease with which elemental things come together to form a composition that is
whatever the season, wherever I put my besotted gaze
perfect. — Bill Bryson

We are not talking about esthetics. We are talking about life: survival of Man. We must train young people to get another vision of Nature. We call it 'wilderness,' and we think it is progress to get further and further away from it. How crazy! Where would we have been if Nature had not built us up? — Thor Heyerdahl

Nature is located mainly in national parks, which are vast tracts of wilderness that have been set aside by the United States government so citizens will always have someplace to go where they can be attacked by bears. And we're not talking about ordinary civilian bears, either: We're talking about federal bears, which can behave however they want to because they are protected by the same union as postal clerks. — Dave Barry

Awestruck, Flora stared at the dishevelled sisters with their blazing faces and radiant ragged wings, who smelled of no kin but the wild high air. — Laline Paull

Its invisibility, and the mystery which was attached to it, made this organization doubly terrible. It appeared to be omniscient and omnipotent, and yet was neither seen nor heard. The man who held out against the Church vanished away, and none knew whither he had gone or what
had befallen him. His wife and his children awaited him at home, but no father ever returned to tell them how he had fared at the hands of his secret judges. A rash word or a hasty act was followed by annihilation, and yet none knew what the nature might be of this terrible power which was suspended over them. No wonder that men went about in fear and trembling, and that even in the heart of the wilderness they dared not whisper the doubts which oppressed them. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Must be frustrating being a scientist. There you are, incrementally discovering how the universe works via a series of complex tests and experiments, for the benefit of all mankind - and what thanks do you get? People call you "egghead" or "boffin" or "heretic", and they cave your face in with a rock and bury you out in the wilderness.
Not literally - not in this day and age - but you get the idea. Scientists are mistrusted by huge swathes of the general public, who see them as emotionless lab-coated meddlers-with-nature rather than, say, fellow human beings who've actually bothered getting off their arses to work this shit out. — Charlie Brooker

He is one of those who has had the wilderness for a pillow, and called a star his brother. Alone. But loneliness can be a communion. — Dag Hammarskjold

I go now to the wilderness to be a part of it; to accept my place in the world and its place in me; to grow into reality as a tree grows into the rain, to conform to the Earth as a stream conforms to the stones of its bed. To live. To aspire. To be. — William Ashworth