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Quotations
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Various Quotations on Nature Walking
If you are seeking creative ideas, go out walking. Angels whisper to a man when he goes for a walk.
~Raymond Inmon
I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.
~John Muir
Me thinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow.
~Henry David Thoreau
My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing.
~Aldous Huxley
When you have worn out your shoes, the strength of the shoe leather has passed into the fiber of your body. I measure your health by the number of shoes and hats and clothes you have worn out.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.
~John Muir
In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.
~John Muir
Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.
~Soren Kierkegaard
How can you explain that you need to know that the trees are still there, and the hills and the sky? Anyone knows they are. How can you say it is time your pulse responded to another rhythm, the rhythm of the day and the season instead of the hour and the minute? No, you cannot explain. So you walk.
~Author unknown, from New York Times editorial, "The Walk," 25 October 1967
I haven't got any special religion this morning. My God is the God of Walkers. If you walk hard enough, you probably don't need any other god.
~Bruce Chatwin, In Patagonia, 1977
An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.
~Henry David Thoreau
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain - and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light....
~Robert Frost
As a nation we are dedicated to keeping physically fit - and parking as close to the stadium as possible.
~Bill Vaughan
I stroll along serenely, with my eyes, my shoes
my rage, forgetting everything.
~Pablo Neruda, translated
I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least - and it is commonly more than that - sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements.
~Henry David Thoreau
I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a single day without acquiring some rust, and when sometimes I have stolen forth for a walk at the eleventh hour of four o'clock in the afternoon, too late to redeem the day, when the shades of night were already beginning to be mingled with the daylight, have felt as if I had committed some sin to be atoned for.
~Henry David Thoreau
The true charm of pedestrianism does not lie in the walking, or in the scenery, but in the talking. The walking is good to time the movement of the tongue by, and to keep the blood and the brain stirred up and active; the scenery and the woodsy smells are good to bear in upon a man an unconscious and unobtrusive charm and solace to eye and soul and sense; but the supreme pleasure comes from the talk.
~Mark Twain
General Quotations on Nature & Environmental Ethics
Rachel Carson
"The real wealth of the Nation lies in the resources of the earth — soil, water, forests, minerals, and wildlife."
"Here and there awareness is growing that man, far from being the overlord of all creation, is himself part of nature, subject to the same cosmic forces that control all other life. Man's future welfare and probably even his survival depend upon his learning to live in harmony, rather than in combat, with these forces."
"We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost's familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road — the one less traveled by — offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth."
"The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us the less taste we shall have for the destruction of our race. Wonder and humility are wholesome emotions, and they do not exist side by side with a lust for destruction."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile."
"The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance."
"Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact."
"Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air."
"The earth laughs in flowers."
Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Join with the Earth and each other, to bring new life to the land, to restore the waters, to refresh the air, to renew the forests, to care for the plants, to protect the creatures, to celebrate the seas, to rejoice in the sunlight, to sing the song of the stars, to recall our destiny, to renew our spirits, to reinvigorate ur bodies, to recreate the human community, to promote justice and peace, to love our children and love one another, to join together as many and diverse expressions of one loving mystery, for the healing of the Earth and the renewal of all life."
Aldo Leopold
"Conservation is getting nowhere because it is incompatible with our Abrahamic concept of land. We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.'
"The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant, "What good is it?" If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering."
"Civilization has so cluttered this elemental man-earth relationship with gadgets and middlemen that awareness of it is growing dim. We fancy that industry supports us, forgetting what supports industry."
"Ethical behavior is doing the right thing when no one else is watching- even when doing the wrong thing is legal."
"The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land... In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such."
"It is inconceivable to me that an ethical relation to land can exist without love, respect, and admiration for land and a high regard for its value. By value, I of course mean something far broader than mere economic value; I mean value in the philosophical sense."
John Muir
"When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world."
"The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness."
"Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul."
"Keep close to Nature's heart...and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.'
"In every walk with Nature one receives far more than he seeks."
"I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in."
"The sun shines not on us but in us."
"Earth has no sorrow that earth can not heal."
"Most people are on the world, not in it-- having no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them-- undiffused seporate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but seporate. "
Chief Seattle
"Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect."
"We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children."
"All things share the same breath - the beast, the tree, the man. The air shares its spirit with all the life it supports."
"The earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons and daughters of the earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected."
Vanada Shiva
"The environmental movement can only survive if it becomes a justice movement. As a pure environmental movement, it will either die, or it will survive as a corporate 'greenwash'. Anyone who's a sincere environmentalist can't stand that role."
"It is time to learn from the mistakes of monocultures of the mind and the essentialising violence of reductionist thought. It is time to turn to diversity for healing."
"Diversity creates harmony, and harmony creates beauty, balance, bounty and peace in nature and society, in agriculture and culture, in science and in politics."
Henry David Thoreau
"The sea-shore is a sort of neutral ground, a most advantageous point from which to contemplate this world. It is even a trivial place. The waves forever rolling to the land are too far-travelled and untamable to be familiar. Creeping along the endless beach amid the sun-squall and the foam, it occurs to us that we, too, are the product of sea-slime."
"A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature.
It is Earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures
the depth of his own nature."
"You only need sit still long enough in some attractive spot in the woods
that all its inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns."
"In wilderness is the preservation of the world.'
"Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.'
"Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.'
"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."