“Perhaps a creature of so much ingenuity and deep memory is almost bound to grow alienated from his world, his fellows, and the objects around him. He suffers from a nostalgia for which there is no ...”

“Though men in the mass forget the origins of their need, they still bring wolfhounds into city apartments, where dog and man both sit brooding in wistful discomfort.The magic that gleams an instant...”

“Once upon a time, there was a wise man who used to go to the ocean to do his writing. He had a habit of walking on the beach before he began his work.One day, as he was walking along the shore, he ...”

“I am sure now that life is not what it is purported to be and that nature, in the canny words of the Scotch theologue, 'is not as natural as it looks.”

“Out of the choked Devonian waters emerged sight and sound and the music that rolls invisible through the composer's brain. They are there still in the ooze along the tideline, though no one notices...”

“For the first time in four billion years a living creature had contemplated himself and heard with a sudden, unaccountable loneliness, the whisper of the wind in the night reeds.”

“If I paint a wild horse, you might not see the horse... but surely you will see the wildness!”

“He who looks through an open window sees fewer things than he who looks through a closed window.”

“The only thing worse than being blind is having sight and no vision.”

“What else can we do in the wilderness, than to wonder?”

“One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning.”

“Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling.”