“Every sunset which I witness inspires me with the desire to go to a west as distant and as fair as that into which the Sun goes down. He appears to migrate westward daily and tempt us to follow him...”

“Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to...”

“A truly good book is something as natural, and as unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and perfect, as a wild-flower discovered on the prairies of the West or in the jungles of the East. Genius is a...”

“I rejoice that horses and steers have to be broken before they can be made the slaves of men, and that men themselves have some wild oats still left to sow before they become submissive members of ...”

“What is most of our boasted so-called knowledge but a conceit that we know something, which robs us of the advantage of our actual ignorance?”

“Which is the best man to deal with,-he who knows nothing about a subject, and, what is extremely rare, knows that he knows nothing, or he who really knows something about it, but thinks that he kno...”

“Nature is not a place to visit. It is home.”

“Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans.”

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

“Today I want to belong. I want to feel safe and at home. I want to be aware of what it is like simply to be, without defenses or desires. I will appreciate the flow of life for what it is-my own tr...”

“Nature reflects the moods of the wizard.”

“My calling ties me to no office, makes me no man's slave, compels me to no action which my soul condemns. It sets me free from town life, which I loathe; and allows me to breathe clean air, to exer...”

“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.”