Compiled by Jenna Hertz

Being Present/Living in the moment:
"Our busy lives, our need or desire to get ahead - all of our seemingly important obligations often pull us away from life's simple daily miracles. Staying aware of the purpose and meaning of things, remembering their interconnections and knowing that all of our actions have consequences is not easy. If we do not remember who we are and what our place is, the human tendency to become masters and controllers of our universe can get the better of us. It takes practice to learn to see and value all life." - Ellen Bernstein

" Deliberate living: Conscious attention to the basics of life, and a constant attention to your immediate environment and its concerns…All true meaning resides in the personal relationship to a phenomenon, what it means to you." - Chris McCandless

"The thing to remember when traveling is that the trail is the thing, not the end of the trail. Travel too fast and you miss all you are traveling for." - Louis L'Amour

"Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you're no longer thinking ahead, each foot step isn't just a means to an end but a unique event in itself. This leaf has jagged edges. This rock looks loose. From this place the snow is less visible, even though closer. These are the things you should notice anyway. To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top. Here's where things grow." - Robert Pirsig

"When its over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. When it's over I don't want to wonder if I have made my life something particular, and real." - Mary Oliver

"Know that to attain the sun is merely to go on seeking it." - Douglas Wood

Wilderness as a means of sustenance/conservation:
"In wilderness is the preservation of the world." - Thoreau

"I would not have every man nor every part of a man cultivated, any more than I would have every acre of earth cultivated; part will be tillage, but the greater part will be meadow and forest, not only serving an immediate use, but preparing a mould against a distant future, by the annual decay of vegetation which it supports." - Thoreau

"It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men's hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit." - Robert Louis Stevenson

"Leave it as it is. You cannot improve upon it, not a bit. What you can do is keep it for your children and your children's children, for all that come after you." - Theodore Roosevelt, referring to the grand canyon.

"The singing wilderness has to do with the calling of the loons, the northern lights, and the great silences of a land lying north of Lake Superior. It is concerned with the simple joys, the timelessness and perspective found in a way of life that is close to the past." - Sigrud Olson

"The conservation of national resources is the fundamental problem which underlies almost every other problem of our national life." - Theodore Roosevelt

"Justice, opportunity, and prosperity are not assigned to Americans as the free gift of providence…the promise of American life can only be realized by a national effort." - Walter Lippmann

"We-you and I, and our government- must avoid plundering for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all ages to come." - General Dwight Eisenhower, farewell address

Sense of Wonder:
" I had some terrific experiences in the wilderness since I wrote you last- overpowering, overwhelming…but then I am always being overwhelmed. I require it to sustain life." - Everett Ruess

"Of what avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?" - Aldo Leopold

"What I want in my life is to be willing to be dazzled- To cast aside the weight of facts. And maybe even to float a little above this world. I want to believe I am looking. Into the white fire of a great mystery. I want to believe that the imperfection are nothing- That the light is everything- that it is more than the sum of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do." - Mary Oliver

"A child's world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood. It I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask her gift to each child in the world a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last thorough out life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength." - Rachel Carson

"I was walking in a meadow, the source of a small brook, when the sun at last, just before setting, after a cold, gray, day, reached a clear stratum in the horizon, and softest, brightest, morning sunlight fell on the dry grass an on the stems of the trees in the opposite horizon and on the leaves of the shrub oaks on the hillside, while our shadows stretched long over the meadow eastward, as if were the only motes in its beams. It was such a light as we could not have imagined a moment before, and the air also was so warm and serene that nothing was wanting to make a paradise of that meadow. When we reflected that this was not a solitary phenomenon, never to happen again, but that it would happen forever and ever, an infinite number of evenings, and cheer and reassure the latest child that walked there, it was more glorious still." - Thoreau

Love for wilderness:
"But the true love of wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyond reach; it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth, the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only home we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need-if we only had the eyes to see." - Edward Abbey

"There are no words that can tell of the hidden spirit of the wilderness, that can reveal its misery, its melancholy, its charm." - TR

"I believe in the forest, and in the meadow, and in the night in which corn grows….Hope and future for me are not in the lawns and cultivated fields, not in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps." - Thoreau

"All good things are wild and free." - Thoreau

Being One with Nature:
"Let's just wander here and there- like leaves floating in the autumn air and look at common little things- stones on the beach- flowers turning into berries .. from the winds we'll catch a bit of that wondrous feeling that comes- not from seeing- but from being part of nature." - Gwen Frostic

"The land is love. Love is what we fear. To disengage from the earth is our own oppression." - Terry Temptest Williams

"Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him. One who pressed forward incessantly and never rested from his labors, who grew fast and made infinite demands on life, would always find himself in a new country of wilderness, and surrounded by the raw material of life. He would be climbing over the prostrate stems of primitive forest trees." - Thoreau

"Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life. Whatever the vexations or concerns of their personal lives, their thoughts can find paths that lead to inner contentment and renewed excitement in living. Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is a symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature." - Rachel Carson

"Nature's silence is its one remark...You feel the world's word as a tension, a hum, a single chorused note everywhere the same. That is it: the hum is the silence…The silence is all there is. It is the alpha and the omega. It is God's brooding over the face of the waters; it is the blended note of ten thousand things, the whine of wings. You take a step in the right direction to pray in this silence, and even to address the prayer to "world" - Annie Dillard

"may we grow into true understanding- a deep understanding that inspires us to protect the tree on which we bloom, and the water, soil, and atmosphere without which we have no existence. May we turn inwards and stumble upon our true roots in the intertwining biology of this exquisite planet. May nourishment and power pulse through these roots, and fierce determination to continue the billion year dance." - John Seed

Finding Yourself in nature:
"The land is like poetry: it is inexplicably coherent, it is transcendent in its meaning, and it has the power to elevate a consideration of human life." - Barry Lopez

"We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." - T.S. Eliot

"Sun, storm, drought, let these sculptors do their work. Your work is to grow." - Douglas Wood

"Wilderness provides that perfect relaxation which all jaded minds require." - William H H Murray.

"The clearest way into the universe is through a forest wilderness." - John Muir

"This life is yours. Take the power to choose what you want to do and do it well. Take the power to love what you want in life and love it honestly. Take the power to walk in the forest and be a part of nature. Take the power to control your own life. No one else can do it for you. Take the power to make your life happy."

"Going to the woods is going home." - John Muir

"Stand still. The trees ahead and the bushes beside you are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here, and you must treat it as a powerful stranger, Must ask permission to know it and be known. The forest breathes. Listen. It answers. I have made this place around you. If you leave it, you may come back gain, saying Here. No two trees are the same to Raven. No two branches are the same to Wren. If what a tree or a such does is lost on you. You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows where you are. You must let it find you." - David Wagoner

"You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down…so why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. In climbing take careful note of the difficulties along your way; for as you go up you can observe them. Coming down you will no longer see them, but you will know that they are there. There is an art of finding one's direction in the lower regions by memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know." - Rene Daumal

"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 freshness into you, and storms their energy…" - John Muir

Sustainability/balance/man's place:
"A change is required of us, a healing of the betrayed trust between humans and the earth. Care taking is the most spiritual and physical responsibility of our lifetime, and perhaps that stewardship is finally our place in the web of life...the solution to the mystery of what we are." - Anne Hogan

"We can never live in harmony with each other unless we live also in harmony with nature." - Jane Goodall. "People who will not sustain trees will soon live in a world that will not sustain people." - Bryce Nelson

"I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with freedom and culture merely civil- to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of nature, rather than a member of society." - Thoreau

"Each thing- Each stone, blossom, child- Is held in place. Only we, in our arrogance, push out beyond what we each belong to for some empty freedom. If we surrender to earth's intelligence we could rise up rooted, like trees. Instead we entangle ourselves in the knots of our own making and struggle, lonely and confused." - Rainer Maria Rilke

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit." - Nelson Henderson

"The world, we are told, was made especially for man-a presumption not supported by all the facts…Nature's object is making animals and plants might possibly be first of all the happiness of each one of them , not the creation of all for the happiness of one. Why should man value himself as more than a small part of the one great unit of creation? And what creature of all that the lord has taken the pains to make is not essential to the completeness of that unit-the cosmos? The universe would be incomplete without man; but it would also be incomplete without the smallest transmicroscopic creature that dwells beyond our conceitful eyes and knowledge." - John Muir

"In the traditional Cherokee way, when children argued over an object, it was taken away from them and they were encouraged to lie down on mother earth and look up at the sky. While observing the sky, the children were reminded that focusing attention on an object and on wanting to possess that object removed them from the harmony and balance of the great circle." - Micheal Tlanusta Garett

"A wilderness is contrast with those areas where man and his works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man., where man himself is a visitor and does not remain." - Wilderness Act of 1964

"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 society, to culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man- a sort of breeding in and in, which produces at most a merely English nobility, a civilization destined to have a speedy limit." - Thoreau

Change/Inspiration:
"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself." - Gandhi

"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." - Emerson.

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world." - Gandhi

The best way to predict the future is to create it.

"To each generation comes its allotted task; and no generation is to be excused for failure to perform that task. No generation can claim as an excuse for such failure the fact that it is not guilty of the sins of the preceding generation…More and more we are learning that to love one's country above all other is in no way incompatible with respecting and wishing well to all others, and that, as between man and man, so between nation and nation, there should live the great law of right…No ability, no strength and force, no power of intellect or power of wealth, shall avail us, if we have not the root of right living in us." - Theodore Roosevelt

"All eyes are opened, or opening to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth that the mass of mankind has not been born, with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them." - Thomas Jefferson, rationale for declining an invitation to be in Washington DC for the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the declaration of independence.

"American can exert its greatest influence in the other world by demonstrating at home that the largest and most complex modern society can solve the problems of modernity. Then, what all the world is struggling with will be show to be soluble. Example, not intervention and fire power, has been the historic instrument of American influence on mankind, and never has it been more necessary and more urgent to realize this truth once more" - Walter Lippmann

"The world has no need, in this age of nationalism and nuclear weapons, for this age of nationalism and nuclear weapons, for a new imperial power, but there is a great need of moral leadership- by which I mean the leadership of decent example." - Senator J William Fulbright.

"So we saunter toward the holy land, till one day the sun shall shine more brightly than ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light, as warm and serene and golden as on a bankside in autumn." - Thoreau

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