A human being should be able to heal a wound, plan an expedition, order from a French menu, climb a mountain face, enjoy a ballet, balance accounts, roll a kayak, embolden a friend, tell a joke, laugh at himself, cooperate, act alone, sing a children's song, solve equations, throw a dog a stick, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, love heartily, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
--Lew Hitchner
To the attentive eye, each movement of the year has it's own beauty, and in the fame field it beholds, every hour, a picture which was never seen before and which shall never be seen again.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled or were the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly, who errs, and comes short again and again -- who knows the great enthusiasms the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and at worst, if he fails, at least fails so greatly so that his place shall never be with those timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.
--Theodore Roosevelt
Now I see the secret of making the best person, it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.
--Walt Whitman
The best way out is always through.
--Robert Frost
A man can fail many times but he isn't a total failure until he begins to blame someone else for his own deficiencies. We should all realize that every right implies a responsibility, every opportunity an obligation, every position a duty, and that the most effective sermon is expressed in deeds instead of words.
Being good is commendable, but only when it is combined with doing good is it useful.
To become competent in governing others we must first learn to govern ourselves.
The trouble with many of us is that we would rather be ruined by flattery and praise than saved by honest criticism.
--Waite Phillips, from Waite Phillip's Epigrams
Nothing worthwhile was ever accomplished without the will to start, the enthusiasm to continue and, regardless of temporary obstacles, the persistence to complete.
--Waite Phillips, from Waite Phillip's Epigrams
To see is one of God's great gifts to man and to comprehend what we see is doubly so. Furthermore, He has endowed some people with the qualities to see the beauties of life and nature much more than others and they have the greatest gift of all.
--Waite Phillips, from Waite Phillip's Epigrams
Your equipment stands between you and the wilderness. The less of it you have the closer you approach the wilderness . . . Expensive space--age technology makes backpacking easier, or at least more efficient, but it is not what backpacking is all about, merely a means to it. Do only what you have to do.
--Ed Burgen, Vagabonding in the USA
Somehow I can't believe there are many heights that can't be scaled by a man who knows the secret can be summarized in four Cs. They are curiosity, confidence, courage and constancy, and the greatest of these is confidence. When you believe a thing, believe it all the way. Have confidence in your ability to do it right. And work hard to do the best possible job.
--Walt Disney
How do you indicate to an individual that there is a potential experience without dictating it to him?
--Dr. Suess, from Do you like Green Eggs and Ham?
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 footstep 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 for only some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top. ``Here's where things grow. But, of course, without the top you can't have any sides. It's the top that defines the sides. So on we go . . . we have a long way . . . no hurry . . . just one step after the next . . . with a little Chautaugua for entertainment . . . Mental reflection is so much more interesting than TV, it's a shame more people don't switch over to it. They probably think what they hear is unimportant, but it never is.
--Robert Pirsig, from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
What's the principle of the T.V., madam? The vacuum tube, madam. And do you know what happens if you stick your head in a vacuum tube?
If you stick your head . . .
I'll tell you; you get your brains sucked out.
--Edward Abbey, from A Desert Solitaire
The man who sat on the ground in his tipi meditating on life and its meaning, accepting the kinship of all creatures and acknowledging unity with the universe of things was infusing into his being the true essence of civilization. And when native man left off this form of development, his humanization was retarded in growth.
--Chief Luther Standing Bear
Play for more than you can afford to lose, and you will learn the game.
--Winston Churchill
He that riseth late must trot all day.
--Ben Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanac
All that glitters is not gold. All who wander are not lost.
--William Shakespeare
I have been told with some regularity that by walking out and away I am ``escaping from reality.'' I admit that the question puts me on the defensive. Why, I ask myself, are people so ready to assume that chilled champagne is more real than water drawn from an ice--cold mountain creek? Or a dusty sidewalk than a carpet of desert dandelions? Or a Boeing 707 than a flight of graceful white pelicans soaring in unison against the sunrise? Why, in other words, do people assume that the acts and emotions and values that stem from the city life are more real than those that arise from the beauty and the silence and the solitude of wilderness?
--Colin Fletcher, from the Complete Walker
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
--Henry David Thoreau
If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
--Henry David Thoreau
Of what avail is an open eye, if the heart is blind?
--Solomon Ibn--Gabirol
I conceive that the land belongs to a vast family of which many are dead, few are living, and countless numbers are still unborn.
--Nigerian Chieftan
Those who know do not talk.
Those who talk do not know.
To Touch and Feel is to Experience. Many people live out their entire lives without ever really Touching or being Touched by anything. These people live within a world of mind and imagination that may move them sometimes to joy, tears, happiness or sorrow. But these people never really Touch. They do not live and become one with life.
--Hyemeyohsts Storm Seven Arrows
There is more to life than increasing it's speed.
--Ghandi
The old people came literally to love the soil and they sat or reclined on the ground with a feeling of being close to a mothering power. It was good for the skin to touch the earth and the old people liked to remove their moccasins and walk with bare feet on the sacred earth. Their tipis were built upon the earth and their altars were made of earth. The birds that flew into the air came to rest upon the earth and it was the final abiding place of all things that lived and grew. The soil was soothing, strengthening, cleansing and healing.
--Chief Luther Standing Bear
The frog does not drink up the pond in which he lives.
--Indian Proverb
Do not try to satisfy your vanity by teaching a great many things. Awaken people's curiosity. It is enough to open minds; do not overload them. Put there just a spark. If there is some good inflammable stuff, it will catch fire.
--Anatole France
Men go back to the mountains, as they go back to sailing ships at sea, because in the mountains and on the sea they must face up, as did men of another age, to the challenge of nature. Modern man lives in a highly synthetic kind of existence. He specializes in this and that. Rarely does he test all his powers or find himself whole. But in the hills and on the water the character of a man comes out.
--Abram T. Collier
Today is a new day; you'll get out of it just what you put into it. If you have made mistakes, even serious mistakes, you can make a new start whenever you choose. For the thing we call failure is not the falling but the staying down.
--Mary Pickford
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