“A period recourse into the wilds is not a retreat into secret silent sanctums to escape a wicked world, it is to take breath amid effort to forge a better world.”

For we need this thing wilderness far more than it needs us. Civilizations (like glaciers) come and go, but the mountain and its forest continue the course of creation’s destiny. And in this we mere humans can take part-by fitting our civilization to the mountain.

There are three things: to walk, to see, and to see what you see.

However useful may be the National Parks and Forests of the West for those affording the Pullman fare to reach them, what is needed by the bulk of the American population is something nearer home.

Wilderness is two things-fact and feeling. It is a fund of knowledge and a spring of influence. It is the ultimate source of health-terrestrial and human.

One function, at least, of true wilderness is to provide a refuge from the crassitudes of civilization-whether visible, intangible, audible-whether of billboard, of pavement, of auto horn-all of these are urban essences; all are negations of wilderness.

If the purpose be Cannibalism (preference for Ham a la Capitalism) then nobody but a Cannibal should be admitted. There should be plenty of discussion and disagreement as to how and the means but none whatever as to ends.

Nice, People, Bumps, Inocence, Always

The West has not lived through totalitarianism, with a single ideology for 70 years.We are escaping from the burden of the past, and onlyafter we have done that will we be ready to integrate with Europeand Europe needs Russia.

You don’t need to know what you’re escaping from to become a fugitive.

When the eternal and the human meet, that’s where love is born — not through escaping our humanity or trying to disappear into transcendence, but through finding that place where they come into union.

When my dreams showed signs of becoming politically correct no unruly images escaping beyond borders … then I began to wonder

I’m one with New York, and New York is one with me. I grew up there; there’s no escaping it.

No escaping when I start, once I’m in I own your heart

He had so many ways of climbing into the tree house in his head, escaping the madness below, and pulling the ladder up behind him.