“As long as I live, I’ll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing.”

In our best times everything turns into religion, all the world seems a church and the mountains altars.

Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity

I am learning to live close to the lives of my friends without ever seeing them. No miles of any measurement can separate your soul from mine.

Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fiber thrilling like harp strings.

The rivers flow not past, but through us, thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing.

Going to the woods is going home.

Earth has no sorrow that earth can not heal.

Most people who travel look only at what they are directed to look at. Great is the power of the guidebook maker, however ignorant.

There is a love of wild nature in everybody, an ancient mother-love showing itself whether recognized or no, and however covered by cares and duties.

Mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not ‘hike’ through them.

Wildness is a necessity.

What a psalm the storm was singing, and how fresh the smell of the washed earth and leaves, and how sweet the still small voices of the storm!

How narrow we selfish conceited creatures are in our sympathies! How blind to the rights of all the rest of creation!

Every sight and sound inspiring, leading one far out of himself, yet feeding and building up his individuality.

If people in general could be got into the woods, even for once, to hear the trees speak for themselves, all difficulties in the way of forest preservation would vanish.

Take me into the mountains.

We’re just some birds in this fucked up nest of a world.

And wisdom is a butterfly And not a gloomy bird of prey.

Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet, With charm of earliest birds.

With empty hand no man can lure a hawk.

With empty hands men may no hauks lure.

The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

You can make even a parrot into a learned political economist – all he must learn are the two words “supply” and “demand.”

If the Great Spirit had desired me to be a white man he would have made me so in the first place. He put in your heart certain wishes and plans, and in my heart he put other and different desires. It is not necessary for eagles to be crows.