“Society speaks and all men listen, mountains speak and wise men listen.”

Few places in this world are more dangerous than home.

All the world was before me and every day was a holiday, so it did not seem important to which one of the world’s wildernesses I first should wander.

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.

The galling harness of civilization drops off, and wounds heal ere we are aware.

Go where we will, all the world over, we seem to have been there before.

Yet through all this stress the forest is maintained in marvelous beauty.

Night is coming on and I am filled with indescribable loneliness. Felt feverish; bathed in a black, silent stream.

The power of imagination makes us infinite.

Going to the mountains is going home.

The deeper the solitude the less the sense of loneliness, and the nearer our friends.

It is always interesting to see people in dead earnest, from whatever cause, and earthquakes make everybody earnest.

We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us.

I never saw a discontented tree.

One day’s exposure to mountains is better than a cartload of books.

So also there are tides and floods in the affairs of men, which in some are slight and may be kept within bounds, but in others they overmaster everything.

The soft light of morning falls upon ripening forests of oak and elm, walnut and hickory, and all Nature is thoughtful and calm.