Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.

I imagine that yes is the only living thing.

Exploration by real people inspires us.

If you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won’t see why we go.

Adventure is not outside man; it is within.

Sponges grow in the ocean. That just kills me. I wonder how much deeper the ocean would be if that didn’t happen.

I don’t believe in an outside agent that creates the world, then walks away. But I feel very strongly there is an intelligence at work in every flower, in every blade of grass, in every cell of my body. And it is that intelligence that, I wouldn’t say created the universe. It is creating the universe. It’s an ongoing process.

I was enjoying myself writing, because I don’t know what’s going to happen when I take a ride around that corner. You don’t know at all what you’re going to find there. That can be thrilling when you read a book, especially when you’re a kid and you’re reading stories.

I’m an introvert… I love being by myself, love being outdoors, love taking a long walk with my dogs and looking at the trees, flowers, the sky.

If you do not expect the unexpected you will not find it, for it is not to be reached by search or trail.

I just think cities are unnatural, basically. I know there are people who live happily in them, and I have cities that I love, too. But it’s a disaster that we have moved so far from nature.

Habit is a second nature that destroys the first. But what is nature? Why is habit not natural? I am very much afraid that nature itself is only a first habit, just as habit is a second nature.

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.

Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating.

In all private quarrels the duller nature is triumphant by reason of dullness.

Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution.

A lot of people ask me when I do a stunt, ‚Jackie, are you scared?‘ Of course I’m scared. I’m not Superman.

The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding.

Every natural object is a conductor of divinity and only by coming into contact with them… may we be filled with the Holy Ghost.

Here ends my forever memorable first High Sierra excursion. I have crossed the Range of Light, surely the brightest and best of all the Lord has built. And, rejoicing in its glory, I gladly, gratefully, hopefully pray I may see it again.

The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.

Nothing on this earth is standing still. It’s either growing or it’s dying. No matter if it’s a tree or a human being.

In this business you have to develop a thick skin, but I’m always going to feel everything. It’s my nature.

It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.

Buy the ticket, take the ride.

After having dispatched a meal, I went ashore, and found no habitation save a single house, and that without an occupant; we had no doubt that the people had fled in terror at our approach, as the house was completely furnished.

Regarded zoologically, man is today an almost isolated figure in nature. In his cradle, he was less isolated.

For me, training is my meditation, my yoga, hiking, biking all rolled into one. Wake up early in the morning, generally around 4 o’clock, and I’ll do my cardio on an empty stomach. Stretch, have a big breakfast, and then I’ll go train.

On life’s vast ocean diversely we sail. Reasons the card, but passion the gale.

The earth’s crust has not yet stopped heaving and plunging under our feet. Mountain ranges are still being thrust up on the horizon. Granites are still growing under the continental masses. Nor has the organic world ceased to produce new buds at the tips of its countless branches.

It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.

Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole.

Nature cannot be tricked or cheated. She will give up to you the object of your struggles only after you have paid her price.

I’m not someone who sits at home and doesn’t like to go out, doesn’t like to watch movies. I like to live my life.

Water is the driving force of all nature.

An architect should live as little in cities as a painter. Send him to our hills, and let him study there what nature understands by a buttress, and what by a dome.

There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.

My relationship with the mountains actually started when I was 16. Every year, a group used to be taken from Auckland Grammar down to the Tangariro National Park for a skiing holiday.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.

Take a course in good water and air; and in the eternal youth of Nature you may renew your own. Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you.

I often visited a particular plant four or five miles distant, half a dozen times within a fortnight, that I might know exactly when it opened.

Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.

The environment is everything that isn’t me.

During my first years in the Sierra, I was ever calling on everybody within reach to admire them, but I found no one half warm enough until Emerson came. I had read his essays, and felt sure that of all men he would best interpret the sayings of these noble mountains and trees. Nor was my faith weakened when I met him in Yosemite.

Not all those who wander are lost.

My love is a hummingbird sitting that quiet moment on the bough, as the same cat crouches.

Flowers… are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.

I owe the best of myself to geology, but everything it has taught me tends to turn me away from dead things.

Living indoors without fresh air quickly poisons the blood and makes people feel tired and seedy when they don’t know why. For myself, I sleep out of doors in winter as well as summer. I only feel tired or seedy when I have been indoors a lot. I only catch cold when I sleep in a room.

The sky is the part of creation in which nature has done for the sake of pleasing man.

In order to speak about all and to all, one has to speak of what all know and of the reality common to us all. The sea, rains, necessity, desire, the struggle against death… these are things that unite us all.

Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.

Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow.

The beginning of reform is not so much to equalize property as to train the noble sort of natures not to desire more, and to prevent the lower from getting more.

I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.

The stars shall fade away, the sun himself Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years, But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, Unhurt amidst the wars of elements, The wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds.

When you draw or paint a tree, you do not imitate the tree; you do not copy it exactly as it is, which would be mere photography. To be free to paint a tree or a flower or a sunset, you have to feel what it conveys to you: the significance, the meaning of it.

It will be a killer, and a chiller, and a thriller, when I get the gorilla in Manila.

Going to the woods is going home, for I suppose we came from the woods originally. But in some of nature’s forests, the adventurous traveler seems a feeble, unwelcome creature; wild beasts and the weather trying to kill him, the rank, tangled vegetation, armed with spears and stinging needles, barring his way and making life a hard struggle.

I believe that there are many herbs and many trees that are worth much in Europe for dyes and for medicines; but I do not know, and this causes me great sorrow. Arriving at this cape, I found the smell of the trees and flowers so delicious that it seemed the pleasantest thing in the world.

Joy in looking and comprehending is nature’s most beautiful gift.