inspirational figures

I like reading other authors’ work to help me put into words how I feel or approach an idea or philosophy. I especially like to read works of philosophy and anything dealing with the human struggle, soul, spirit, or wilderness because they are all at the center of my personal drive and inspiration. These aren’t mindless regurgitations; I hold all of these quotes in high regard and they have some important meaning to me in some manner.

If I were to ever choose who to summit a peak with I would without hesitation name John Muir. He and I may share some sort of descendant spirit.

John Muir
“Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountain is going home; that wildness is necessity; that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.”

“The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual.”

“In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.”

“The Mountains are calling and I must go.”

“Keep close to Nature’s heart…and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.”

“I care to live only to entice people to look at nature’s loveliness. My only special self is nothing (I want to be) like a flake of glass through which light passes.” -John Muir

“In the midst of such beauty, pierced with its rays, one’s body is all one tingling palate. Who wouldn’t be a mountaineer! Up here all the world’s prizes seem nothing.”

“No synonym for God is so perfect as Beauty. Whether as seen carving the lines of the mountains with glaciers, or gathering matter into stars, or planning the movement of water, or gardening — still all is Beauty! ”

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

“If my soul could get away from this so-called prison, be granted all the list of attributes generally bestowed on spirits, my first ramble on spirit-wings would not be among the volcanoes of the moon. Nor should I follow the sunbeams to their sources in the sun. I should hover about the beauty of our own good star. I should not go moping around the tombs, nor around the artificial desolation of men. I should study Nature’s laws in all their crossings and unions: I should follow magnetic streams to their source and follow the shores of our magnetic oceans. I should go among the rays of the aurora, and follow them to their beginnings, and study their dealings and communions with other powers and expressions of matter. And I should go to the very center of our globe and read the whole splendid page from the beginning.”

“I . . . am always glad to touch the living rock again and dip my hand in the high mountain air.”

“The mountains are fountains of men as well as of rivers, of glaciers, of fertile soil. The great poets, philosophers, profits, able men whose thoughts and deeds have moved the world, have come down from the mountains — mountain-dwellers who have grown strong they are with the forest trees in Natures work-shops.”

Thoreau
“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.”

“He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul’s estate. ”

“That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.”

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

“To preserve wild animals implies generally the creation of a forest for them to dwell in or resort to.”

Tolstoy
“Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.” -Tolstoy

“One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken. ” – Tolstoy

“Where Love Is, God Is”

“God is not love, but the more there is of love, the more man manifests God, and the more he truly exists…”

“Quite often a man goes on for years imagining that the religious teaching that had been imparted to him since childhood is still intact, while all the time there is not a trace of it left in him. ”

“The recognition that love represents the highest morality was nowhere denied or contradicted, but this truth was so interwoven everywhere with all kinds of falsehoods which distorted it, that finally nothing of it remained but words.”

Other

“You will be more inspired by these mountains in a year than a lifetime of reading inspired authors’ writings.” -David Ryder

“Only after the last tree has been cut down
Only after the last river has been poisoned
Only after the last fish has been caught
Only then you will find out that money cannot be eaten” – Cree Indian Prophecy

“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed.” – Mohandas Gandhi

“I would rather wake up in the middle of nowhere than in any city on earth.” -Steve Mcqueen

“The love of wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyond reach; it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth … the only home we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need — if only we had the eyes to see.” -Edward Abbey

“Humanity is cutting down its forests, apparently oblivious to the fact that we may not be able to live without them. ” -Isaac Asimov

“In the mountain, stillness surges up to explore its own height; In the lake, movement stands still to contemplate its own depth.” – Tagore

“I think I could turn and live with the animals, they are so placid and self-contained. ” – Walt Whitman

“The smaller we come to feel ourselves compared to the mountain, the nearer we come to participating in its greatness. I do not know why this is so.” -Arne Naess

“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.” – Helen Keller