Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.

The mountains are calling and I must go.

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

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.

Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another.

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.

There is that in the glance of a flower which may at times control the greatest of creation's braggart lords.

It seems strange that bears, so fond of all sorts of flesh, running the risks of guns and fires and poison, should never attack men except in defense of their young. How easily and safely a bear could pick us up as we lie asleep! Only wolves and tigers seem to have learned to hunt man for food, and perhaps sharks and crocodiles.

Trees go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far!

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.

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.

Man seems to be the only animal whose food soils him, making necessary much washing and shield-like bibs and napkins. Moles living in the earth and eating slimy worms are yet as clean as seals or fishes, whose lives are one perpetual wash.

If you have easy self-contentment, you might have a very, very cheap source of happiness.

I have nothing against respecting people who lived before, but we have no responsibility toward them.

The limits of the possible can only be defined by going beyond them into the impossible.

The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.

Reading computer manuals without the hardware is as frustrating as reading sex manuals without the software.

The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion.

I don't believe in God but I'm very interested in her.

If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

This is the first age that's ever paid much attention to the future, which is a little ironic since we may not have one.

It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God - but to create him.

Our lifetime may be the last that will be lived out in a technological society.

It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.

I don't pretend we have all the answers. But the questions are certainly worth thinking about.

How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean.

Human judges can show mercy. But against the laws of nature, there is no appeal.

I have a fantasy where Ted Turner is elected President but refuses because he doesn't want to give up power.

It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms of nationalism can long survive when men have seen the Earth in its true perspective as a single small globe against the stars.

Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case the idea is quite staggering.

The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.

Perhaps, as some wit remarked, the best proof that there is Intelligent Life in Outer Space is the fact it hasn't come here. Well, it can't hide forever - one day we will overhear it.

New ideas pass through three periods: 1) It can't be done. 2) It probably can be done, but it's not worth doing. 3) I knew it was a good idea all along!

First-rate people hire first-rate people; second-rate people hire third-rate people.

We see things as we are, not as they are.

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Extremists think 'communication' means agreeing with them.

Why did God give me two ears and one mouth? So that I will hear more and talk less.

Happiness comes only when we push our brains and hearts to the farthest reaches of which we are capable.

I learned that it is the weak who are cruel, and that gentleness is to be expected only from the strong.

A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they're dead.

Truth is stranger than fiction; fiction has to make sense.

Courage is the capacity to confront what can be imagined.

The books that help you most are those which make you think that most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty.

I want to do with you what spring does with cherry trees.

I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests.

Peace goes into the making of a poem as flour goes into the making of bread.

We possess only the happiness we are able to understand.

When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough.

All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than animals that know nothing.