Quotes

“Determination is the mind willing something to happen by the grace of God." —Sister Madonna Buder – Grace to Race

 "Wander a whole summer if you can. Thousands of God's blessings will search you and soak you as if you were a sponge, and the big days will go by uncounted." - John Muir 

 "Hiking a long-distance trail is not about giving up six months of your life. It's about having six months to live" - Keith Fosket - The Last Englishman

"Doubt indulged soon becomes doubt realized."  Frances Ridley Havergal


"I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one finds many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can rest only for a moment, for with freedom come responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended." ~ Nelson Mandela 

 “I go forth to make new demands on life. I wish to begin this summer well; to do something in it worthy of it and me; to transcend my daily routine and that of my townsmen…I pray that the life of this spring and summer may ever lie fair in my memory. May I dare as I have never done! May I persevere as I have never done!” ~ Henry David Thoreau

 

 “Quit living as if the purpose of life is to arrive safely at death. Set God-sized goals. Pursue God-ordained passions. Go after a dream that is destined to fail without divine intervention...And remember: If God is for us, who can be against us?” ~ Mark Batterson

 

"Courage is not the absence of fear, courage is carrying on despite the fear." ~ Winston Churchill

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could learn what it had to teach, and not, when I come to die, discover that I had not lived… I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one."~ Henry David Thoreau

 

"Inexperience is an asset. Embrace it."  ~ Wendy Kopp 

“Let your mind start a journey thru a strange new world. Leave all thoughts of the world you knew before. Let your soul take you where you long to be...Close your eyes let your spirit start to soar, and you'll live as you've never lived before.” ~ Erich Fromm

"Baby step by baby step, you have what you need right now to start moving in the direction of your happiest dreams."  ~ Marta Davidovich Ockuly

"Let us always meet each other with a smile, for the smile is the beginning of love." ~ Mother Teresa

"Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike."  John Muir

 "The feeling remains that God is on the journey, too." ~ Teresa of Avila

Photo by Pete Wetzel

"Those who seek the mountains are not escapists, they are searchers. They search for tranquility, for peace of mind, for something higher and more permanent than materialism. They search for the things that really count in life." ~  Anonymous

   

 

"Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather." ~ John Ruskin

"Slow down and enjoy life. It's not only the scenery you miss by going too fast - you also miss the sense of where you are going and why." ~ Eddie Cantor

 “Prayer is not an old woman's idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action.”  ~ Mahatma Gandhi

"I believe there is a certain sense of awe and renewal for anyone who spends much time exposed to nature." ~ Bill Irwin.

“No matter how sophisticated you may be, a large granite mountain cannot be denied – it speaks in silence to the very core of your being.” ~ Ansel Adams

  

Oh, would that my mind could let fall its dead ideas, as the tree does its withered leaves! --Andre Gide (1869-1951) French author. 

 

 

 

 “Make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt . The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun." ~ Jon Krakauer 

“... Joy ... God has placed it all around us. It is in everything and anything we might experience. We just have to have the courage to turn against our habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living." ~ Christopher "Alex" McCandless”

"Breathe with unconditioned breath the unconditioned air. Shun electric wire. Communicate slowly. Live a three-dimensioned life; stay away from screens." ~ Wendell Berry

All other creatures look down toward the earth but man was given a face so that he might turn his eyes toward the stars and his gaze upon the sky. ~ Ovid

The day is clear and bright and overhead the sun not yet half finished with his daily praise. ~ Wendell Berry from Given:Poems

I sit on a log provided at no cost. It is the earth I've come to ... Free. A bargain! Get it while it lasts. ~Wendell Berry from Leavings:Poems

Grace and gratitude belong together like heaven and earth. Gratitude evokes grace like the voice and echo. Gratitude follows grace as thunder follows lightning. ~Karl Barth (1886-1968) theologian.

Let mystery have its place in you; do not be always turning up your whole soil with the ploughshare of self-examination, but leave a little fallow corner in your heart ready for any seed the winds may bring... ~Henri Frederic Amiel (1821-1881) Swiss writer.

If you would attain to what you are not yet, you must always be displeased by what you are. For where you are pleased with yourself there you have remained. Keep adding, keep walking, keep advancing. ~Saint Augustine

Love all God's creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. ~Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) Russian novelist.




This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it. 
~Thomas Dekker (1570-1632) English Writer and Dramatist.

Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.~Winston Churchill (1874-1965) British Prime Minister

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. ~E. E. Cummings (1894-1962) American poet.

Be grateful for who you are.
Be grateful for who you are to become.
Be grateful for the boulders placed upon your path.
For they are not obstacles but stepping stones on your journey of self-realization. ~Joe Keane


Welcome every morning with a smile. Look on the new day as another special gift from your Creator, another golden opportunity to complete what you were unable to finish yesterday. Be a self-starter. Let your first hour set the theme of success and positive action that is certain to echo through your entire day. Today will never happen again. Don't waste it with a false start or no start at all. You were not born to fail.  ~Og Mandino (1923-1996) American Author and Psychologist.


 What you can do, or dream you can do, begin it;
boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) German author and scientist


 I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life. ~Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) 16th US President.


The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched, they must be felt with the heart.
~Helen Keller (1880-1968) U.S. author who was blind and deaf.

 Nature is God's greatest evangelist.
~Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) American minister.


The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays. ~Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) Danish philosopher, theologian and author.
 

Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf. ~Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) Indian author.

To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom. ~Emerson

Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do. ~John Wooden

She travels grubbiest who travels light. —ERMA BOMBECK, Humor columnist, 1927-

There is an art of finding one's direction in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. ~ René Daumal

 If you want to get to the peak, you ought to climb without giving it too much thought. ~Nietzsche

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads. – Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

Nature is always hinting at us.
It hints over and over again.
And suddenly we take the hint. ~Robert Frost (1874-1963)

 He who would travel happily, must travel light. ~Antoine de Saint Exupery

 From Pope Benedict's final Sunday Angelus address on 2/24/13; this quote is particularly meaningful to me -- "The Christian life consists in continuously scaling the mountain to meet God and then coming back down, bearing the love and strength drawn from him so as to serve our brothers and sisters with God's own love."







"Some succeed because they are destined to, but most succeed because they are determined to.” ~ Henry Van Dyke

 "There is a real magic in enthusiasm. It spells the difference between mediocrity and accomplishment."~Norman Vincent Peale

 "What is once well done is done forever." ~ Henry David Thoreau

 "Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements." ~ Napoleon Hill

"Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence." ~ Helen Keller

 "What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us." ~ Helen Keller

 “To embark on the journey towards your goals and dreams requires bravery. To remain on that path requires courage. The bridge that merges the two is commitment.”
― Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience

 “Every bridge is a holy saint; it helps everyone who comes to him and protects them from the precipices!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

 If you hug to yourself any resentment against anybody else, you destroy the bridge by which God would come to you. ~Peter Marshall


“The forest makes a claim upon men’s hearts…that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.”  -Robert Louis Stevenson

“At the gates of the forest, the surprised man of the world is forced to leave his city estimates of great and small, wise and foolish.  The knapsack of custom falls off his back.”  -Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Creator has not given you a longing to do that which you have no ability to do. ~ Orison Swett Marden

"Still round the corner there may wait
A new road or a secret gate,
And though I oft have passed them by,
A day will come at last when I
Shall take the hidden paths that run
West of the Moon, East of the Sun."

[J.R.R. Tolkien]      “Never make your home in a place. Make a home for yourself inside your own head. You'll find what you need to furnish it - memory, friends you can trust, love of learning, and other such things. That way it will go with you wherever you journey.” ― Tad Williams