Some of Our Favorite Quotes About Being in the Wild

“My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing.” – Aldous Huxley

“A white man makes a large fire and sits far away, an Indian makes a small fire and sits close.”

“Being lost is a state of mind, not a state of place.”

“I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority. ” – E. B. White

“The more you know the less you carry” – Mors Kochanski

“I once asked my grandfather if he’d ever been lost in the woods. He gave me a perplexed look and said, The woods are my home. How can I be lost when I’m at home?”

“To poke a wood fire is more solid enjoyment than almost anything else in the world.” – Charles Dudley Warner

“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

“The best knife is the one you have with you when you need it.”

“Everything is edible, even the things that are not… Those kill you… Learn the difference…”

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, to discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and to be able to give a true account of it” – Henry David Thoreau – (1817 – 1862) – Walden or Life in the Woods

“Take only memories, leave only footprints.” – Ray Mears

“A blunt blade is more dangerous than a sharp one” – Ray Mears

“Do not mess with the forces of Nature, for thou art small and biodegradable!”

“If you leave the Christian Bible outside, eventually the wind and the rain will destroy it. My bible IS the wind and the rain.” – attributed to an unnamed Native American woman.

Advice on knife use; “The pink things are fingers”

“Always hike in bear country with someone you can outrun”

“Fire-wood makes you warm three times; first collecting it, secondly shifting it and third when you burn it.” – Ray Mears

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference” – Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken

“When the first Europeans landed in the Americas, they described it as one vast untouched wilderness. This was about the highest compliment they could pay to the Native people who had lived there for thousands of years.” – Bill Mason – at the start of Waterwalker

“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 will you realize that you cannot
EAT MONEY!”
– Cree Indian prophesy

“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children”

“We do not go to the green woods and crystal waters to rough it, we go to smooth it. We get it rough enough at home, in towns and cities.” –NESSMUK (G.W. Sears), Woodcraft, 1963
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“Never pick blackberries along the path which are below waist height.”

“The real measure of wealth is how much you’d be worth if you lost all your money.” -unknown

“Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Teach a man TO LEARN to fish and you empower him for a lifetime.” – Lao Tzu

“Light a man a fire and he’s warm for the night. Light a man on fire and he’s warm for the rest of his life.”

“In all things of nature, there is something of the marvelous.” – Aristotle

“Nature does nothing uselessly.” – Aristotle

“You will find something more in woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you that which you can never learn from masters.” – Saint Bernard

“Knowledge is the key to survival, the real beauty of that is that it doesn’t weigh anything.” – Ray Mears

“Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does Nature because in her inventions, nothing is lacking and nothing is superfluous.” – Leonardo da Vinci.

“No ones last words have been ‘I wish I’d spent more time in the office”

“A sharp knife in the hands of a wise man is less dangerous than a blunt knife in the hands of a fool.” – Montivagus

“There is a pleasure in the pathless woods;
There is a rapture on the lonely shore;
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar;
I love not man the less, but Nature more.” ~ Lord Byron