Outdoors Quotes

“Hiking is not escapism; it's realism. The people who choose to spend time outdoors are not running away from anything; we are returning to where we belong.”
― Jennifer Pharr Davis, The Pursuit of Endurance: Harnessing the Record-Breaking Power of Strength and Resilience

“Never have I thought so much, never have I realised my own existence so much, been so much alive, been so much myself ... as in those journeys which I have made alone and afoot. Walking has something in it which animates and heightens my ideas: I can scarcely think when I stay in one place ; my body must be set a-going if my mind is to work. The sight of the country, the succession of beautiful scenes ... releases my soul, gives me greater courage of thought, throws me as it were into the midst of the immensity of the objects of Nature ... my heart, surveying one object after another, unites itself, identifies itself with those in sympathy with it, surrounds itself with delightful images, intoxicates itself with emotions the most exquisite.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions

“Sometimes, the most productive thing that you can do is to step outside and do nothing... relax and enjoy nature.”
― Melanie Charlene

“There is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes.”
― James Rebanks, The Shepherd's Life: A People's History of the Lake District

“As a child, one has that magical capacity to move among the many eras of the earth; to see the land as an animal does; to experience the sky from the perspective of a flower or a bee; to feel the earth quiver and breathe beneath us; to know a hundred different smells of mud and listen unselfconciously to the soughing of the trees.”
― Valerie Andrews, A Passion for This Earth: Exploring a New Partnership of Man, Woman, and Nature

“In our best times everything turns into religion, all the world seems a church and the mountains altars.”
― John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra

“I know you find your banishment from court hard, but, believe me, it could be much, much worse. This is not a true prison. You can come out here to the garden and see the sky and listen to the birds singing and the bees humming in the flowers. You can work with your own two hands and see things you have planted grow and bring beauty to the world. You can eat what you have grown, and that is a joy too. Then there is the music and the singing, which is a balm to the soul, and the convent itself is filled with beauty, the soaring pillars and the windows glowing like jewels and the embroidered tapestries.”
― Kate Forsyth, Bitter Greens

“No single mountain ever came to me...
so I always go to them”
― Erik Tanghe

“Everything in Nature called destruction must be creation-a change from beauty to beauty.”
― John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra

“Live bold, without fear. This is life amongst the deer.”
― Katelyn S. Bolds

“A walk. The atmosphere incredibly pure ... joy in one's whole being ... I abandoned myself to life and to nature ... To open one's heart in purity to this ever-pure nature, to allow this immortal life of things to penetrate into one's soul, is at the same time to listen to the voice of God. Sensation may be a prayer, and self-abandonment an act of devotion.”
― Henri-Frédéric Amiel, Amiel's Journal

“Catch fireflies in flight, crinkle grass under your toes and know that you are always beloved always beautiful .... a dream within a dream.”
― spoken silence

“For any sustained and more or less original work it seems most necessary that one should have the quietude and strength of Nature at hand, like a great reservoir from which to draw. The open air, and the physical and mental health that goes with it, the sense of space and freedom of the Sky, the vitality and amplitude of the Earth -- these are real things from which one can only cut oneself off at serious peril and risk to one's immortal soul.”
― Edward Carpenter, My Days and Dreams

“LOSE YOURSELF IN A BOOK, FIND YOURSELF OUTSIDE”
― David Covell

“Walker-thinkers have found various ways to accommodate the gifts that their walking brings. Caught paperless on his walks in the Czech enclaves of Iowa, maestro Dvořák scribbles the string quartets that visited his brain on his starched white shirt cuffs (so the legend goes). More proactively, Thomas Hobbes fashioned a walking stick for himself with an inkwell attached, and modern poet Mary Oliver leaves pencils in the trees along her usual pathways, in case a poem descends during her rambles.”
― Lyanda Lynn Haupt, Crow Planet: Essential Wisdom from the Urban Wilderness

“But I want to be free, I want to fly away. If that means living outdoors, well, that's fine by me. If it means not having any food, so what? The only sustenance that matters is the love in my dog's eyes and the hope of meeting people who dare to truly live.”
― Maude Julien, The Only Girl in the World

“The wild unbounded hills we ranged,
While oft our talk its topic changed,
And, desultory as our way,
Ranged, unconfined from grave to gay.
Even when it flagg'd , as oft will chance,
No effort made to break its trance,
We could right pleasantly pursue
Our thoughts in social silence too”
― Sir Walter Scott

“Like roundness, or silence, their quality is natural, but it is found so seldom in its absolute state that when we do so find it we are astonished.”
― Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain: A Celebration of the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland

“Simply is as simply does”
― Phillip Gary Smith, 300-MILE MAN

“Oftentimes, it’s only when we are in the wilds, amidst nature, when we are challenged to reconnect with our main primal needs – finding shelter, water, and food, and working together with the environment – that a real sense of living comes back to us. This does not just happen to me, but by observation, to everyone who finds themselves once again among the wilds.

For me, adventures aren’t just about doing something crazy, but rather about connecting with forgotten core elements of life. In effect, the single feeling that many people seek, but can’t seem to find anywhere else, returns – and that is the feeling of being alive.”
― Jellis Vaes

“I realize that in giving birth, managing a household, raising a child, and composting potato peels in a city, I have learned some things about wildness that even Thoreau could not have known.”
― Lyanda Lynn Haupt, Crow Planet: Essential Wisdom from the Urban Wilderness

“…walking will always be to his benefit - that is, of course, so long as he does not warp his soul by the detestable habit of walking for no object but exercise … walk for glory or for adventure, or to see new sights … and you will very soon find how consonant is walking with your whole being. The chief proof of this … is the way in which a man walking becomes the cousin or the brother of everything around.”
― Belloc, Hilaire, 1870-1953.

“not the least of the practical blessings incident to a walk is that you are beyond the reach of letters and telegrams and telephones”
― Haultain, Arnold

“...those who think their God ... has nowhere so plainly shown himself as in his works, will seek in the face and lineaments of Nature that consoling smile which every lonely soul so miserably craves ... betake thee to the fields; betake thee to the woods ... thou shalt be comforted ... Lay thy tired head on Nature's breast ... always there is at hand the Infinite and the Eternal: about thee, above thee ...”
― Arnold Haultain, Of Walks And Walking Tours: An Attempt to find a Philosophy and a Creed

“Some immensity of Being. It is to this that in reality all Nature points. The clouds, the skies, the greenery of earth, the myriad forms of vegetation at our feet, stir as these may the soul to its depths, they are but single chords in the orchestra of Life. It is the great paean of Being that Nature chants ... Through them it is that we detect the enormous but incomprehensible unity which underlies this incommensurable multiplicity. The wavelet's plash; the purl of the rill; the sough of the wind in the pines - these are but notes in the divine diapason of Life ... Alas, that so fear hear aught but a thin and scrannel sound!”
― Arnold Haultain, Of Walks And Walking Tours: An Attempt to find a Philosophy and a Creed

“Nature's lessons are hard to learn. Harder still is it to translate Nature's lessons to others. Beside, the appeal of Nature is to the Emotions; and words are weak things ... by which to convey or to evoke emotion. Words seem to be the vehicles rather of ratiocination than of emotion. If, in these pages, there are scattered speculations semi-mystical, semi-intelligible, perhaps even transcending the boundaries of rigid logic, I must simply aver that i put in writing that only which was given me to say.”
― Arnold Haultain, Of Walks And Walking Tours: An Attempt to find a Philosophy and a Creed

“I was well on the way to tacking together a sort of nature religion to make up fro Grandpa's defection, an apotheosis of the back of beyond, in which I was just another thinking thing, neuter, drab, camouflaged. There'd be sermons in stones, and books to read in the haybarn, for ever and ever. Amen.”
― Lorna Sage, Bad Blood

“The need for wildness is written within our genes, in a language we are just beginning to understand. And in wilderness we will find the Rosetta Stone that can unravel this ancient language of our bones.”
― Krista Schlyer, Almost Anywhere: Road Trip Ruminations on Love, Nature, National Parks, and Nonsense

“…every now and then when I felt the necessity of a strong inspiration of soul-thought. My heart was dusty, parched for want of the rain of deep feeling; my mind arid and dry, for there is a dust which settles on the heart as well as that which falls on a ledge. It is injurious to the mind as well as the body to be always in one place and always surrounded by the same circumstances. A species of thick clothing slowly grows about my mind … little habits become a part of existence, and by degrees the mind is inclosed in a husk. When this began to form I felt eager to escape from it … to drink deeply once more at the fresh fountains of life. An inspiration -- a long deep breath of pure air of thought -- could alone give health to the heart. There was a hill to which I used to resort at such periods. The labour of walking three miles to it, all the while gradually ascending, seemed to clear my blood of the heaviness accumulated at home … the slow continued rise required continual effort, which carried away the sense of oppression … Moving up the sweet short turf, at every step my heart seemed to obtain a wider horizon of feeling; with every inhalation of rich pure air, a deeper desire … By the time I had reached the summit I had entirely forgotten the petty circumstances and the annoyances of existence. I felt myself, myself'.”
― Richard Jefferies, The Story of my Heart

“The outdoors is best viewed from inside.”
― AMY WOLF