Quotes about outdoors

Anne Lamott - Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

When I asked Father Tom where we find God in this present darkness, he said that God is in creation, and to get outdoors as much as you can.

Daniel J. Rice - The Unpeopled Season: Journal from a North Country Wilderness

When I returned to camp, they walked behind me on the trail, and we spoke not a word about getting skunked today, but rather talked about the days we returned with a stringer full of fish, and how we filleted them and the left the guts out for bears and eagles, and how those fish tasted fresh when we fried them over a fire.

Walter Scott - The Lady of the Lake

so wondrous wild, the whole might seemthe scenery of a fairy dream

Henry David Thoreau -

We are but faint-hearted crusaders...our expeditions are but tours...half the walk is but retracing our steps. We should go forth on the shortest walks, perchance, in the spirit of stirring adventure, never to return, --prepared to send back our embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate kingdoms...if you have paid your debts and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free man, then you are ready for a walk.

Fennel Hudson - A Waterside Year - Fennel's Journal - No. 2

My tent doesn’t look like much but, as an estate agent might say, “It is air-conditioned and has exceptional location.

John Muir - The Mountains of California

Even the sick should try these so-called dangerous passes, because for every unfortunate they kill, they cure a thousand.

Wendy Delsol - Stork

I was drinking in the surroundings: air so crisp you could snap it with your fingers and greens in every lush shade imaginable offset by autumnal flashes of red and yellow.

George Washington Sears - Woodcraft and Camping

For brick and mortar breed filth and crime,With a pulse of evil that throbs and beats;And men are whithered before their primeBy the curse paved in with the lanes and streets.And lungs are poisoned and shoulders bowed, In the smothering reek of mill and mine;And death stalks in on the struggling crowd—But he shuns the shadow of the oak and pine

Mackenzie Crook -

I like the outdoors and the natural world. Environmental issues.

Joe Namath -

I was focused on athletics, outdoors, sports.

Jillian Rose Reed -

I love to be outdoors, so I like to hike, bike and go to the beach.

Norman Cousins -

Hearty laughter is a good way to jog internally without having to go outdoors.

David Suzuki -

All those hours exploring the great outdoors made me more resilient and confident.

Richard Askwith - Feet in the Clouds: A Tale of Fell-Running and Obsession

It can't be more than a quarter of a mile to the finish, but it seems to go on forever. Do I really have to do this? My legs are entirely dead. Would it really matter if I stopped here?But I know I'd regret it if I did, so I plod leadenly on, distracting myself...with the thought that, whatever troubles I may have been carrying around in my head before the race, I have now entirely forgotten what they were. This thought is rather refreshing. Whatever physical pains it has involved, this ordeal h

Eowyn Ivey - The Snow Child

He stood there a moment, listened to the creek, and let the mountain air blow against his face. Even with all this heartache, it was beautiful here.

Steven Magee - Light Forensics

Be healthy by being outdoors in the natural daylight with nature!

Charles M. Schulz - Vol. 1: 1950-1952

Whenever the sun is shining, I feel obligated to play outside!

Peter Heller - Hell or High Water: Surviving Tibet's Tsangpo River

Maybe freedom really is nothing left to lose. You had it once in childhood, when it was okay to climb a tree, to paint a crazy picture and wipe out on your bike, to get hurt. The spirit of risk gradually takes its leave. It follows the wild cries of joy and pain down the wind, through the hedgerow, growing ever fainter. What was that sound? A dog barking far off? That was our life calling to us, the one that was vigorous and undefended and curious.

J.R. Rim -

Most people spend less time outside than prisoners.

Enid Blyton - Five Go Off in a Caravan

Soon they were all sitting on the rocky ledge, which was still warm, watching the sun go down into the lake. It was the most beautiful evening, with the lake as blue as a cornflower and the sky flecked with rosy clouds. They held their hard-boiled eggs in one hand and a piece of bread and butter in the other, munching happily. There was a dish of salt for everyone to dip their eggs into.‘I don’t know why, but the meals we have on picnics always taste so much nicer than the ones we have indoors,’

Thomas Cole -

Though American scenery is destitute of many of those circumstances that give value to the European, still it has features, and glorious ones, unknown to Europe...the most distinctive, and perhaps the most impressive, characteristic of American scenery is its wildness

Summer Lane - Running with Wolves

Outside, the dogs whine over the wind. They sense the wolves - they sense the wild. It calls to them, like it calls to me, and I wonder sometimes if we are the only ones who hear it.

Daniel J. Rice - This Side of a Wilderness

As the saturating colors of sun-life fade from sight, the ominous moon reaches out its long arm and applies the dark dyes of night.

Travis Polso -

Having a pleasant time can extend a long period of time to have a fun time.

Fennel Hudson - A Waterside Year - Fennel's Journal - No. 2

Rarely will I write indoors, even if it means getting wet during rain, or my hands numb in winter.

Roman Payne -

We made love outdoors—without a roof, I like most, without stove, my favorite place, assuming the weather be fair and balmy, and the earth beneath be clean. Our souls intertwined and dripping with dew, and our love for each other was seen. Our love for the world was new.

Roman Payne -

SAUL: 'We made love outdoors, my favorite place to make love, assuming the weather be fair and balmy, and the earth beneath be clean. Our souls intertwined and dripping with sweat.

Dan Pearce - Single Dad Laughing

Fishing is much less about the fishing, and much more about the time alone with your kid, away from the hustle and bustle of the everyday.

Robert M. Pirsig - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you’re no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn’t just a means to an end but a unique event in itself. This leaf has jagged edges. This rock looks loose. From this place the snow is less visible, even

Steven Magee - Curing Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity

I routinely use my blue sky "Device" and it works very well for me.

Ana Claudia Antunes - ACross Tic

Walking with my doggy is so much fun! And she makes me laugh, she makes me run. Licking she likes to make some good new friends, Kindly enough with cyclists who spin with no end.

John R. Stilgoe -

The whole concatenation of wild and artificial things, the natural ecosystem as modified by people over the centuries, the build environment layered over layers, the eerie mix of sounds and smells and glimpses neither natural nor crafted- all of it is free for the taking, for the taking in. Take it, take it in, take in more every weekend, every day, and quickly it becomes the theater that intrigues, relaxes, fascinates, seduces, and above all expands any mind focused on it. Outside lies utterly

Steven Magee -

Smart people that like good health spend several hours outdoors daily in the shade of trees.

A.L. Kennedy - Day

A good roast of sun, it slows you, lets you relax–and out here if there's anything wrong, you can see it coming with bags of time to do what's next. This is the place and the weather for peace, for the cultivation of a friendly mind.

Jenn Fagan -

I never knew I liked to be outside so much. I never knew I liked lochs and views and that, but I could seriously handle living in a cottage by the side of somewhere like this."The Panopticon

Fennel Hudson - Fine Things - Fennel's Journal - No. 8

You need to be outdoors. Away from here. You need a holiday.

Stephen Jay Gould - An Urchin in the Storm: Essays about Books and Ideas

No Geologist worth anything is permanently bound to a desk or laboratory, but the charming notion that true science can only be based on unbiased observation of nature in the raw is mythology. Creative work, in geology and anywhere else, is interaction and synthesis: half-baked ideas from a bar room, rocks in the field, chains of thought from lonely walks, numbers squeezed from rocks in a laboratory, numbers from a calculator riveted to a desk, fancy equipment usually malfunctioning on expensive

Daniel J. Rice - Awake in the World: A Riverfeet Press Anthology 2017

As Gabe continued to speak, he sounded to be a cheerful and intelligent person, two attributes I have commonly found associated with people who spend most of their time outdoors.-from New River, in the anthology AWAKE IN THE WORLD

Nan Shepherd - The Living Mountain

Summer on the high plateau can be delectable as honey; it can also be a roaring scourge. To those who love the place, both are good, since both are part of its essential nature. And it is to know its essential nature that I am seeking here. To know, that is, with the knowledge that is a process of living. This is not done easily nor in an hour. It is a tale too slow for the impatience of our age, not of immediate enough import for its desperate problems. Yet it has its own rare value. It is, for

Roman Payne -

The green-eyed angel came in less than a half hour and fell docile as a lamb into my arms. We kissed and caressed, I met no resistance when I unlaced the strings to free her dress and fill myself in the moist and hot bed nature made between her thighs. We made love outdoors—without a roof, I like most, without stove, my favorite place, assuming the weather be fair and balmy, and the earth beneath be clean. Our souls intertwined and dripping with dew, and our love for each other was seen. Our lov

Gerard Manley Hopkins -

Where lies your landmark, seamark, or soul's star?

Ralph Waldo Emerson -

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

Edward Abbey - Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness

Water, water, water....There is no shortage of water in the desert but exactly the right amount , a perfect ratio of water to rock, water to sand, insuring that wide free open, generous spacing among plants and animals, homes and towns and cities, which makes the arid West so different from any other part of the nation. There is no lack of water here unless you try to establish a city where no city should be.

Percy Bysshe Shelley -

...Away, away, from men and towns, To the wild wood and the downs— To the silent wilderness Where the soul need not repress Its music lest it should not find An echo in another’s mind. While the touch of Nature’s art Harmonizes heart to heart. I leave this notice on my door For each accustomed visitor:— “I am gone into the fields To take what this sweet hour yields;...Awake! arise! And come away! To the wild woods and the plains, And the pools where winter rains Image all their roof of leaves, W

Salt - Henry S.

But I would point out that there is another and still more important function of great mountains - the culture not of athletic faculty alone, but of that intellectual sympathy with untamed and primitive Nature which our civilization threatens to destroy. A mountain is something more than a thing to climb. To the many who, on a fine summer day, swarm up Skiddaw or Snowdon by the well-worn pony-paths, it is pure holiday-making; to the few who (in another sense) swarm up Scafell Pinnacel or the Nap

Fennel Hudson - Traditional Angling - Fennel's Journal - No. 6

I’m likely to stay here, pen in hand, until dusk comes and my writing melts into the twilight.

Stephen Graham - The Gentle Art of Tramping

...Nature becomes your teacher, and from her you will learn what is beautiful and who you are and what is your special quest in life and whither you should go...You live on manna vouchsafed to you daily, miraculously. You stretch out arms for hidden gifts, you year toward the moonbeams and the stars, you listen with new ears to bird's songs and the murmurs of trees and streams....From day to day you keep your log, your day-book of the soul, and you may think at first that it is a mere record of

Jim Crumley - Gulfs of Blue Air: A Highland Journey

...there are no new themes for a writer, only new ways of setting down old themes, new eyes to wander among old rocks.

Robert Macfarlane - Landmarks

The word "landmark" is from the old English "landmearc", meaning 'an object in the landscape which, by its conspicuousness, serves as a guide in the direction of one's course.

Norman MacCaig -

Scholars, I plead with you, Where are your dictionaries of the wind, the grasses?

Tracy Rees - Amy Snow

We both loved the birds and animals and plants. We both felt far happier out of doors. I felt a peace in nature that I could never find in the human world, as you know.

Tracy Rees - Amy Snow

Although the deepest of snow in living memory lay upon the ground, the sun was shining and Aurelia breathed easiest out of doors. The four walls of any given room could not give her the horizons she longed for - horizons she could measure with her eyes and strive to conquer with her own two legs. She was like a wild animal, Cook always said.

Virginia Woolf -

I am extremely happy walking on the downs...I like to have space to spread my mind out in.

Adam Nicolson -

The place has entered me...it has coloured my life like a stain.

Jeffrey Robinson -

Every step of the walk unburdens us of what we have just seen and thought while it simultaneously thrusts us into the previously unknown.

Kiran Desai - The Inheritance of Loss

Should humans conquer the mountain or should they wish for the mountain to possess them?

David Eddings - Crystal Gorge

The stars were better company anyway. They were very beautiful, and they almost never snored.

anonymous - in review of Thoreau

With…love of wind, there is no surer test of genuine Nature instinct that this. Any body can love sunshine.

John Muir - The Story of My Boyhood and Youth

When I was a child in Scotland, I was fond of everything that was wild, and all my life I've been growing fonder and fonder of wild places and wild creatures. Fortunately, around my native town of Dunbar, by the stormy North Sea, there was no lack of wildness...

John Stuart Mills -

It is not good for man to be kept perforce at all times in the presence of his species. A world from which solitude is extirpated is a very poor ideal. Solitude, in the sense of being often alone, is essential to any depth of meditation or of character; and solitude in the presence of natural beauty and grandeur, is the cradle of thoughts and aspirations which are not only good for the individual, but which society could ill do without. Nor is there much satisfaction in contemplating the world w

Theodor Adorno -

Words tend to bounce off nature as they try to deliver nature's language into the hands of another language foreign to it.

Rebecca Brooks - Make Me Stay

It didn’t matter that she didn’t live here, that a relationship was out of the question. It was probably because a relationship wouldn’t happen that he could let himself get this close. He wrapped his arms tighter around her as though this were all that existed in the world. Just the two of them, the mountain, the clean winter air. The taste of her tongue on his lips.

simon schma -

...landscape is a work of the mind. Its scenery is built up as much from strata of memory as from layers of rock.

Barry Babcock - TEACHERS IN THE FOREST: Essays from the last wilderness in Mississippi Headwaters Country

On a winter’s day when a person’s spirits may be low and to behold thirty to one-hundred Evening Grosbeaks busily gorging themselves on bird seed and perched in a stand of pines with all of them creating a cacophony of sparrow like chirps, this is real therapy for me. It is an act of contagious optimism. It is at such times I realize that a bird can do more for me than a shrink.

Barry Babcock - TEACHERS IN THE FOREST: Essays from the last wilderness in Mississippi Headwaters Country

No animal could change the character of the land as the presence of the wolf had that day.