Quote

Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed ... We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in.

Wallace Stegner

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Wallace Stegner
Age: 84 †
Born: 1909
Born: February 18
Died: 1993
Died: April 13
Biographer
Environmentalist
Historian
Naturalist
Novelist
Writer
Lake Mills
Iowa
Something
Gone
Wilderness
Never
Ever
Edge
People
Look
Edges
Looks
Wild
Need
Destroyed
Country
Drive
Needs
Available
Even
Simply
Remaining

More quotes by Wallace Stegner

Image
Wisdom. . .is knowing what you have to accept.
Wallace Stegner
Image
You married me...but you didn't marry what you could make out of me.
Wallace Stegner
Image
If the national park is, as Lord Bryce suggested, the best idea America has ever had, wilderness preservation is the highest refinement of that idea.
Wallace Stegner
Image
A political animal can be defined as a body that will go on circulating a petition even with its heart cut out.
Wallace Stegner
Image
Thanks to the growing strength of environmental organizations, there will always be some back country to provide us with a touch of wonder and a breath of fresh air.
Wallace Stegner
Image
He used to tell me, 'Do what you like to do. It'll probably turn out to be what you do best.
Wallace Stegner
Image
I gave my heart to the mountains the minute I stood beside this river with its spray in my face and watched it thunder into foam, smooth to green glass over sunken rocks, shatter to foam again. I was fascinated by how it sped by and yet was always there its roar shook both the earth and me.
Wallace Stegner
Image
Home is a notion that only nations of the homeless fully appreciate and only the uprooted comprehend.
Wallace Stegner
Image
There is a sense in which we are all each other's consequences
Wallace Stegner
Image
If you avoid the killer diseases and keep the degenerative ones under control with sensible diet and exercise and whatever chemotherapy you need to stay in balance, you can live nearly forever.
Wallace Stegner
Image
Some are born in their place, some find it, some realize after long searching that the place they left is the one they have been searching for.
Wallace Stegner
Image
To try to save for everyone, for the hostile and independent as well as the committed, some of the health that flows down across the green ridges from the skyline, and some of the beauty and spirit that are still available to any resident of the valley who has a moment and the wit to lift up his eyes unto the hills.
Wallace Stegner
Image
Youth hasn't got anything to do with chronological age. It's times of hope and happiness.
Wallace Stegner
Image
Every action is an idea before it is an action, and perhaps a feeling before it is an idea, and every idea rests upon other ideas that have preceded it in time.
Wallace Stegner
Image
American individualism, much celebrated and cherished, has developed without its essential corrective, which is belonging.
Wallace Stegner
Image
Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed ... so that never again can we have the chance to see ourselves single, separate, vertical and individual in the world, part of the environment of trees and rocks and soil, part of the natural world and competent to belong in it.
Wallace Stegner
Image
She had rooms in her mind that she would not look into.
Wallace Stegner
Image
How much wilderness do the wilderness-lovers want? ask those who would mine and dig and cut and dam in such sanctuary spots as these. The answer is easy: Enough so that there will be in the years ahead a little relief, a little quiet, a little relaxation, for any of our increasing millions who need and want it.
Wallace Stegner
Image
It should not be denied... that being footloose has always exhilarated us. It is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression and law and irksome obligations, with absolute freedom, and the road has always led West.
Wallace Stegner
Image
It's easier to die than to move ... at least for the Other Side you don't need trunks.
Wallace Stegner