Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.

There is a love of wild nature in everybody, an ancient mother-love showing itself whether recognized or no, and however covered by cares and duties

The most distinctive, and perhaps the most impressive, characteristic of American scenery is its wilderness.

If I should be fated to walk no more with Nature, be compelled to leave all I most devoutly love in the wilderness, return to civilization and be twisted into the characterless cable of society, then these sweet, free, cumberless rovings will be as chinks and slits on life's horizon, through which I may obtain glimpses of the treasures that lie in God's wilds beyond my reach.

Going to the mountains is going home.

All the world was before me and every day was a holiday, so it did not seem important to which one of the world's wildernesses I first should wander.

…their eager, childlike attention was refreshing to see as compared with the decent, deathlike apathy of weary civilized people, in whom natural curiosity has been quenched in toil and care and poor, shallow comfort.