One should go to the woods for safety, if for nothing else.

Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of the mountaineer.

Long, blue, spiky-edged shadows crept out across the snow-fields, while a rosy glow, at first scarce discernible, gradually deepened and suffused every mountain-top, flushing the glaciers and the harsh crags above them. This was the alpenglow, to me the most impressive of all the terrestrial manifestations of God. At the touch of this divine light, the mountains seemed to kindle to a rapt, religious consciousness, and stood hushed like devout worshippers waiting to be blessed.

...full of God's thoughts, a place of peace and safety amid the most exalted grandeur and enthusiastic action, a new song, a place of beginnings abounding in first lessons of life, mountain building, eternal, invincible, unbreakable order; with sermons in stone, storms, trees, flowers, and animals brimful with humanity.

When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.

Books are but stepping stones to show you where other minds have been.

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.