“It has never been man’s gift to make wildernesses. But he can make deserts, and has.”
"The War Between the Rough Riders and the Bird Watchers" (1959 address; reprinted in Wildlands and Our Civilization, David Brower, editor, 1964, and in Voices for the Wilderness, William Schwarz, editor, 1970, page 76)
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Wallace Stegner 29
American historian, writer, and environmentalist 1909–1993Related quotes
“An onion can make people cry, but there has never been a vegetable invented to make them laugh.”
As quoted in You Must Remember This (1975) by Walter Wagner, p. 175
As quoted in ...
News summaries (31 December 1969)
“A man can never quite understand a boy, even when he has been the boy.”
Wisdom and Innocence: A Life of G.K. Chesterton, Joseph Pearce
Misattributed
Source: Sculpting in Time (1986), p. 38
Context: Art is born and takes hold wherever there is a timeless and insatiable longing for the spiritual, for the ideal: that longing which draws people to art. Modern art has taken the wrong turn in abandoning the search for the meaning of existence in order to affirm the value of the individual for his own sake. What purports to be art begins to looks like an eccentric occupation for suspect characters who maintain that any personalised action is of intrinsic value simply as a display of self-will. But in an artistic creation the personality does not assert itself it serves another, higher and communal idea. The artist is always the servant, and is perpetually trying to pay for the gift that has been given to him as if by a miracle. Modern man, however, does not want to make any sacrifice, even though true affirmation of the self can only be expressed in sacrifice. We are gradually forgetting about this, and at the same time, inevitably, losing all sense of human calling.
Hyperion
Original: (de) Immerhin hat das den Staat zur Hölle gemacht, daß ihn der Mensch zu seinem Himmel machen wollte.
Part Five, Chapter 3.
Blue Highways (1982)
As quoted in Carl Anderson. Some notes about his life and work at Caltech. The first of a series of biographical sketches of Caltech faculty members. Engineering and Science, Vol. 15:1 (October 1951) http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechES:15.1.0
Source: Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book IV, 8