“It is a lovely and terrible wilderness, such as wilderness as Christ and the prophets went out into; harshly and beautifully colored, broken and worn until its bones are exposed, its great sky without a smudge of taint from Technocracy, and in hidden corners and pockets under its cliffs the sudden poetry of springs.”

—  Wallace Stegner

Wilderness Letter http://wilderness.org/bios/former-council-members/wallace-stegner (1960)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "It is a lovely and terrible wilderness, such as wilderness as Christ and the prophets went out into; harshly and beauti…" by Wallace Stegner?
Wallace Stegner photo
Wallace Stegner 29
American historian, writer, and environmentalist 1909–1993

Related quotes

Rabindranath Tagore photo

“My heart, the bird of the wilderness, has found its sky in your eyes.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

31
The Gardener http://www.spiritualbee.com/love-poems-by-tagore/ (1915)

“Picture this:
A mountain splintering the sky like a broken bone, its western precipice plummeting onto jumbled scree.”

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

Source: The Visitor (2002), Ch. 1 : caigo faience, first lines (p. 1)

Oscar Wilde photo

“It takes great deal of courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it.”

Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband

Variant: It takes great courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it. And even more courage to see it in the one you love
Source: An Ideal Husband

John Keats photo

“We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us — and if we do not agree, seems to put its hand in its breeches pocket. Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle or amaze with itself, but with its subject.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Letter to John Hamilton Reynolds (February 3, 1818)
Letters (1817–1820)

“I thought of the wilderness we had left behind us, open to sea and sky, joyous in its plenitude and simplicity, perfect yet vulnerable, unaware of what is coming, defended by nothing, guarded by no one.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

Source: Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside

Washington Irving photo

“Luxury spreads its ample board before their eyes; but they are excluded from the banquet. Plenty revels over the fields; but they are starving in the midst of its abundance: the whole wilderness has blossomed into a garden; but they feel as reptiles that infest it.”

Washington Irving book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.

"Traits of Indian Character".
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819–1820)

John Muir photo

“The whole wilderness in unity and interrelation is alive and familiar … the very stones seem talkative, sympathetic, brotherly. … No particle is ever wasted or worn out but eternally flowing from use to use.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

attributed to a Muir "manuscript" in Linnie Marsh Wolfe, Son of the Wilderness: The Life of John Muir (1945), page 124
Similar to statements from My First Summer in the Sierra http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/my_first_summer_in_the_sierra/, see quotes from 30 August and 2 September above.
1870s

Ernesto Che Guevara photo

“Now in the mountains and fields of America, on its flatlands and in its jungles, in the wilderness or in the traffic of cities, on the banks of its great oceans or rivers, this world is beginning to tremble. Anxious hands are stretched forth, ready to die for what is theirs, to win those rights that were laughed at by one and all for 500 years.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Address to the United Nations (1964)

Théodore Guérin photo

“Sometimes I am so disheartened with this country that I feel as if I were carrying on my shoulders the weight of its highest mountains, and in my heart all the thorns of its wilderness.”

Théodore Guérin (1798–1856) Catholic saint and nun from France

Letter to the Very Reverend A. Martin, Vincennes, 1844-10-03.
Context: I must close now, for I am obliged to go to Terre Haute, where I am called to court to explain my conduct and defend myself against accusations relative to counterfeit money that was said to have been received from me. One has to come to America to be treated thus! Sometimes I am so disheartened with this country that I feel as if I were carrying on my shoulders the weight of its highest mountains, and in my heart all the thorns of its wilderness. Pray for me occasionally that I may not lose courage; nay, more, that I may be brave enough to hold up others who falter sometimes.

Related topics