More From "The Open Road"

As described in an earlier post, during a former lifetime, when I was "Rucksack Man" (see left) and wandered blamelessly and somewhat aimlessly along the more scenic footpaths of Britain, I carried a little notebook of quotations which I'd collected. I called this booklet "The Open Road" after a poem by Walt Whitman. In the absence of anything more pressing to report on I'd like to share a few more of these quotes with you.

"The power most important to cultivate, and, at the same time the hardest to acquire, is that of seeing what is before you" - George Perkins Marsh

"You don't run down the present, pursue it with baited hooks and nets. You wait for it, empty-handed and you are filled." - Annie Dillard

"The question is not what you look at but what you see" - Thoreau

"There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy" - Henry Miller

"The peasants are the great sanctuary of sanity, the country the last stronghold of happiness. When they disappear there is no hope for the race." - Virginia Woolf

"Cold mountain water
Heals the body's ills
But only grouse and mountain birds can reach it
Beasts of the valley have no chance to drink it"
- Song of Milarepa

"It takes more endurance to work in a city than it does to climb a mountain" - Pete Boardman

"In such an ugly time as this the only true protest is beauty" - Phil Ochs

"Nature is the most beautiful thing in the world. You can show the beauty, illustrate it, but it is never the real beauty - very far from it. We don't know how beautiful nature really is. We can only guess." - Andre Kertesz

Take care.