Hiking and outdoor quotes

Quotes

Over the years we have published a selection of hiking and other outdoor based quotes as part of our regular newsletters. These quotes cover the full range from witty, to inspiring, and sometimes irreverent, so we thought we would collect them all in one central location and continue to update this list on a regular basis as we find more quotes.

The following list is arranged in alphabetical order based on the attributed author’s last name. Enjoy!

Anonymous

Anywhere is ‘within walking distance’.

Anonymous

Comfortable in camp, or comfortable on the trail.

Anonymous

Go where you feel most alive.

Anonymous

Hiking is the answer.  Who cares what the question is.

Anonymous

Hiking side effects include sweating, euphoria and general awesomeness.

Anonymous

I hike to burn off the crazy.

Anonymous

It feels good to be lost in the right direction.

Anonymous

If the winter is too cold and the summer is too hot, you are not a hiker.

Anonymous

Let’s wander where the WiFi is weak

Anonymous

The earth has music for those who listen.

Anonymous

I don’t get it. The trail looked so flat on the map.

Anonymous

Bring a compass.  It’s awkward when you have to eat your friends.

Anonymous

The closer you are to nature, the further you are from idiots.

Anonymous

I will go hiking here or there, I will go hiking everywhere.

Anonymous

Wander and Wonder at any Age

Anonymous

When everything feels like an uphill struggle, Just think of the view from the top.

 Anonymous

A

Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread.

Edward Abbey

Adventure is the result of poor planning.

Roald Amundsen

Nature is one of the most underutilised treasures in life. It has the power to unburden hearts and reconnect to that inner place of peace.

Janice Anderson

B

There is always an adventure waiting in the woods.

Katelyn S. Bolds

I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.

John Burroughs

To be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter… these are some of the rewards of the simple life.

John Burroughs

If happiness is the goal – and it should be, then adventures should be top priority.

Richard Branson

What we find in a soulmate is not something wild to tame, but something wild to run with.

Robert Brault

Nothing lives long, Only the earth and mountains

Dee Brown

All that is required of you is a willingness to trudge. There is no point in hurrying because you are not actually going anywhere. However far or long you trod you are always in the same place – in the woods. It’s where you were yesterday, where you will be tomorrow.

Bill Bryson

A significant fraction of thru-hikers reach Katahdin, then turn around and start back to Georgia. They just can’t stop walking, which kind of makes you wonder.

Bill Bryson

What a lovely surprise to discover how un-lonely being alone can be.

Ellen Burstyn

C

I love the fact that we are surrounded by this spectacular natural beauty that routinely strikes us dead. Hikers walk off into the woods and are never seen again. And still we tug on our fleece and skip off into the wilderness, not a care in the world.

Chelsea Cain

It is quite possible to leave your home for a walk in the early morning air and return a different person – beguiled, enchanted.

Mary Ellen Chase

I met a lot of young people who asked me what books to read or films to watch. I think that is a good way to start, but there’s no substitute for just going there.

 Yvon Chouinard

If you think adventure is dangerous, try routine, it’s lethal.

 Paulo Coelho

We all walk in different shoes.

Kenneth Cole

May you live in interesting times.

Confucius

It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.

Confucius

Ignore the outside voices telling you you’re doing it wrong; there is no “wrong.” But also watch out for wanting to fit in so badly that you start hiking someone else’s hike.

Ben Crawford

D

To walk in nature is to witness a thousand miracles.

Mary Davis

A walk in nature walks the soul back home.

Mary Davis

I found far more answers in the woods than I ever did in the city.

Mary Davis

Hiking is not escapism; it’s realism. The people who choose to spend time outdoors are not running away from anything; we are returning to where we belong.

Jennifer Pharr Davis

Never follow someone else’s path unless you’re in the woods and you’re lost, and you see a path. By all means, you should follow that.

Ellen DeGeneres

You shall have a place outside the camp, and you shall go out to it. And you shall have a stick with your weapons, and when you sit down outside, you shall dig a hole with it and turn back and cover up your excrement.

Deuteronomy 23:12-13

When you go out there you don’t get away from it all, you get back to it all. You come home to what’s important. You come home to yourself.

Peter Dombrovskis

I love walking because it clears your mind, enriches the soul, takes away stress, and opens up your eyes to a whole new world.

Claudette Dudley

E

Look deep into nature and you will understand everything better.

Albert Einstein

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go.

T.S. Eliot

Going for a leisurely walk in the forest feels like getting a big ol’ hug from Mother Nature.

Jamie Erwine

Adventure is out there.

Ellie from the movie Up

Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you’re on the right path it will always be uphill.

Henry B. Eyring

F

There is no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing.

Sir Rannulph Fiennes

He who dies with the most toys wins.

Malcolm Forbes

The best way out is always through. Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on. Two roads diverged in a wood and I  took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost

G

I remember a hundred lovely lakes, and recall the fragrant breath of pine and fir and cedar and poplar trees. The trail has strung upon it, as upon a thread of silk, opalescent dawns and saffron sunsets.

Hamlin Garland

Whenever the pressure of our complex city life thins my blood and numbs my brain, I seek relief in the trail; and when I hear the coyote wailing to the yellow dawn, my cares fall from me – I am happy.

Hamlin Garland

Yours are the only shoes made to walk your journey.

Charles F. Glassman

Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you should set up a life you don’t need to escape from.

Seth Godin

Days of slow walking are very long: they make you live longer, because you have allowed every hour, every minute, every second to breathe, to deepen, instead of filling them up by straining the joints.

Frederic Gros

Walking gets the feet moving, the blood moving, the mind moving. And movement is life.

Terri Guillemets

You need special shoes for hiking—and a bit of a special soul as well.

Terri Guillemets

H

If you face the rest of your life with the spirit you show on the trail, it will have no choice but to yield the same kind of memories and dreams.

Adrienne Hall

Remember to look up to the stars, not down to your feet.

Stephen Hawking

Hike your own hike to health.

Harken Headers

It is not talking but walking that will bring us to heaven.

Matthew Henry

Without new experiences, something inside of us sleeps. The sleeper must awaken.

Frank Herbert

If you do not expect the unexpected you will not find it, for it is not to be reached by search or trail.

Heraclitus

If you are in a bad mood go for a walk. If you are still in a bad mood go for another walk.

Hippocrates

Walking is man’s best medicine. 

Hippocrates

Most folks in today’s society do not seek out things that will test them. Most seek out things that will entertain them.

David Horton

Hiking is the only slightly less ugly stepsister of running.

Lindy Hughes

My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing.

Aldous Huxley

I

On a hike, the days pass with the wind, the sun, the stars; movement is powered by a belly full of food and water, not a noxious tankful of fossil fuels. On a hike, you’re less a job title and more a human being. A periodic hike not only stretches the limbs but also reminds us: Wow, there’s a big old world out there.

Ken Ilgunas

J

There is no habit you will value so much as that of walking far without fatigue.

Thomas Jefferson

To hike is to complain.

Dean Johnston

K

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure.

Helen Keller

I love walking in the woods, along the trails, by the beaches. I love being part of nature. I love walking alone. It is therapy. One needs to be alone, to recharge one’s batteries.

Grace Kelly

 

Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in an office or mowing the lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain.

Jack Kerouac

There was nowhere to go but everywhere.

Jack Kerouac

Jumping from boulder to boulder and never falling, with a heavy pack, is easier than it sounds; you just can’t fall when you get into the rhythm of the dance.

Jack Kerouac

May your dreams be larger than mountains and may you have the courage to scale their summits.

Harley King

You haven’t lived until you’ve lived with only what you can carry under your own power

J Kline

Never underestimate the power of the Ocean

Heidi Klum

The core of mans’ spirit comes from new experiences.

Jon Krakauer

L

Walking: the most ancient exercise and still the best modern exercise.

Carrie Latet

He who limps is still walking.

Stanislaw J. Lec

Real freedom lies in wildness, not in civilization’.

Charles Lindbergh

The best thing one can do when it’s raining is to let it rain.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A shoe is not only a design, but it’s a part of your body language, the way you walk. The way you’re going to move is quite dictated by your shoes.

Christian Louboutin

Hiking is the best workout! You can hike for three hours and not even realise you’re working out. And, hiking alone lets me have some time to myself.

Jamie Luner

Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more that what we could learn from books.

John Lubbock

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.

John Lubbock

All those who love Nature she loves in return, and will richly reward, not perhaps with the good things, as they are commonly called, but with the best things of this world-not with money and titles, horses and carriages, but with bright and happy thoughts, contentment and peace of mind.

John Lubbock

We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again – to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more.

Pico Lyer

M

I slow down when hiking. The rhythm of nature is more leisurely. The sun comes up, it moves across the sky, and you begin to synchronize to that rhythm.

John Mackey

Thoughts come clearly while one walks.

Thomas Mann

Hiking is just walking where it’s okay to pee.

Demetri Martin

I was no longer following a trail. I was learning to follow myself.

Aspen Matis

You can’t find happiness at the end of your journey if you didn’t bring it with you all along.

Katrina Mayer

The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.

Alexander Supertramp Chris McCandless

So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned by a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure.

Alexander Supertramp Chris McCandless

Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. 

Terence McKenna

One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.

Henry Miller

 

Walking brings me back to myself.

Laurette Mortimer

In every walk with nature, one receives far more than he seeks.

John Muir

Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity.

John Muir

I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.

John Muir

Between every two pines there is a doorway to a new world.

John Muir

Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt.

John Muir

N

All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.

Friedrich Nietzsche

If adventure has a final and all-embracing motive, it is surely this: we go out because it is our nature to go out, to climb mountains, and to paddle rivers, to fly to the planets and plunge into the depths of the oceans… When man ceases to do these things, he is no longer man.

Wilfrid Noyce

Ever since a small boy, I have loved just to look at the mountains, to see them in different lights and from different angles, to feel their rough rock under my fingers and the breath of the winds against my feet… I am in love with the mountains.

Wilfrid Noyce

O

Hiking is just walking where the ground doesn’t cooperate

Outdoor Man TV series

I hate hiking with convicts carrying machetes.

Susan Orlean

Some beautiful paths can’t be discovered without getting lost.

Erol Ozan

P

The only trips I regret are the ones I didn’t do.

Paddy Pallin

I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, This is what it is to be happy.

Sylvia Plath

Fall down seven times and stand up eight.

Japanese Proverb

Camping is not a date; it’s an endurance test. If you can survive camping with someone, you should marry them on the way home.

Yvonne Prinz

Leave the road, take the trails.

Pythagoras

Q

He who spends time regretting the past loses the present and risks the future.

Francisco de Quevedo

R

Walking together. Creating memories.

Surabhi Rai

If you’ve ever walked a mile into a virgin forest – you know, like a deep forest where trees have been uncut – the energy is totally different from the shopping mall.

James Redfield

I love being in the woods, when I can just walk barefoot in the grass and just sit down and breathe. I love that so much..

Jessie Reyez

Walking for health and fitness, the easiest way to get in shape and stay in shape.

Frank Ring

Everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while you’re climbing it.

Andy Rooney

Returning home is the most difficult part of long-distance hiking. You have grown outside the puzzle and your piece no longer fits.

Cindy Ross

S

That’s my rock, you need to find your own!

Gill Savage

The best remedy for a short temper is a long walk.

Jacqueline Schiff

The wild woman has a deep love of nature; a love for the ancient mother. Though possibly misunderstood, it has always been in her. When she goes into the wilderness, a part of her soul is going home.

Shikoba

Sometimes, nature is all you need.

Shikoba

May your time in nature lead you to yourself.

Shikoba

Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.

Dr Seuss

You’re off to great place, today is your day. Your mountain is waiting, so get on your way.

Dr Seuss

Carry as little as possible, but choose that little with care.

Earl Shaffer

Never say there is nothing beautiful in the world anymore.There is always something to make you wonder in the shape of a tree, the trembling of a leaf.

Albert Schweitzer

The way I choose to function is to pick an arbitrary, stupid Goal, become totally involved in it, and pursue it with vigour, and what happens to you in that pursuit is your life.

Kenny Shopsin

There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.

Beverly Sills

There is no Wifi in the Forest, but I promise you will find a better connection.

Ralph Smart

Walking is how the body measures itself against the earth.

Rebecca Solnit

Nature is not a place to visit. It is home.

Gary Snyder

Walking is the great adventure, the first meditation, a practice of heartiness and soul primary to humankind. Walking is the exact balance between spirit and humility.

Gary Snyder

Walking is the great adventure, the first meditation, a practice of heartiness and soul primary to humankind. Walking is the exact balance between spirit and humility.

Gary Snyder

A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.

John Steinbeck

Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake.

Wallace Stevens

It had nothing to do with gear or footwear or the backpacking fads or philosophies of any particular era or even with getting from point A to point B. It had to do with how it felt to be in the wild. With what it was like to walk for miles with no reason other than to witness the accumulation of trees and meadows, mountains and deserts, streams and rocks, rivers and grasses, sunrises, and sunsets. The experience was powerful and fundamental. It seemed to me that it had always felt like this to be a human in the wild, and as long as the wild existed it would always feel this way.

Cheryl Strayed

I was amazed that what I needed to survive could be carried on my back. And, most surprising of all, that I could carry it.

Cheryl Strayed

I considered my options. There were only two and they were essentially the same. I could go back in the direction I had come from, or I could go forward in the direction I intended to go.

Cheryl Strayed

We live in a fast-paced society. Walking slows us down.

Robert Sweetgall

Devote six years to your work, but in the seventh, go into solitude or among strangers. So that your friends, by remembering what you were, do not prevent you from being what you have become.

Leo Szilard

T

You never climb the same mountain twice, not even in memory. Memory rebuilds the mountain, changes the weather, retells the jokes, remakes all the moves.

Lito Tejada-Flores

Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.

Henry David Thoreau

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

Henry David Thoreau

I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than trees.

Henry David Thoreau

An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.

Henry David Thoreau

Me thinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow.

Henry David Thoreau

The moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow.

Henry David Thoreau

Not all who wander are lost.

J.R.R Tolkien

You can never turn your back on the ocean.

Rip Torn

After a day’s walk, everything has twice its usual value.

G.M. Trevelyan

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream.

Mark Twain

The better organised you are in the simple things, the more spontaneous and free you can be in the more important things.

Brian Tracy

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Lao Tzu

U

V

Getting to the top is optional. Getting down is mandatory.

Ed Viesturs

W

Oh, how can I put into words the joys of a walk over country such as this; the scenes that delight the eyes, the blessed peace of mind, the sheer exuberance which fills your soul as you tread the firm turf? This is something to be lived, not read about.

Alfred Wainwright

I understood at a very early age that in nature, I felt everything I should feel in church but never did. Walking in the woods, I felt in touch with the universe and with the spirit of the universe.

Alice Walker

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter.

Izaak Walton

 

Now I see the secret of making the best person, it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.

Walt Whitman

Moments of solitude with Mother Nature is sunshine to a soul.

Anthony Douglas Williams

If we were meant to stay in one place, we’d have roots instead of feet.

Rachel Wolchin

I put tape on the mirrors in my house so I don’t accidentally walk through into another dimension.

Steven Wright

X

Y

I always wonder why birds stay in the same place when they can fly anywhere on the earth.  Then I ask myself the same question.

Harun Yahya

Hiking’s not for everyone. Notice the wilderness is mostly empty.

Sonja Yoerg

Z

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