35 Outdoor Adventure Quotes For Hikers & Nature Lovers

The warm feeling of the sun on your face, the taste of honeysuckle, the sound of rustling leaves chasing the wind — these are simple appetizers for the feast of the senses nature provides us. Every human who has walked on Earth has been graced by its wonder, and most have spoken of it quite often. Some of the most famous poets and authors in history, as well as more modern films and figures, have shared their thoughts on nature's beauty. Their lasting words are proof of the hold nature has over us and our desire to explore the outdoors.

You may be planning a day trip to your favorite mountaintop or getting ready to embark on an adventure of a lifetime to one of Earth's many wonders. Either way, starting off your journey with some solid inspiration from fellow nature lovers can only elevate your experience. These adventure quotes from renowned thinkers and children of the world will speak to the souls of hikers and those who love to be one with nature.

• "In coming to Alaska, McCandless yearned to wander uncharted country, to find a blank spot on the map. In 1992, however, there were no more blank spots on the map—not in Alaska, not anywhere. But Chris, with his idiosyncratic logic, came up with an elegant solution to this dilemma: He simply got rid of the map." - Jon Krakauer, "Into the Wild"

• "Travel far enough, you meet yourself." – David Mitchell, "Cloud Atlas"

• "You can't get away from yourself by moving to one place to another" – Ernest Hemingway, "The Sun Also Rises"

• "And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul." – John Muir

• "It was in the forest that I found 'the peace that passeth understanding'" – Jane Goodall

• "Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads." – Henry David Thoreau, "Walden"

• "Nature always wears the color of the spirit." – Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Nature"

• "Some of us are drawn to mountains the way the moon draws the tide. Both the great forests and the mountains live in my bones. They have taught me, humbled me, purified me and changed me." – Joan Halifax, "The Fruitful Darkness: A Journey Through Buddhist Practice and Tribal Wisdom"

• "The outside is the only place we can truly be inside the world." – Daniel J. Rice

• "Only spread a fern-frond over a man's head, and worldly cares are cast out, and freedom and beauty and peace come in." – John Muir, "My First Summer in the Sierra"

• "The world reveals itself to those who travel on foot." – Werner Herzog

• "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

• "All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking." – Friedrich Nietzsche, "Twilight of the Idols"

• "Walk alone, across mountains or through forests. You are nobody to the hills or the thick boughs heavy with greenery. You are no longer a role, or a status, not even an individual, but a body, a body that feels sharp stones on the paths, the caress of long grass and the freshness of the wind." – Frédéric Gros, "A Philosophy of Walking"

• "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, "The Pursuit of Endurance: Harnessing the Record-Breaking Power of Strength and Resilience"

• "Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go." – T.S. Eliot, Preface to "Transit of Venus"

• "A ship is safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are built for." – John A. Shedd, "Salt From My Attic"

• "A person does not grow from the ground like a vine or a tree, one is not part of a plot of land. Mankind has legs so it can wander." – Roman Payne, "The Wanderess"

• "The Wanderlust has got me...by the belly-aching fire." – Robert W. Service, "Rhymes of a Rolling Stone"

• "A nomad I will remain for life, in love with distant and uncharted places." – Isabelle Eberhardt

• "Every traveler has a home of his own, and he learns to appreciate it the more from his wandering." – Charles Dickens

• "The world is big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark."- John Muir

• "There are only two times. Now and too late." – Anh Do, "The Happiest Refugee"

• But there is no journey upon this earth that a man may not make if he sets his heart to it." – H. Rider Haggard, "King Solomon's Mines"

• "I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of our life more nearly; to come down off this feather-bed of civilization, and find the globe granite underfoot and strewn with cutting flints." – Robert Louis Stevenson

• "You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose." – Dr. Seuss, "Oh, the Places You Will Go!"

• "Some journeys take us far from home. Some adventures lead us to our destiny." – C.S. Lewis

• "The road goes ever on and on." – J.R.R. Tolkien, "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings"

• "'It's all right,' she said. Her throat hurt. Her chest hurt. Love hurt. So why was she happy? 'The world is good. Go see it.'" – Kelly Barnhill, "The Girl Who Drank the Moon"

• "But it is one thing to read about dragons and another to meet them." – Ursula K. Le Guin, "A Wizard of Earthsea"

• "In nature's infinite book of secrecy / A little I can read." – William Shakespeare, "Antony and Cleopatra"

• "Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea." – Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

• "In crowds, you cannot understand how big neither the world nor the universe is; but while walking alone, looking at the endless horizons, you realize both your own smallness and the greatness of the outside world!" – Mehmet Murat İldan

• "All these millions of stars looking down on me, and I've never given them more than a passing thought before. Not just the stars — how many other things haven't I noticed in the world, things I know nothing about?" – Haruki Murakami, "Kafka on the Shore"

• "The world is so huge that people are always getting lost in it. There are too many ideas and things and people too many directions to go." – Susan Orlean, "The Orchid Thief"