I never lose. I either win or learn.
Nelson Mandela
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
Mary Oliver
One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am — a reluctant enthusiast, a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it's still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much — you will outlive the bastards.
Edward Abbey
Competition — from the Latin root petre (to go out, to head for, to seek) and com (doing it together, in common, in harmony). Competition is simply each of us seeking our absolute best with the help of each other.
George Sheehan · This Running Life
Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.
Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
The truth is that part of the essence of mountain climbing is to push oneself to one's limits. This is not to say you deliberately try something you know you can't do. But you do deliberately try something which you are not sure you can do.
Woodrow Wilson Sayre
There is more to be learned in one day of discomfort, poverty and anxiety than in a lifetime of apparent happiness, security, riches and power.
Ralph Stanbury · Outward Bound
Basically, this is the hardest thing I have ever done, but I hope it is not the hardest thing I ever do.
Author unknown · Voyager Outward Bound Journal
Beauty builds joy in the spirit. Tribulation builds character in the spirit. Start and end all things in thanksgiving.
Author unknown · Voyager Outward Bound Journal
When despair for the world grows in me… For a time / I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Wendell Berry · The Peace of Wild Things · Read the full poem →
I do not see that computers are bringing us one step nearer to anything that does matter to me: peace, economic justice, ecological health, political honesty, family and community stability, good work.
Wendell Berry