YourDictionary

Dictionary Home » Famous Quotes » wilderness

wilderness quotes

  • I count our progress by the extent to which what we cried in the wilderness five and thirty years ago has now become part of the assumptions of the ordinary man and woman† It is better to argue from what has been done to what may be done, rather than to suggest that very little has been accomplished.

    -1st Earl
      Of the Labour Party. Letter to Harold J Laski,1 May.

  • And the children of Israel said unto them,Would to God we had died by thehand of the L in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh pots, and when we did eat bread to the full; for ye have brought us forth to this wilderness, to kill this whole assembly with hunger.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    ORDExodus16:3.

  • But the goat, on which the lot fell to be the scapegoat, shall be presented alive before the L, to make an atonement with him, and to let him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    ORDLeviticus16:10.

  • He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Deuteronomy 32:10.

  • But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself that he might die; and said, It is enough, now,O L, take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    ORD1 Kings19:4.

  • Harden not your heart, as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness: When your fatherstempted me, proved me, and saw my work.Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said, It is a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known my ways: Unto whom I sware in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Psalms 95:8^11.

  • Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert. And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water: in the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Isaiah 35:5^7.

  • Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the L hand double for all her sins. The voice of himthat crieth in the wilderness,Prepare ye the way of the L, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valleyshall be exalted,and everymountainand hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: And the glory of the L shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the L hath spoken it. The voicesaid,Cry. And hesaid,What shall Icry? All flesh isgrass, and all thegoodlinessthereof isastheflowerof the field: The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the L bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    ORD'SORDORDORDORDIsaiah 40:1^8.

  • And saying, Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying,The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    St Matthew 3:2^3.

  • Then was Jesus led up of the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred. And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    St Matthew 4:1^4.

  • And as they departed, Jesus began to say unto the multitudes concerning John,What went ye out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken with the wind? But what went ye out for to see? A man clothed in soft raiment? behold, they that wear soft clothing are in kings' houses.But what went ye out for to see? A prophet? yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophet.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    St Matthew11:7^9.

  • What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninetyand nine in the wilderness, andgoafter that whichislost, until hefind it? And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    St Luke15:4^5.

  • Hobo-trekkers that forever search An empire wilderness of freight and rails.

    - (Harold) Hart Crane
      The Bridge,'The River'.

  • Science had married the wilderness and was taming the savage shrew.

    - Edna Ferber
      Of  Alaska. Ice Palace.

  • Here with a loaf of bread beneath the bough, A flask of wine, a book of verseand Thou Beside me singing in the wilderness And wilderness is paradise enow.

    - Edward Fitzgerald
      The Ruba  iya  t of Omar Khayya  m of Naishapur, stanza12. In the1879 edn this was changed to'A Book of  Verses underneath the Bough, /  A  Jug of  Wine, a loaf of Breadand Thou / Beside me singing in the Wilderness / Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!'

  • We do not like the confiding, the intimate, the ingratiating, the hail-fellow-well-met, but prefer the unapproachable, the hard-bitten, the recalcitrant, the sinister, the malignant, the saturnine, the cross-grained and the cankered, and the howling wilderness to the amenities of civilization, the irascible to the affable, the prickly to the smooth.We have no damned fellow- feeling at all.

    -Grieve
      'The Dour Drinkers of Glasgow', in The American Mercury, Mar.

  • I have a garden of my own, But so with roses overgrown, And lilies, that you would it guess To be a little wilderness.

    - Andrew Marvell
    c.1650^1652  'The Nymph Complaining for the Death of her Fawn' (published1681).

  •    If these sketches should prove the means of deterring onefamily fromsinking their property, andshipwrecking all their hopes, by going to reside in the backwoods of Canada, I shall consider myself amply repaid for revealing the secrets of the prison-house, and feel that I have not toiled and suffered in the wilderness in vain.

    - Susanna ne  e Strickland Moodie
      Roughing It in the Bush; or,  A Life in Canada, vol.2, ch.14, 'Adieu to the Woods'.

  • The tendency nowadays to wander in wildernesses is delightful to see. Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains isgoing home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.

    -John Muir
    Our National Parks, ch.1,'The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West'.

  • I placed a jar inTennessee, And round it was, upon a hill. It made the slovenly wilderness Surround that hill.

    -Wallace Stevens
      Harmonium,'Anecdote of theJar'.

  • Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant. They make a wilderness and they call it peace.

    -Tacitus
    Speech of the British chieftain Calgacus, before the battle of Mons Graupius, referring to the Romans. Agricola, ch.30.

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Learn more about wilderness

link/cite print suggestion box