“Among the scenes which are deeply impressed on my mind, none exceed in sublimity the primeval forests undefaced by the hand of man; whether those of Brazil, where the powers of Life are predominant, or those of Tierra del Fuego, where Death and decay prevail. Both are temples filled with the varied productions of the God of Nature: -- no one can stand in these solitudes unmoved, and not feel that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body.”
“Those scenes of solitude from which the hand of nature have never been lifted, affect the mind with a more deep-toned emotion than aught which the hand of man has touched. Amid them the consequent associations are of God the Creator, they are His undefiled works; and the mind is cast into contemplation of eternal things.”
“Yeah, equal pay for equal work and our bodies ourselves and Gloria Steinem and all that jazz...but in that dusty dark little corner of every woman's heart where we keep our maps of Tierra del Fuego lives the hunger to fetch a powerful man his slippers on her hands and knees.”
“More grass means less forest; more forest less grass. But either-or is a construction more deeply woven into our culture than into nature, where even antagonists depend on one another and the liveliest places are the edges, the in-betweens or both-ands..... Relations are what matter most.”
“Nature is a temple, where the livingColumns sometimes breathe confusing speech;Man walks within these groves of symbols, eachOf which regards him as a kindred thing.”
“At last concluded that no creature was more miserable than man, for that all other creatures are content with those bounds that nature set them, only man endeavors to exceed them.”