One does not leave gold untouched, when one discovers the yellow metal in filth. One is very ready to pick it up. What is intrinsically good will never change no matter where it is found. A diamond is often spotted amidst black blocks of coal. Lotus blossoms in a swamp and the beautiful rose blooms among thorns. In fact the presence of such invaluable wonders enhances the importance of a place no matter how sullied it is!

The seal and guerdon of wealth untold
We clasp in the wild marsh marigold.

more brave in despising gold as yet undiscovered, and so best situated while hidden in the earth, than in forcing it out for the uses of mankind, with a hand ready to make depredations on everything that is sacred.

In God's wildness lies the hope of the world - the great fresh unblighted, unredeemed wilderness. The galling harness of civilization drops off, and wounds heal ere we are aware.

In God's wildness lies the hope of the world — the great fresh, unblighted, unredeemed wilderness. The galling harness of civilization drops off, and wounds heal ere we are aware.

It was a beautiful place - wild, untouched, above all untouched, with an alien, disturbing, secret loveliness. And it kept its secret. I'd find myself thinking, 'What I see is nothing - I want what it hides - that is not nothing'.

Shakespeare opens a mine which contains gold and diamonds in unexhaustible plenty, though clouded by incrustations, debased by impurities, and mingled with a mass of meaner minerales.

I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.

There is a delight in the hardy life of the open.

There are no words that can tell the hidden spirit of the wilderness, that can reveal its mystery, its melancholy and its charm.

The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased; and not impaired in value.

Conservation means development as much as it does protection.

Everyone who enters the world comes in with hidden gold, it's called your natural gifts. The job of a person is to find the hidden gold and give it. It turns out that when you give it you get more than when you hold on to it, that's the economy of the soul.

Nothing is rich but the inexhaustible wealth of nature. She shows us only surfaces, but she is a million fathoms deep.

Why are you so enchanted by this world
when a mine of gold lies within you?

It is a lovely and terrible wilderness, such as wilderness as Christ and the prophets went out into; harshly and beautifully colored, broken and worn until its bones are exposed, its great sky without a smudge of taint from Technocracy, and in hidden corners and pockets under its cliffs the sudden poetry of springs.

There is many a rich stone laid up in the bowels of the earth, many a fair pearl laid up in the bosom of the sea, that never was seen, nor never shall be.