That is all the National Parks are about. Use, but do no harm.
Wallace StegnerRead
You can plan all you want to. You can lie in your morning bed and fill whole notebooks with schemes and intentions. But within a single afternoon, within hours or minutes, everything you plan and everything you have fought to make yourself can be undone as a slug is undone when salt is poured on him. And right up to the moment when you find yourself dissolving into foam you can still believe you are doing fine.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Life is unpredictable, and despite our best plans, circumstances can change everything in an instant.
This quote by Wallace Stegner highlights the fragility of our plans and aspirations, suggesting that no matter how much we prepare and strategize our lives, external forces can disrupt everything we have worked for. It serves as a reminder to remain adaptable and recognize that our sense of stability can be an illusion, as events can change dramatically in a very short period.
Themes
LifePlansChangeAdaptabilityUncertainty
In practice
Example use cases
During a motivational speech about resilience in the face of unexpected challenges.
More from Wallace Stegner
All quotes →Touch. It is touch that is the deadliest enemy of chastity, loyalty, monogamy, gentility with its codes and conventions and restraints. By touch we are betrayed and betray others ... an accidental brushing of shoulders or touching of hands ... hands laid on shoulders in a gesture of comfort that lies like a thief, that takes, not gives, that wants, not offers, that awakes, not pacifies. When one flesh is waiting, there is electricity in the merest contact.
Wallace StegnerRead
Hope was always out ahead of fact, possibility obscured the outlines of reality.
Wallace StegnerRead
Young writers should be encouraged to write, and discouraged from thinking they are writers.
Wallace StegnerRead
I was shaped by the west and have lived most of my life in it, and nothing would gratify me more than to see it in all its subregions and subcultures both prosperous and environmentally healthy, with a civilization to match its scenery.
Wallace StegnerRead
Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of life amount not to wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus.
Wallace StegnerRead
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