That is all the National Parks are about. Use, but do no harm.
Wallace StegnerRead
No place is a place until things that have happened in it are remembered in history, ballads, yarns, legends, or monuments. Fictions serve as well as facts.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Places acquire significance through the memories and stories associated with them.
This quote by Wallace Stegner emphasizes that a location gains its value and identity not merely through its physical existence, but through the events and narratives that unfold there. Whether through history, stories, or monuments, both real and fictional accounts contribute to how we perceive and understand a place, illustrating the power of memory and storytelling in shaping our connection to the world.
Themes
PlaceMemoryHistoryStoriesIdentityNarrative
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech about the importance of preserving local history, this quote can illustrate how places have stories that enrich our communities.
More from Wallace Stegner
All quotes βTouch. 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
Similar quotes
We are finite and God will not call us everywhere or to support every worthy cause. And real needs are not far from us.
C. S. LewisRead
At the heart of racism is the religious assertion that God made a creative mistake when He brought some people into being
Frederick HertzRead
We prefer self-government with danger to servitude in tranquility.
Kwame NkrumahRead
Each one of us sees Jesus in a different way. To some, He was prophet, for they needed to know the kingdom was at hand. But most of all, He was the son of God, and He came to experience the consequences of the curse the Father had put upon mankind when Adam and Eve disobeyed.
Mother AngelicaRead
I don't know whether war is an interlude during peace, or peace is an interlude during war.
Georges ClemenceauRead
Everybody, soon or late, sits down to a banquet of consequences.
Robert Louis StevensonRead