"No one can say fully what sublimity means, or how the awe or terror or exaltation inspired by the earth in torment affects him; but everyone, even the shallowest sightseer, the strident and aggressive woman in purple rayon slacks shouldering others aside to look at the Great White Throne, is enlarged by the experience. The sightseer may lack vocabulary, even concept, to speak of the one in the many, eternity moving through forms of change, the flowing away at once of time and earth, but there remain mystery and the fulfillment of identity, and he will be richer than he was. It is the same with aesthetics: one may lack words to express the impact of beauty but no one who has felt it remains untouched. It is renewal, enlargement, intensification. The parks preserve it permanently in the inheritance of the American citizen."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Academics from the United StatesEssayists from the United StatesEditors from the United StatesColumnistsHarvard University alumni
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
"The National Parks", in Fortune, vol. 35, no. 6 (June, 1947), p. 121
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bernard_DeVoto
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Bernard DeVoto
(January 11, 1897 – November 13, 1955) was an American historian, conservationist, essayist, columnist, teacher, editor, and reviewer.
34 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Bernard DeVoto →
Related Quotes
"The rat stops gnawing in the wood, the walls withdraw, the weight is lifted, the specters fade. Nerve-ends that stuck…"
"Orange bitters make a good astringent for the face. Never put them in anything that is to be drunk."
"New England is a finished place. Its destiny is that of Florence or Venice, not Milan, while the American empire care…"
"The West begins where the average annual rainfall drops below twenty inches. When you reach the line which marks that…"
"Pessimism is only the name that men of weak nerves give to wisdom."
"Man is a noisome bacillus whom Our Heavenly Father created because he was disappointed in the monkey."
"Art is the terms of an armistice signed with fate."
"Biography seemed to be no more than a high-spirited game of yanking out shirttails and setting fire to them."
"The trouble with the sacred Individual is that he has no significance except as he can acquire it from others, from t…"
"The trouble with Reason is that it becomes meaningless at the exact point where it refuses to act."