John Wesley Powell Quotes

16 quotes in 461 categories

• We have an unknown distance yet to run, an unknown river to explore. What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel,…
• The wonders of the Grand Canyon cannot be adequately represented in symbols of speech, nor by speech itself. The resources of the graphic art are…
• You cannot see the Grand Canyon in one view, as if it were a changeless spectacle from which a curtain might be lifted, but to…
• The elements that unite to make the Grand Canyon the most sublime spectacle in nature are multifarious and exceedingly diverse.
• Possible ideas and thoughts are vast in number. A distinct word for every distinct idea and thought would require a vast vocabulary. The problem in…
• The integers of language are sentences, and their organs are the parts of speech. Linguistic organization, then, consists in the differentiation of the parts of…
• Indian nouns are extremely connotive; that is, the name does more than simply denote the thing to which it belongs - in denoting the object,…
• The verb is relatively of much greater importance in an Indian tongue than in a civilized language.
• Years of drought and famine come and years of flood and famine come, and the climate is not changed with dance, libation or prayer.
• The glories and the beauties of form, color, and sound unite in the Grand Canyon - forms unrivaled even by the mountains, colors that vie…
• I have heard the venerable and impassioned orator on the camp meeting stand rehearse the story of the crucifixion, and seen the thousands there weep…
• We are now ready to start on our way down the Great Unknown. Our boats...are chafing each other, as they are tossed by the fretful…
• I am not sure that we can climb out of the canyon here, and, when at the top of the wall, I know enough of…
• The landscape everywhere, away from the river, is of rock, cliffs of rock, tables of rock, plateaus of rock, terraces of rock, crags of rock,…
• I wish to make it clear to you, there is not sufficient water to irrigate all the lands which could be irrigated, and only a…
• In central Colorado the Continental Divide is a wilderness of desolate peaks that rise far above the timber line into regions of rime and naked…

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