Excerpts from "Into the Wild"

Here the leaders of the great religions have sought the therapeutic and spiritual values of retreat, not to escape but to find reality.

So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, comformity, conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future.

Unlike most of us, he was the sort of person who insisted on living out his beliefs.

I was stirred by the dark mystery of mortality.  I couldn't resist stealing up to the edge of doom and peering over the brink.