Richard E Byrd Quotes

Half the confusion in the world comes from not knowing how little we need.

15. "Few men during their lifetime comes anywhere near exhausting the resources dwelling within them. There are deep wells of strength that are never used."--

The universe was a cosmos, not a chaos; man was as rightfully a part of that cosmos as were the day and night.

Part of me remained forever at Latitude 80 degrees 08 minutes South: what survived of my youth, my vanity, perhaps, and certainly my skepticism. On the other hand, I did take away something that I had not fully possessed before: appreciation of the sheer beauty and miracle of being alive, and a humble set of values. All this happened four years ago. Civilization has not altered my ideas. I live more simply now, and with more peace.

Perceptive and valuable personal explorations of time alone include A Book of Silence by Sara Maitland, Party of One by Anneli Rufus, Migrations to Solitude by Sue Halpern, Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton, The Point of Vanishing by Howard Axelrod, Solitude by Robert Kull, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby, A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit, The Story of My Heart by Richard Jefferies, Thoughts in Solitude by Thomas Merton, and the incomparable Walden by Henry David Thoreau. Adventure tales offering superb insight into solitude, both its horror and its beauty, include The Long Way by Bernard Moitessier, The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst by Nicholas Tomalin and Ron Hall, A Voyage for Madmen by Peter Nichols, Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, and Alone by Richard E. Byrd. Science-focused books that provided me with further understanding of how solitude affects people include Social by Matthew D. Lieberman, Loneliness by John T. Cacioppo and William Patrick, Quiet by Susan Cain, Neurotribes by Steve Silberman, and An Anthropologist on Mars by Oliver Sacks. Also offering astute ideas about aloneness are Cave in the Snow by Vicki Mackenzie, The Life of Saint Anthony by Saint Athanasius, Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke, the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson (especially “Nature” and “Self-Reliance”) and Friedrich Nietzsche (especially “Man Alone with Himself”), the verse of William Wordsworth, and the poems of Han-shan, Shih-te, and Wang Fan-chih. It was essential for me to read two of Knight’s favorite books: Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Very Special People by Frederick Drimmer. This book’s epigraph, attributed to Socrates, comes from the C. D. Yonge translation of Diogenes Laërtius’s third-century A.D. work The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers. The Hermitary website, which offers hundreds of articles on every aspect of hermit life, is an invaluable resource—I spent weeks immersed in the site, though I did not qualify to become a member of the hermit-only chat groups. My longtime researcher, Jeanne Harper, dug up hundreds of reports on hermits and loners throughout history. I was fascinated by the stories of Japanese soldiers who continued fighting World War II for decades on remote Pacific islands, though none seemed to be completely alone for more than a few years at a time. Still, Hiroo Onoda’s No Surrender is a fascinating account.

Just as the long night of the Arctic ends, the brilliant sunshine of Truth shall come again... and those who are of darkness shall fall in its Light... FOR I HAVE SEEN THAT LAND BEYOND THE POLE, THAT CENTER OF THE GREAT UNKNOWN.

Behind every legend, strange to say, can be found a kernel of truth, a group of facts around which the legend was built.

Scientists say that it is impossible for any life to exist deep underground, that the Earth is solid through and through. However, at this point in time, no scientist has actually ever been far enough underground to prove their theories.

Why is the sun invisible so long in winter near the farthest points north or south?

There was no end to the books that I was forever promising myself to read; but, when the time came to reading them, I seemed never to have the time or the patience.

If the time was not sufficient, well and good; let the job be resumed another day.

If the time was not sufficient, well and good; let the job be resumed another dat.

Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd, speaking under the auspices of the Council for Democracy, got it right. “Whenever a man stands before you and tells you to bow down before the mythical invincibility of the Nazi tyranny,” he said, “that man is a warmonger.” He added, “Whenever he tells you that democracy is done for, that we must not have the faith in the eternal strength of our democratic institutions, that man is a warmonger.