Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It is in midwinter that I sometimes glean from my pines... a curious transfusion of courage.
Hemispheric solidarity is new among statesmen, but not among the feathered navies of the sky.
One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.
Prudence never kindled a fire in the human mind; I have no hope for conservation born of fear.
Wilderness is the raw material out of which man has hammered the artifact called civilization.
Wilderness, then, assumes unexpected importance as a laboratory for the study of land - health.
Relegating grizzlies to Alaska is about like relegating happiness heaven; one may never get there.
If the land mechanism as a whole is good then every part is good, whether we understand it or not.
Your woodlot is, in fact, an historical document which faithfully records your personal philosophy.
Patriotism requires less and less of making the eagle scream, but more and more of making him think.
There can be no doubt that a society rooted in the soil is more stable than one rooted in pavements.
Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them
Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left.
The art of land doctoring is being practiced with vigor, but the science of land health is yet to be born.
The life of every river sings its own song, but in most the song is long marred by the discords of misuse.
Land is not merely soil, it is a fountain of energy flowing through a circuit of soils, plants and animals.
One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of March thaw, is the Spring.
There is value in any experience that exercises those ethical restraints collectively called sportsmanship.
Conservation will ultimately boil down to rewarding the private landowner who conserves the public interest.
We stand guard over works of art, but species representing the work of aeons are stolen from under our noses
To those devoid of imagination a blank place on the map is a useless waste; to others, the most valuable part.
No farmer-sportsman group is stronger than the ties of mutual confidence and enthusiasm which bind its members.
We can be ethical only in relation to something we can see, feel, understand, love, or otherwise have faith in.
The rich diversity of the world's cultures reflects a corresponding diversity in the wilds that gave them birth.
Keeping records enhances the pleasure of the search and the chance of finding order and meaning in these events.
There are two things that interest me: the relation of people to each other, and the relation of people to land.
Ethical behavior is doing the right thing when no one else is watching- even when doing the wrong thing is legal.
I do not imply that this philosophy of land was always clear to me. It is rather the end result of a life journey.
Conservation is a positive exercise of skill and insight, not merely a negative exercise of abstinence and caution.
We face the question whether a still higher "standard of living" is worth its cost in things natural, wild, and free.
The good life of any river may depend on the perception of its music; and the preservation of some music to perceive.
A river or stream is a cycle of energy from sun to plants to insects to fish. It is a continuum broken only by humans.
Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and aesthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient.
Conservation viewed in its entirety, is the slow and laborious unfolding of a new relationship between people and land.
The richest values of wilderness lie not in the days of Daniel Boone, nor even in the present, but rather in the future.
A peculiar virtue in wildlife ethics is that the hunter ordinarily has no gallery to applaud or disapprove of his conduct
Land health is the capacity for self-renewal in the soils, waters, plants, and animals that collectively comprise the land.
In country, as in people, a plain exterior often conceals hidden riches, to perceive which requires much living in and with.
All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts.
It is part of wisdom never to revisit a wilderness, for the more golden the lily, the more certain that someone has gilded it
Agricultural science is largely a race between the emergence of new pests and the emergence of new techniques for their control.
A conservationist is one who is humbly aware that with each stroke [of the axe] he is writing his signature on the face of his land.
Is education possibly a process of trading awareness for things of lesser worth? The goose who trades his is soon a pile of feathers.
Wilderness is a resource which can shrink but not grow... the creation of new wilderness in the full sense of the word is impossible.
Wilderness areas are first of all a series of sanctuaries for the primitive arts of wilderness travel, especially canoeing and packing.
Once you learn to read the land, I have no fear of what you will do to it, or with it. And I know many pleasant things it will do to you.
At first blush I am tempted to conclude that a satisfactory hobby must be in large degree useless, inefficient, laborious, or irrelevant.
The outstanding scientific discovery of the twentieth century is not television, or radio, but rather the complexity of the land organism.
Having to squeeze the last drop of utility out of the land has the same desperate finality as having to chop up the furniture to keep warm.
A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.