To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has its own beauty, and in the same field, it beholds, every hour, a picture which was never seen before, and which shall never be seen again.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Although huge sums of money are involved in any basis of calculation, the most important values of forest recreation are not susceptible of measurement in monetary terms. They are concerned with such intangible considerations as inspiration, aesthetic enjoyment, and a gain in understanding.
—Bob Marshall (1901–39) American Forester
Wilderness is a necessity … They will see what I meant in time. There must be places for human beings to satisfy their souls. Food and drink is not all. There is the spiritual. In some it is only a germ, of course, but the germ will grow.
—John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American Naturalist
If you plan for a year, plant rice. If you plan for ten years, plant trees. If you plan for 100 years, educate your children.
—Chinese Proverb
There is just one hope for repulsing the tyrannical ambition of civilization to conquer every inch on the whole earth. That hope is the organization of spirited people who will fight for the freedom and preservation of the wilderness.
—Bob Marshall (1901–39) American Forester
I am glad I will not be young in a future without wilderness.
—Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) American Ecologist, Conservationist
National parks and reserves are an integral aspect of intelligent use of natural resources. It is the course of wisdom to set aside an ample portion of our natural resources as national parks and reserves, thus ensuring that future generations may know the majesty of the earth as we know it today.
—John F. Kennedy (1917–63) American Head of State, Journalist
Land, then, is not merely soil; it is a fountain of energy flowing through a circuit of soils, plants, and animals. Food chains are the living channels which conduct energy upward; death and decay return it to the soil. The circuit is not closed; some energy is dissipated in decay, some is added by absorption from the air, some is stored in soils, peats, and long-lived forests; but it is a sustained circuit, like a slowly augmented revolving fund of life.
—Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) American Ecologist, Conservationist
What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone, in the forests, at night, cherished by this wonderful, unintelligible, perfectly innocent speech, the most comforting speech in the world, the talk that rain makes by itself all over the bridges, and the talk of the water courses everywhere in the hollows!Nobody started it, nobody is going to stop it. It will talk as long as it wants, this rain. As long as it talks I am going to listen.
—Thomas Merton (1915–68) American Trappist Monk
The frog does not drink up the pond in which he lives.
—American Indian Proverb
The clearest way into the universe is through a forest wilderness.
—John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American Naturalist
Here is calm so deep, grasses cease waiting… wonderful how completely everything in wild nature fits into us, as if truly part and parent of us. The sun shines not on us, but in us. The rivers flow not passed, but through us, thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing.
—John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American Naturalist
Believe one who knows; you will find something greater in woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you that which you can never learn from masters.
—Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) French Catholic Religious Leader
We of the genus Homo ride the logs that float down the Round river, and by a little judicious “burling” we have learned to guide their direction and speed. This feat entitles us to the specific appellation sapiens. The technique of burling is called economics, the remembering of old routes is called in history, the selection of new ones is called statesmanship, the conversation about oncoming rifles and rapids is called politics. Some of the crew aspire to burl not only their own blogs, but the whole flotilla as well. This collective bargaining with nature is called national planning.
—Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) American Ecologist, Conservationist
What would the world be, once bereft of wet and wildness? Let them be left. O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89) British Jesuit Priest, Poet
No site in the forest is without significance, not a glade, not a thicket that does not provide analogies to the labyrinth of human thoughts. Who among those people with a cultivated spirit, or whose heart has been wounded, can walk in a forest without the forest speaking to him? … If one searched for the causes of that sensation, at once solemn, simple, gentle, mysterious, that seizes one, perhaps it would be found in the sublime and ingenious spectacle of all the creatures obeying their destinies, immutably docile.
—Honore de Balzac (1799–1850) French Novelist
Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape. There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet. This is the best part of these men’s farms, yet to this their warranty-deeds have no title.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
With the beauty before me,
May I walk
With beauty behind me,
May I walk
With beauty above me,
May I walk
With beauty below me,
May I walk
With beauty all around me,
May I walk
Wandering on a trail of beauty,
Lively, I walk.
—American Indian Proverb
Wildness and silence disappeared from the countryside, sweetness fell from the air, not because anyone wished them to vanish or fall but because throughways had to floor the meadows with cement to carry the automobiles which advancing technology produced. Tropical beaches turned into high-priced slums where thousand-room hotels elbowed each other for glimpses of once-famous surf not because those who loved the beaches wanted them there but because enormous jets could bring a million tourists every year—and therefore did.
—Archibald MacLeish (1892–1982) American Poet, Dramatist
Discovery consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else and thinking something different
—Albert Szent-Gyorgyi (1893–1986) Hungarian-American Biochemist
The thoughts of the earth are my thoughts.The voice of the earth is my voice.All that belongs to the earth belongs to me.All that surrounds the earth surrounds me.It is lovely indeed, it is lovely indeed.
—Common Proverb
Each day comes to me with both hands full of possibilities, and in its brief course I discern all the verities and realities of my existence; the bliss of growth, the glory of action, the spirit of beauty.
—Helen Keller (1880–1968) American Author
And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.
—Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931) Lebanese-born American Philosopher, Poet, Painter, Theologian, Sculptor
Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for the spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature – the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter.
—Rachel Carson (1907–64) American Naturalist, Science Writer
The creation of the mental domain of phantasm has a complete counterpart in the establishment of “reservations” and “nature-parks.”… The “reservation” is to maintain the old condition of things which has been regretfully sacrificed to necessity everywhere else; there everything make grow and spread as it pleases, including what is it useless and even what is harmful. The mental realm of phantasm is also such a reservation reclaimed from the encroachment of the reality-principle.
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian Psychiatrist, Psychoanalytic
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
—T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) American-born British Poet, Dramatist, Literary Critic
Harmony with the land is like harmony with a friend. You cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left. That is to say you cannot have game and hate predators. The land is one organism.
—Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) American Ecologist, Conservationist
Is not the sky a father and the earth a mother, and are not all living things with feet or wings or roots their children?
—Black Elk (1863–1950) Native American Spiritual Leader
The shore is an ancient world, for as long as there has been an earth and sea there has been this place of the meeting of land and water. Yet it is a world that keeps alive the sense of continuing creation and of the relentless drive of life. Each time that I enter it, I gain some new awareness of its beauty and its deeper meanings, sensing that intricate fabric of life by which one creature is linked with another, and each with its surroundings…
There is a common thread that links these scenes and memories—the spectacle of life in all its varied manifestations as it has appeared, evolved, and sometimes died out. Underlying the beauty of the spectacle there is meaning and significance. It is the elusiveness of that meaning that haunts us, that sends us again and again into the natural world where the key to the riddle is hidden. It sends us back to the edge of the sea, where the drama of life played its first scene on earth and perhaps even its prelude; where the forces of evolution are at work today, as they have been since the appearance of what we know as life; and where the spectacle of living creatures faced by the cosmic realities of their world is crystal clear.
—Rachel Carson (1907–64) American Naturalist, Science Writer
In the point of rest at the center of our being, we encounter a world where all things are at rest in the same way. Then a tree becomes a mystery, a cloud a revelation, each man a cosmos of whose riches we can only catch glimpses. The life of its simplicity is simple, but it opens to us a book in which we never get beyond the first syllable.
—Dag Hammarskjold (1905–61) Swedish Statesman, UN Diplomat