Anxiety and distress, interrupted occasionally by pleasure, is the normal course of man’s existence.
—Joseph Wood Krutch
The most serious charge that can be brought against New England is not Puritanism but February.
—Joseph Wood Krutch
Topics: Change
Only those within whose own consciousness the sun rise and set, the leaves burgeon and wither, can be said to be aware of what living is.
—Joseph Wood Krutch
Topics: Nature
Logic is the art of going wrong with confidence.
—Joseph Wood Krutch
Topics: Confidence, Decisions, Logic
When a man wantonly destroys one of the works of man we call him a vandal. When he destroys one of the works of god we call him a sportsman.
—Joseph Wood Krutch
What a man knows is everywhere at war with what he wants.
—Joseph Wood Krutch
Topics: Conflict
Few people have ever seriously wished to be exclusively rational. The good life which most desire is a life warmed by passions and touched with that ceremonial grace which is impossible without some affectionate loyalty to traditional form and ceremonies.
—Joseph Wood Krutch
Topics: Passion
All the naturalistic religions are founded upon the assumption that nature—which “never did betray the heart that loved her”—is discoverable and ready to serve as an infallible guide.
—Joseph Wood Krutch
Topics: Religion
Nature takes no account of even the most reasonable of human excuses.
—Joseph Wood Krutch
Topics: Nature
The advertiser is the over rewarded court jester and court pander at the democratic court.
—Joseph Wood Krutch
Topics: Advertising
The snow itself is lonely or, if you prefer, self-sufficient. There is no other time when the whole world seems composed of one thing and one thing only.
—Joseph Wood Krutch
Topics: Snow, Weather
Security depends not so much upon how much you have, as upon how much you can do without.
—Joseph Wood Krutch
Topics: Safety, Security
Happiness is itself a kind of gratitude.
—Joseph Wood Krutch
Topics: Happiness, Appreciation, Blessings, Gratitude
Electronic calculators can solve problems which the man who made them cannot solve but no government-subsidized commission of engineers and physicists could create a worm.
—Joseph Wood Krutch
Topics: Science
The wilderness and the idea of wilderness is one of the permanent homes of the human spirit.
—Joseph Wood Krutch
Topics: Wilderness
Civilizations die from philosophical calm, irony, and the sense of fair play quite as surely as they die of debauchery.
—Joseph Wood Krutch
Topics: Civilization
Every time a value is born, existence takes on a new meaning; every time one dies, some part of that meaning passes away.
—Joseph Wood Krutch
If we do not permit the earth to produce beauty and joy, it will in the end not produce food, either.
—Joseph Wood Krutch
Topics: Earth
It is not ignorance but knowledge which is the mother of wonder.
—Joseph Wood Krutch
Topics: One liners, Ignorance
Not to have known—as most men have not—either the mountain or the desert is not to have known one’s self.
—Joseph Wood Krutch
Topics: Wilderness
Cats seem to go on the principle that it never does any harm to ask for what you want.
—Joseph Wood Krutch
Topics: Questions
Technology made large populations possible; large populations now make technology indispensable
—Joseph Wood Krutch
Topics: Technology
The rare moment is not the moment when there is something worth looking at, but the moment when we are capable of seeing.
—Joseph Wood Krutch
Topics: Vision
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Diane Ackerman American Poet, Naturalist
- James Truslow Adams American Historian
- Marie Chapian American Christian Writer
- Robin Morgan American Author
- Robert M. Pirsig American Writer
- E. L. Doctorow American Novelist
- Randolph Bourne American Journalist, Critic
- Ben Stein American Writer
- Nikki Giovanni American Poet
- Alexander Woollcott American Critic
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