“We are not truly civilized if we concern ourselves only with the relation of man to man. What is important is the relation of man to all life.”

Beginnings are apt to be shadowy.

Those who love and free nature are never alone.

Then the song of a whitethroat, pure and ethereal, with the dreamy quality of remembered joy.

We still talk in terms of conquest. We still haven’t become mature enough to think of ourselves as only a tiny part of a vast and incredible universe.

To understand the living present, and the promise of the future, it is necessary to remember the past.

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.

A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood.

The real wealth of the Nation lies in the resources of the earth – soil, water, forests, minerals, and wildlife.

Beginnings are apt to be shadowy and so it is the beginnings of the great mother life, the sea.

The discipline of the writer is to learn to be still and listen to what his subject has to tell him.

It is not half so important to know as to feel.

For all at last return to the sea- to Oceanus, the ocean river, like the ever-flowing stream of time, the beginning and the end.

The lasting pleasures of contact with the natural world are not reserved for scientists but are available to anyone who will place himself under the influence of earth, sea and sky and their amazing life.

I sincerely believe that for the child, and for the parent seeking to guide him, it is not half so important to ‘know’ as to ‘feel’.

There is one quality that characterizes all of us who deal with the sciences of the earth and its life – we are never bored.

The aim of science is to discover and illuminate truth. And that, I take it, is the aim of literature, whether biography or history or fiction. It seems to me, then, that there can be no separate literature of science.

We must have no carelessness in our dealings with public property or the expenditure of public money. Such a condition is characteristic either of an undeveloped people, or of a decadent civilization. America is neither.

From the first day to this, sheer greed was the driving spirit of civilization.

Peace on earth would mean the end of civilization as we know it.

Their whole life depends on spending money, and now they’ve got none to spend. That’s our civilization and our education: bring up the masses to depend entirely on spending money, and then the money gives out.

The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart.

If we assume man has been corrupted by an artificial civilization, what is the natural state? the state of nature from which he has been removed? imagine, wandering up and down the forest without industry, without speech, and without home.

Lack of culture means what it has always meant: ignoble civilization and therefore imminent downfall.

The mother art is architecture. Without an architecture of our own we have no soul of our own civilization.