“Writing is reporting what we saw after the vision has left us. It is catching the fish which the tide has left far up on our shores in the low and depressed places.”

A sap run is the sweet goodbye of winter. It is the fruit of the equal marriage of the sun and frost.

Without the emotion of the beautiful, the sublime, the mysterious, there is no art, no religion, no literature.

Even in rugged Scotland, nature is scarcely wilder than a mountain sheep, certainly a good way short of the ferity of the moose and caribou.

The homing instinct in birds and animals is one of their most remarkable traits: their strong local attachments and their skill in finding their way back when removed to a distance.

The life of a swarm of bees is like an active and hazardous campaign of an army: the ranks are being continually depleted and continually recruited.

Most birds are very stiff-necked, like the robin, and as they run or hop upon the ground, carry the head as if it were riveted to the body.

I am sure I was an evolutionist in the abstract, or by the quality and complexion of my mind, before I read Darwin, but to become an evolutionist in the concrete, and accept the doctrine of the animal origin of man, has not for me been an easy matter.

Some of the animals outsee man, outsmell him, outhear him, outrun him, outswim him, because their lives depend more upon these special powers than his does; but he can outwit them all because he has the resourcefulness of reason and is at home in many different fields.

Most people were shocked by the thought; it was intensely repugnant to their feelings.

I have suffered no great losses, or defeats, or illness, or accidents, and have undergone no great struggles or privations; I have had no grouch. I have not wanted the earth.

Naturalists, like poets, are born and then made only by years of painstaking observation.

The feminine character, the feminine perceptions, intuitions, delicacy, sympathy, quickness, are more responsive to natural forms and influences than is the masculine mind.

There are no sermons in stones. It is easier to get a spark out of a stone than a moral.

The key is always to speak in your own voice. Speak the truth. That’s Acting 101. Then you start putting layers on top of that.

When Darwin published his conclusion that man was descended from an apelike ancestor who was again descended from a still lower type.

The building of cities and towns, the cutting down of forests, and the draining of pools and swamps have deprived American birds of their original homes and food supply.

How you respond to the challenge in the second half will determine what you become after the game, whether you are a winner or a loser.

My wife goes to Birmingham five times a week. My mom lives in Birmingham now after moving from Myrtle Beach. It’s not just the job. A lot of people don’t get that. My life is here.

Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity.

God looks after children, animals and idiots.

I am not enough of a mathematician to be able to judge either the well-foundedness or the limits of relativity in physics.

I look for what needs to be done. After all, that’s how the universe designs itself.

What is a scientist after all? It is a curious man looking through a keyhole, the keyhole of nature, trying to know what’s going on.

I had a chance to win $2 million, a week after high school graduation, and if I turned pro, the sponsor was going to financially support me.