“If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement, and mystery of the world we live in.”

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.