“We cannot have peace among men whose hearts find delight in killing any living creature.”

The ‘control of nature’ is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man.

The edge of the sea is a strange and beautiful place.

When we go down to the low-tide line, we enter a world that is as old as the earth itself – the primeval meeting place of the elements of earth and water, a place of compromise and conflit and eternal change.

There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature.

Why would anyone believe it is possible to lay down such barrage of poisons on the surface of the earth without making it unfit for all life? They should not be called insecticides, but biocides.

I like to define biology as the history of the earth and all its life – past, present, and future.

The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster.

The beauty of the living world I was trying to save has always been uppermost in my mind – that, and anger at the senseless, brutish things that were being done. . . . Now I can believe I have at least helped a little.

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature – the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.

There is no drop of water in the ocean, not even in the deepest parts of the abyss, that does not know and respond to the mysterious forces that create the tide.

Conservation is a cause that has no end. There is no point at which we will say our work is finished.

Autumn comes to the sea with a fresh blaze of phosphorescence, when every wave crest is aflame. Here and there the whole surface may glow with sheets of cold fire, while below schools of fish pour through the water like molten metal.

Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species — man — acquired significant power to alter the nature of the world.

The years of early childhood are the time to prepare the soil.

A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement.

Nowhere on the shore is the relation of a creature to its surroundings a matter of a single cause and effect; each living thing is bound to its world by many threads, weaving the intricate design of the fabric of life.

Shadow work is the path of the heart warrior.

Life is going to give you just what you put in it. Put your whole heart in everything you do, and pray, then you can wait.

Depression is the absence of hope.

It can be heartbreaking when you find out that your fairy tale image of the world doesn’t match the reality.

Some people don’t understand the promises they’re making when they make them.

You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.

I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up all alone. It’s not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel all alone.

Take courage, my heart: you have been through worse than this.