The shore is an ancient world, for as long as there has been an earth and sea there has been this place of the meeting of land and water.
RACHEL CARSONThe shore is an ancient world, for as long as there has been an earth and sea there has been this place of the meeting of land and water.
RACHEL CARSONNowhere 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.
RACHEL CARSONWe 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.
RACHEL CARSONThe ‘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.
RACHEL CARSONThere is one quality that characterizes all of us who deal with the sciences of the earth and its life – we are never bored.
RACHEL CARSONA child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement.
RACHEL CARSONAutumn 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.
RACHEL CARSONAlways the edge of the sea remains an elusive and indefinable boundary. The shore has a dual nature, changing with the swing of the tides, belonging now to the land, now to the sea.
RACHEL CARSONOne summer night, out on a flat headland, all but surrounded by the waters of the bay, the horizons were remote and distant rims on the edge of space.
RACHEL CARSONBut most of all I shall remember the monarchs, that unhurried westward drift of one small winged form after another, each drawn by some invisible force.
RACHEL CARSONIf there is poetry in my book about the sea, it is not because I deliberately put it there, but because no one could write truthfully about the sea and leave out the poetry.
RACHEL CARSONBut man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself.
RACHEL CARSONAs crude a weapon as a cave man’s club, the chemical barrage has been hurled against the fabric of life.
RACHEL CARSONHave we fallen into a mesmerized state that makes us accept as inevitable that which is inferior or detrimental, as though having lost the will or the vision to demand that which is good?
RACHEL CARSONKnowing what I do, there would be no future peace for me if I kept silent.
RACHEL CARSONI like to define biology as the history of the earth and all its life – past, present, and future.
RACHEL CARSON