On motionless wing they emerge from the lifting mists, sweep a final arc of sky, and settle in clangorous descending spirals to their feeding grounds. A new day has begun on the crane marsh.

We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.

Land is not merely soil, it is a fountain of energy flowing through a circuit of soils, plants and animals.

Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left.

There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot.

A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.

The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: 'What good is it?

There can be no doubt that a society rooted in the soil is more stable than one rooted in pavements.

There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.

The first law of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts

To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.

I don't want to wake up and find out it was all a dream.

Is this love? Does love need to hurt this much? Or is this a forced kind of love that slaughters all involved?

There is no shame in being afraid.

I'm thankful for the three ounce Ziploc bag, so that I have somewhere to put my savings.

We all have different desires and needs, but if we don't discover what we want from ourselves and what we stand for, we will live passively and unfulfilled.

Through buried paths, where sleepy twilight dreams The summer time away.

When one wants to write, one writes. If one is condemned to write, one writes.

For the rhapsode ought to interpret the mind of the poet to his hearers, but how can he interpret him well unless he knows what he means?

Stand us against a wall and shoot us, well and good, you are victors. But why should I be brought before a Tribunal like a c-c-c-... I can't even get the word [criminal] out!

An epigram is a half-truth so stated as to irritate the person who believes the other half.