J. M. Coetzee Quotes

Do not let spacious plans for a new world divert your energies from saving what is left of the old.

It is good to realize that if love and peace can prevail on earth, and if we can teach our children to honor nature's gifts, the joys and beauties of the outdoors will be here forever.

We owe it to our ancestors to preserve entire those rights which they have delivered to our care. We owe it to our posterity not to suffer their dearest inheritance to be destroyed.

If I have any lasting worth, it will be because I have tried to make people remember what the Earth is meant to look like.

We can believe in the future and work to achieve it and preserve it, or we can whirl blindly on, behaving as if one day there will be no children to inherit our legacy. The choice is ours; the earth is in balance.

Demons run when a good man goes to war. Night will fall and drown the sun when a good man goes to war. Friendship dies and true love lies. Night will fall and the dark will rise when a good man goes to war. Demons run but count the cost; the battle's won but the child is lost.

Though the word beautification makes the concept sound merely cosmetic, it involves much more: clean water, clean air, clean roadsides, safe waste disposal and preservation of valued old landmarks as well as great parks and wilderness areas. To me … beautification means our total concern for the physical and human quality we pass on to our children and the future.

Only the story can continue beyond the war and the warrior. The story outlives the sound of the war drum... The story is our escort. Without it we are blind... It is the thing that sets us apart from cattle.

Books should be cherished, like children, books are for the next generation, like children, like history.

Leave it as it is. You can not improve on it. You can only mar it. The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it. What you can do is keep it for your children, your children's children and for all who come after you.

Nobody likes to see that which they've invested in disappear from the face of the earth before they've even died. This is not cool. We can now see what the landmarks, in fact are.

I remember as a ranger the first time I stood alone on Inspiration Point over at Canyon Station looking out over this beautiful land. I thought to myself how lucky I was that my parents' and grandparents' generation had the vision and the determination to save it for us. Now it is our turn to make our own gift outright to those who will come after us, 15 years, 40 years, 100 years from now. I want to be as faithful to my grandchildren's generation as Old Faithful has been to ours. What better way can we add a new dimension to our third century of freedom?

Was there ever a war where only one side bled?

I think everyone should have a personal mission to leave the Earth a better place for them having lived in it and let Earth then take it from there.

Some crime against nature is about to be committed. I feel it in my veins. These men and boys are grocers and clerks, gardeners and fathers - fathers of small children. A country cannot bear to lose them.

I feel that our planet is in peril and that creating a sustainable planet for my children and my children's children is the most important thing I can do in this lifetime.

Oh Earth, you gave me all I have, I love you, I love you, - oh what have IThat I can give you in return - Except my body after I die?

We have an obligation to make things beautiful. Not to leave the world uglier than we found it, not to empty the oceans, not to leave our problems for the next generation.

When people go at war they cheapen things.

It’s not about keeping up the population, it’s about passing on who we are and what we've learned, so things keep going. So we don’t just end.

Let us leave a splendid legacy for our children...let us turn to them and say, this you inherit: guard it well, for it is far more precious than money...and once destroyed, nature's beauty cannot be repurchased at any price.

One must care about a world one will not see.

If you plan on continuing a tradition, it might be a good idea to find out just what tradition it is that you intend to continue.

In peace children inter their parents, war violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their children.

To each of my Nephews, William Augustine Washington, George Lewis, George Steptoe Washington, Bushrod Washington, and Samuel Washington, I give one of my swords or Cutteaux of which I may be Possesed; and they are to chuse in the order they are named. These Swords are accompanied with an injuction not to unsheath them for the purpose of shedding blood, except it be for self defense, or in the defense of their Country and its rights; and in the latter case, to keep them unsheathed, and prefer falling with them in their hands, to the relenquishment thereof.