Aldo Leopold Quotes

All that's bright must fade, The brightest still the fleetest; All that's sweet was made But to be lost when sweetest.

A work of art is static; and its value and its weakness lie in being so: but the tuft of grass and the clouds above it belong to our own travelling brotherhood.

Beauty is momentary in the mind -- The fitful tracing of a portal; But in the flesh it is immortal. The body dies; the body's beauty lives. So evenings die, in their green going, A wave, interminably flowing.

But pleasures are like poppies spread, You seize the flower, it's bloom is shed; Or, like the snow-fall in the river, A moment white, then melts forever.

Nothing gold can stay.

Life is a stream On which we strew Petal by petal the flower of our heart; The end lost in dream, They float past our view, We only watch their glad, early start. Freighted with hope, Crimsoned with joy, We scatter the leaves of our opening rose; Their widening scope, Their distant employ, We never shall know. And the stream as it flows Sweeps them away, Each one is gone Ever beyond into infinite ways. We alone stay While years hurry on, The flower fared forth, though its fragrance still stays.

I did not want to move. For I had the feeling that this was a place, once seen, that could not be seen again. If I left and then came back, it would not be the same; no matter how many times I might return to this particular spot the place and feeling would never be the same, something would be lost or something would be added, and there never would exist again, through all eternity, all the integrated factors that made it what it was in this magic moment.

Beautiful is the bloom of youth, but it lasts only for a short time.

Everything vanishes, falls apart, doesn't it? Nature is always the same but nothing in her that appears to us lasts. Our art must render the thrill of her permanence, along with her elements, the appearance of all her changes. It must give us a taste of her Eternity.

A life is a moment in season. A life is one snowfall. A life is one autumn day. A life is the delicate, rapid edge of a closing door's shadow. A life is a brief movement of arms and of legs.

The fading light is us, and we are, for a moment so brief (...) beautiful.

Or like the snow falls in the river, A moment white-then melts for ever . . .

A moment is all you can expect from perfection.

Because beautiful things never last. Not roses nor snow… And not fireworks, either

By the time I recognize this moment, this moment will be gone. . . But I will bend the light, pretend that it somehow lingered on

Natural beauty is essentially temporary and sad, hence the impression of obscene mockery which artificial flowers give us.

A rainbow which lasts for a quarter of an hour is looked at no longer.

Nothing is more fleeting than external form, which withers and alters like the flowers of the field at the appearance of autumn.

A butterfly flitting from flower to flower ever remains mine, I lose the one that is netted by me.

The ballet. I saw in the fugitive beauty of a dancer's gesture a symbol of life. It was achieved at the cost of unending effort but, with all the forces of gravity against it, a fleeting poise in mid-air, a lovely attitude worthy to be made immortal in a bas-relief, it was lost as soon as it was gained and there remained no more than the memory of an exquisite emotion. So life, lived variously and largely, becomes a work of art only when brought to its beautiful conclusion and is reduced to nothingness in the moment when it arrives at perfection.

I knew that it wouldn’t last. It was just a moment, a perfect moment, as time stood still and fleetingly everything fell back into its proper place.

Beautiful things grow to a certain height and then they fail and fade off, breathing out memories as they decay.

Look at the fate of summer flowers, which blow at daybreak, droop ere even-song.

Passing beauties are only the fugitive reflections of the eternal. All beauty alters and all life melts away; in short, everything passes with marvelous rapidity; beautiful Helen of Troy has become a toothless skull, then a handful of dust, then nothing.

The desert weed lives on, but the flower of spring blooms and wilts.