Italo Calvino Quotes

Nature's my muse and it's been my passion.

Like music and art, love of nature is a common language that can transcend political or social boundaries.

wild flowers should be enjoyed unplucked where they grow.

I used to be such a militant city-ist, but more and more I've seen forests and nature and oceans, and I don't know any more if this is the awesomest way to live.

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.

The Mexican gray wolves are actually responsible for the spark of legendary environmentalists Aldo Leopold and Ernest Seton. In both cases, the men found their lives and souls forever changed after they killed Mexican gray wolves.

He who does not become familiar with nature through love will never know her.

Plans to protect air and water, wilderness and wildlife are in fact plans to protect man.

India's elite wants not just cosmetic environmentalism, but a consumer-environmentalism. It wants to have good areas to go for tourism to. So it's happy to have national parks, because people can go for wildlife tourism. Or good beaches. But they don't want, and don't care about, a livelihood environmentalism.

True conservation means protecting the entire habitat.

My brother and I were brought up outdoors. We appreciate the countryside; we appreciate nature and everything about it.

The love of nature is a different thing from the love of science, though the two may go together.

Part of what makes South Carolina so beautiful is the land we conserve for wildlife and for future generations.

Stay green, stay in the woods, and stay safe.

. . . perhaps our grandsons, having never seen a wild river, will never miss the chance to set a canoe in singing waters . . . glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in.

Today, we must realize that nature is revealed in the simplest meadow, wood lot, marsh, stream, or tidepool, as well as in the remote grandeur of our parks and wilderness areas.

I was born and raised here [in Florida], so I still have tremendous affection for the state - especially the few wild places that haven't disappeared under concrete. What's left is still worth fighting for, and that's why I stay.

Conservation is not merely a question of morality, but a question of our own survival.

Nature is where I feel most comfortable; it's where I find my balance. I would like my kids and all future generations to have the chance to experience nature as I did.

There must be limits, somewhere, to the human footprint on this earth. When the whole of the world is reduced to nothing but human product, we will have lost the map that can show us how we got here, and can offer our spirits an answer when we ask why. Surely we are capable of declaring sacred some quarters that we dare not enter or possess.

Barring love and war, few enterprises are undertaken with such abandon, or by such diverse individuals, or with so paradoxical a mixture of appetite and altruism, as that group of avocations known as outdoor recreation. It is, by common consent, a good thing for people to get back to nature. But wherein lies the goodness, and what can be done to encourage its pursuit?

We are not talking about esthetics. We are talking about life: survival of Man. We must train young people to get another vision of Nature. We call it 'wilderness,' and we think it is progress to get further and further away from it. How crazy! Where would we have been if Nature had not built us up?

We can never have enough of Nature.

If wilderness is outlawed, only outlaws can save wilderness.

To this day, I enjoy nature, the luxury of undisturbed wilderness, forests, mountains, lakes, rivers and deserts and their wildlife. But I also know that the greatest danger to their perpetuity is the pressure of human population.