Rachel Carson Quotes

You don't need it, but will you take some advice from a Californian who's been around for a while? Cherish these rivers. Witness for them. Enjoy their unimprovable purpose as you sense it, and let those rivers that you never visit comfort you with the assurance that they are there, doing wonderfully what they have always done.

Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life. Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe, the less taste we shall have for destruction.

They took all the trees and put them in a tree museum.

There is certainly no single remedy for this condition and I am offering no panacea. But it seems reasonable to believe — and I do believe — that the more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us the less taste we shall have for the destruction of our race. Wonder and humility are wholesome emotions, and they do not exist side by side with a lust for destruction.

Life off Earth is in two important respects not at all unworldly: you can choose to focus on the surprises and pleasures, or the frustrations. And you can choose to appreciate the smallest scraps of experience, the everyday moments, or to value only the grandest, most stirring ones.

The green things of this world are just wondrous, aren’t they?” his mother went on. “We work so hard to get rid of them when sometimes they’re the very thing that saves us.

One looks, looks long, and the world comes in.

Almost everything about the universe is astounding.

It is our task in our time and in our generation, to hand down undiminished to those who come after us, as was handed down to us by those who went before, the natural wealth and beauty which is ours.

How we pay attention to the present moment...determin es the character of our experience and...the quality of our lives.

Everything alive is part of each of us, and many things which do not move as we move are part of us. The sun is part of us, the earth, the sky, the stars, the rivers, and the oceans. All things are part of us, and we have come here to enjoy them and to thank God for them.

Ecology is boring for the same reason that destruction is fun.

Art is always the replacement of indifference by attention.

If you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for a moment.

. . . 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.

Survival lies in sanity, and sanity lies in paying attention...the capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.

My experience is what I agree to attend to.

The quality of your moments produces the quality of your life. So, as thoughts come and go and the waves of mind rush on, Carpe punctum-Seize this moment. It deserves your full attention, for it will not pass your way again.

Look for the stars, you'll say that there are none; / Look up a second time, and, one by one, / You mark them twinkling out with silvery light, / And wonder how they could elude the sight!

... the daily world exists because we know how to hold its images; consequently, if one drops the attention needed to maintain those images, the world collapses

The concept of conservation is a far truer sign of civilization than that spoilation of a continent which we once confused with progress.

The voice of the natural world would be, "Could you please give us space and leave us alone to get along with our own lives and our own ways, because we actually know much better how to do it then when you start interfering."

Wildness is not just the "preservation of the world," it is the world

A need to concentrate on each sound, so that every blade of grass would be as important as a flower.

Follow the ball, man. There's only one ball. They can only give it to one of them at a time, so let's not get too far away from the reality of it all.