Our tools are better than we are, and grow better faster than we do. They suffice to crack the atom, to command the tides, but they do not suffice for the oldest task in human history, to live on a piece of land without spoiling it.

Never did we plan the morrow, for we had learned that in the wilderness some new and irresistible distraction is sure to turn up each day before breakfast. Like the river, we were free to wander.

One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of March thaw, is the Spring.

Your woodlot is, in fact, an historical document which faithfully records your personal philosophy.

Conservationists have, I fear, adopted the pedagogical method of the prophets: we mutter darkly about impending doom if people don't mend their ways. The doom is impending, all right; no one can be an ecologist, even an amateur one, without seeing it. But do people mend their ways for fear of calamity? I doubt it. They are more likely to do it out of pure curiosity and interest.

Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and aesthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient.

The land-relation is still strictly economic, entailing privileges but not obligations