No important change in ethics was ever accomplished without an internal chage in our intellectual emphasis, loyalties, affections, and convictions.

To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.

One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.

Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them

But wherever the truth may lie, this much is crystal-clear: our bigger-and-better society is now like a hypochondriac, so obsessed with its own economic health as to have lost the capacity to remain healthy. . . . Nothing could be more salutary at this stage than a little healthy contempt for a plethora of material blessings.

It is, by common consent, a good thing for people to get back to nature.

Wildflower corners are easy to maintain, but once gone, they are hard to rebuild.