The long fight to save wild beauty represents democracy at its best. It requires citizens to practice the hardest of virtues--self-restraint. Why cannot I take as many trout as I want from a stream? Why cannot I bring home from the woods a rare wildflower? Because if I do, everybody in this democracy should be able to do the same. My act will be multiplied endlessly. To provide protection for wildlife and wild beauty, everyone has to deny himself proportionately. Special privilege and conservation are ever at odds.

For observing nature, the best pace is a snail's pace.

If man can take care of man, nature can take care of the rest.

It is morally as bad not to care whether a thing is true or not, so long as it makes you feel good, as it is not to care how you got your money as long as you have got it.

Nature is shy and noncommittal in a crowd. To learn her secrets, visit her alone or with a single friend, at most. Everything evades you, everything hides, even your thoughts escape you, when you walk in a crowd.

Even the lifelong traveler knows but an infinitesimal portion of the Earth's surface. Those who have written best about the land and its wild inhabitants...have often been stay-at-home naturalists...concentrating their attention and affection on a relatively small area.

How strangely inaccurate it is to measure length of living by length of life! The space between your birth and death is often far from a true measure of your days of living.