It is sometimes easier to head an institute for the study of child guidance than it is to turn one brat into a decent human being.
Joseph Wood KrutchThe wilderness and the idea of wilderness is one of the permanent homes of the human spirit.
Joseph Wood KrutchIs it wholly fantastic to admit the possibility that Nature herself strove toward what we call beauty? Face to face with any one of the elaborate flowers which man's cultivation has had nothing to do with, it does not seem fantastic to me. We put survival first. But when we have a margin of safety left over, we expend it in the search for the beautiful. Who can say that Nature does not do the same?
Joseph Wood KrutchPoetry, mythology, and religion represent the world as man would like to have it, while science represents the world as he gradually comes to discover it.
Joseph Wood KrutchThere are some optimists who search eagerly for the skunk cabbage which in February sometimes pushes itself up through the ice, and who call it a sign of spring. I wish that I could feel that way about it, but I do not. The truth of the matter, to me, is simply that skunk cabbage blooms in the winter time.
Joseph Wood Krutch