Have we fallen into a mesmerized state that makes us accept as inevitable that which is inferior or detrimental, as though having lost the will or the vision to demand that which is good?

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature -- the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.

When we go down to the low-tide line, we enter a world that is as old as the earth itself - the primeval meeting place of the elements of earth and water, a place of compromise and conflit and eternal change.

One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself, "What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew i would never see it again?

If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength.

Unless we have courage to recognize cruelty for what it is - whether its victim is human or animal - we cannot expect things to be much better in the world.

In every outthrust headland, in every curving beach, in every grain of sand there is the story of the earth.