Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species -- man -- acquired significant power to alter the nature of the world.

The shore is an ancient world, for as long as there has been an earth and sea there has been this place of the meeting of land and water.

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.

Always the edge of the sea remains an elusive and indefinable boundary. The shore has a dual nature, changing with the swing of the tides, belonging now to the land, now to the sea.

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.

Autumn comes to the sea with a fresh blaze of phosphorescence, when every wave crest is aflame. Here and there the whole surface may glow with sheets of cold fire, while below schools of fish pour through the water like molten metal.

The years of early childhood are the time to prepare the soil.