The wooing of the Earth thus implies much more than converting the wilderness into humanized environments. It means also preserving natural environments in which to experience mysteries transcending daily life and from which to recapture, in a Proustian kind of remembrance, the awareness of the cosmic forces that have shaped humankind.

The word "wilderness" occurs approximately three hundred times in the Bible, and all its meanings are derogatory.

It is possible to analyze the biological and social influences that make each human being unique, unprecedented, and unrepeatable, but this analysis does not explain how and why each feels different from all other human beings.

Social evolution may be the result of intention, but it rarely, if ever, produces the result intended.

The belief that we can manage the Earth and improve on Nature is probably the ultimate expression of human conceit, but it has deep roots in the past and is almost universal.

Men are naturally most impressed by diseases which have obvious manifestations, yet some of their worst enemies creep on them unobtrusively.

...Search for the cause may be a hopeless pursuit because most disease states are the indirect outcome of a constellation of circumstances.