I have been, all my life, what is known as a conservationist. It seems clear beyond possibility of argument that any given generation of men can have only a lease, not ownership, of the earth; and one essential term of the lease is that the earth be handed down on to the next generation with unimpaired potentialities. This is the conservationist's concern.

... To this day I would rather see a fish, creep up to him and watch his rise to my fly than catch half a dozen fish unseen until they take.

I have never seen a river that I could not love. Moving water... has a fascinating vitality. It has power and grace and associations. It has a thousand colors and a thousand shapes, yet it follows laws so definite that the tiniest streamlet is an exact replica of a great river.

I remember the good evenings I have fished, even the ones that realised material hopes not by the fish that came to the fly, but by the colour and movement of the water and sky, by the sounds and scents and gentle stirrings that were all about me.

A fisherman is always hopeful -- nearly always more hopeful than he has any right to be.

I have fished through fishless days that I remember happily without regret.

I still don't know why I fish or why other men fish, except that we like it and it makes us think and feel.