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

A man should think when he fishing of all manner and shape of things, flowing as easily through the mind as the light stream among the rocks

A river is water is its loveliest form; rivers have life and sound and movement and infinity of variation, rivers are veins of the earth through which the lifeblood returns to the heart

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.

Our tradition is that of the first man who sneaked away to the creek when the tribe did not really need fish.

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.

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.