Expose a child to a particular environment at this susceptible time and he will perceive in the shapes of that environment until he dies.

The life we all live is amateurish and accidental; it begins in accident and proceeds by trial and error toward dubious ends.

The brook would lose its song if we removed the rocks.

We are fossils in the making.

We need wilderness preserved-as much of it as is still left, and as many kinds-because it was the challenge against which our character as a people was formed.

After a day and a half or so the traveler will realize that crossing the continent by Interstate he gets to know the country about as well as a cable messenger knows the sea bottom.

[T]hat old September feeling, left over from school days, of summer passing, vacation nearly done, obligations gathering, books and football in the air ... Another fall, another turned page: there was something of jubilee in that annual autumnal beginning, as if last year's mistakes had been wiped clean by summer.