Quotes from Rachel Carson

It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know of wonder and humility.

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strengths that will endure as life lasts

If there is poetry in my book about the sea, it is not because I deliberately put it there, but because no one could write truthfully about the sea and leave out the poetry

A rainy day is the perfect time for a walk in the woods.

As crude a weapon as the cave man's club, the chemical barrage has been hurled against the fabric of life.

Beginnings are apt to be shadowy.

It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose, should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life.

Over increasingly large areas of the United States, spring now comes unheralded by the return of the birds, and the early mornings are strangely silent where once they were filled with the beauty of bird song.

The edge of the sea is a strange and beautiful place. All through the long history of Earth it has been an area of unrest where waves have broken heavily against the land, where the tides have pressed forward over the continents, receded, and then returned. For no two successive days is the shore line precisely the same.

In an age when man has forgotten his origins and is blind even to his most essential needs for survival, water along with other resources has become the victim of his indifference.

Beginnings are apt to be shadowy and so it is the beginnings of the great mother life, the sea.

For the sense of smell, almost more than any other, has the power to recall memories and it is a pity that you use it so little.

The discipline of the writer is to learn to be still and listen to what his subject has to tell him.

The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.

It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist; the threat is rather to life itself.

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.

In nature nothing exists alone.

But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself.

Why should we tolerate a diet of weak poisons, a home in insipid surroundings, a circle of acquaintances who are not quite our enemies, the noise of motors with just enough relief to prevent insanity? Who would want to live in a world which is just not quite fatal?

In every outthrust headland, in every curving beach, in every grain of sand there is the story of the earth.

If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement, and mystery of the world we live in.

One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself, "What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew i would never see it again?

The edge of the sea is a strange and beautiful place.

We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost 's familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road — the one less traveled by — offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth.