Quotes
(collected by Neil E. Taylor)

 

The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men.
                             --Leonardo da Vinci



"The beauty and genius of a work of art may be reconceived, though its first material expression be destroyed; a vanished harmony may yet again inspire the composer; but when the last individual of a race of living things breathes no more, another heaven and another earth must pass before such a one can be again."
     -- William Beebe, 1906



In order to see birds its is necessary to become a part of the silence. -Robert Lynd



We think caged birds sing, when indeed they cry. -John Webster



Use the talents you possess, for the woods would be a very silent place if no birds sang except the best. -Henry Van Dyke



Nature may abhor a vacuum, but nothing better suits



Like a force of nature/Love can fade with the stars at dawn. -N. Peart



Our task must be to free ourselves...by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty. -Albert Einstein



Is not the core of nature in the heart of man? -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe



We are born with our eyes closed and our mouths open, and we spend our whole lives trying to reverse that mistake of nature. - Dale E.Turner



Nature teaches more than she preaches.
There are no sermons in stones.
It is easier to get a spark out of a stone than a moral.
- John Burroughs [Time and Change]



Nature is full of Genius, full of Divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand. - Henry David Thoreau



Time is nature's way of making sure everything doesn't happen at once.



You can complain because roses have thorns,
or you can rejoice because thorns have roses. -Ziggy



Once you have flown, you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward; for there you have been, there you long to return. -Da Vinci



One who walks in another's tracks leaves no footprints. - Proverb



Pain is pain, whether it be inflicted on man or on beast; and the creature who suffers it, whether man or beast, being sensible to the misery of it, whilst it lasts, suffers evil. (T)he white man...can have no right, by virtue of his color, to enslave and tyrannize over a black man. For the same reason, a man can have no natural right to abuse and torment a beast.
                         - Dr. Humphrey Primatt



...as long as human being will go on  shedding the blood of animals, there will never be any peace. There is only one little step from killing animals to creating gas
chambers a la Hitler and concentration camps a la Stalin...all such deeds are done in the name of "social justice. " There will be no justice as long as man will stand with a knife or with a gun and destroy those who are weaker than he is.
                         - Isaac Bashevis Singer



It isn't pollution that's harming the environment.  It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it. - Dan Quayle



The wonder of the world, the beauty and the power, the shapes of things, their colours, light and shades....these I saw.  Look ye also... while life lasts.
 -from an old tombstone in Cumberland, England

- submitted by Terry Carr, Elliot Lake, Ontario


Thoughts of Spring

"The birds link themselves to your memory
 of seasons and places, so that a song,
 a call, a gleam of color, set going a sequence  of delightful reminiscences in your mind."

  John Burroughs-August 1897

(See Teaching the Young)


"The Earth was falling asleep, though all things good and beautiful remained awake.   Happiness and love never sleep, or does silent sorrow which, like endlessly running rivers, turns the wheels of fortune and grinds the hard grain of destiny into soft bread.

A blackbird, like a living star, flies down to a barberry branch.  He has survived the winter and now, when violets in the fields and blue windflowers on the hills are beginning to bud, he is feeling lonely.  Enchanted and bewildered, he whistles his song composed of notes golden as the catkins of the willows and hazelnut bushes, touched with the purple of apple blossoms, pure as the white of endless rows of cherry trees,  a song of warm nests and gently rustling branches.  The song wells from his throat like droplets of blood--was there ever a human singer who could match him?
And behold, a shy shadow flits among the branches: his future companion is approaching, filled with the desire to be joyful, to make him happy.  He no longer sings for his own joy, he no longer sees nor hears for the rapture of having been touched by spring.
 Only when he wakes the others, only when the rejuvenated earth bursts into life,
only then will he stop, only then will he see her.  What is this change that comes over all of us in these moments?  Unaware we become brothers and sisters with the slim young trees flowing with new sap, their gold-green leaves delicate and youthful as our dreams."
From "The Cunning Little Vixen" by Rudolph Tesnohlidek

Chris Lyons Bronx, NY lyonscj@mailexcite.com



I hate quotations. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

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